“We … understand that Russia is one of the world’s leading nuclear powers and is superior to many of those countries in terms of the number of modern nuclear force components,” warned Russian president Vladimir Putin in a Feb 8 press conference. The “West”, he hinted, would be risking nuclear war by opposing Russia in Ukraine.
In 1962, Washington and Moscow stood at the brink of nuclear armageddon. Fortunately, saner heads prevailed and both sides backed down to the relief of all humanity. With the fall of the Berlin Wall, the Cuban Missile Crisis was relegated to the history books as a relic of a bygone age.
Yet once again, as Russia amasses conventional troops on the Ukrainian border, the shadow from the episode 60 years ago casts a long shadow over these manoeuvres. Washington and Moscow still command the world’s two largest nuclear arsenals at 5,600 and 6,257 warheads respectively. While no overt nuclear posturing has been made by either side, any engagement between the US and Russia raises the spectre of nuclear war.
