Noam Chomsky writes: The world stood still 50 years ago during the last week of October, from the moment when it learned that the Soviet Union had placed nuclear-armed missiles in Cuba until the crisis was officially ended – though, unknown to the public, only officially.

The image of the world standing still is due to Sheldon Stern, former historian at the John F Kennedy Presidential Library, who published the authoritative version of the tapes of the ExComm meetings where Kennedy, and a close circle of advisers, debated how to respond to the crisis. The meetings were secretly recorded by the president, which might bear on the fact that his stand throughout the recorded sessions is relatively temperate, as compared to other participants who were unaware that they were speaking to history. Stern has just published an accessible and accurate review of this critically important documentary record, finally declassified in the 1990s. I will keep to that here. “Never before or since,” he concludes, “has the survival of human civilization been at stake in a few short weeks of dangerous deliberations,” culminating in the Week the World Stood Still.

There was good reason for the global concern. A nuclear war was all too imminent – a war that might “destroy the Northern Hemisphere”, President Eisenhower had warned. Kennedy’s own judgment was that the probability of war might have been as high as 50%. Estimates became higher as the confrontation reached its peak and the “secret doomsday plan to ensure the survival of the government was put into effect” in Washington, described by journalist Michael Dobbs in his recent, well-researched bestseller on the crisis – though he doesn’t explain why there would be much point in doing so, given the likely nature of nuclear war. Dobbs quotes Dino Brugioni, “a key member of the CIA team monitoring the Soviet missile build-up”, who saw no way out except “war and complete destruction” as the clock moved to One Minute to Midnight – Dobbs’ title. Kennedy’s close associate, historian Arthur Schlesinger, described the events as “the most dangerous moment in human history”. Defense Secretary Robert McNamara wondered aloud whether he “would live to see another Saturday night”, and later recognized that “we lucked out” – barely.

A closer look at what took place adds grim overtones to these judgments, with reverberations to the present moment. [Continue reading…]