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Allow me to shed a little different historical light on the Cuban Missile Crisis. The whole fiasco began as a major US intelligence failure in that the missiles were already there and ready before the US had a clue. Those missiles could take out everything from Texas to DC quicker than the US could mount any kind of response, if only the Soviets decided to pull the trigger and blow us away.
Kennedy's first response was to dither for a week and not tell the media or even the military that a quarter of the country's population had a big unstoppable nuclear bullseye on it. After diddling for a week, JFK announced the situation to the world, threatened to respond to missiles from Cuba with bombers over Moscow (without being clear as to who would be sending them with the whole US government drifting downwind in an ash cloud), and to enforce a naval blockade of Cuba, which in itself was technically an act of war. When the Russians agreed to pull the missiles out of Cuba, JFK was advertised as a strong young hero who saved his country. What got left out of the media hype was how JFK almost got the USA vaporized and wound up making the country weaker.
First, the Russian freighters hauling more missiles to Cuba which turned around and went home were escorted by a half dozen Soviet diesel subs. As part of the blockade enforcement, former naval officer JFK ordered those subs persecuted mercilessly by our ASW assets. Those subs were constantly harassed by subs, ships, and aircraft until they gave up trying to hide and just proceeded to Cuba or back home on the surface. What the Americans did not know (again, intelligence failure) was that each of those boats carried among other armaments two nuclear torpedoes, and that the Soviet command/control protocol for nuclear release bore no semblance of similarity to ours. Those young submarine commanders had complete autonomy to initiate nuclear warfare on their own against the USA if they felt threatened by an act of war. Our harassment of their subs in international waters to enforce an illegal blockade was an act of war, but fortunately for us all six Russian sub commanders acted prudently and held their fire when the POTUS acted foolishly. I see this as roughly parallel to recent threats to launch airstrikes on Russian manned air defenses as if there would be nothing to worry about from the Russian nuclear arsenal afterwards.
Second, the negotiating chip which convinced Kruschev to remove his missiles from Cuba was Kennedy's promise to remove the US missiles from Turkey, from whence the USA had a nuclear advantage similar to negotiating with a gun to Kruschev's head. The missiles in Turkey predated the arrival of Soviet missiles in Cuba. By withdrawing missiles from Cuba in return for a parallel US withdrawal from Turkey, Kruschev removed the Turkish threat to his country at no real cost. Kruschev was the shrewd negotiator, not JFK. I see this as parallel to the victory claim by POTUS that he forced Assad to hand over his WMDs to Russia while ignoring the new flood of Russian military hardware into Syria to enable more effective killing of rebels and civilians with explosives instead of fickle chemicals.
Third, while the USA did withdraw missiles from Turkey, no provision was made to ensure that the Soviet missiles in Cuba actually went anywhere other than out of the view of our spy planes. I see this as the equivalent as declaring victory based on a handover of chemical weapons that no US observer witnessed, or may happen in the form of swapping out older and less effective chems for new and better ones. With the new influx of Russian arms, and quietly keeping the chems or even upgrading them would retain what little strategic deterrent Syria has against Israeli nuclear weapons.
Fourth, the USA fundamentally misunderstood Soviet combat doctrine. Even up through the mid-1980s, the Americans clung to the fantasy that nuclear warfare would be a gradually developing thing, beginning with limited use of tactical weapons by one side out of desperation, responded to with theater range weapons of larger scale before progressing to ICBMs after a breakdown of political negotiations. The American belief in this fantasy was so strong that the limited attempts at an anti-ICBM system were deployed to protect our missile silos against a surprise first strike. The Russians deployed their anti-ICBM attempts to protect cities, not silos, because they intended their silos to be empty from the moment a war started. We thought their MiG-25 which defected to Japan was laughably inept because its electronics were built around old school vacuum tubes, but the Russians built it that way on purpose because tubes are impervious to EMP effects, and they intended to battlefield to be nuclear from the very beginning. The US superiority in delicate electronic sensors did little to impress the Soviets because they focused on superiority in things that would withstand all but a nearby nuclear detonation - infantry, armor, artillery, aircraft dedicated to ground attack or visual dogfighting, unguided rockets, and simple transport vehicles containing no sensitive electronics at all. That "nuke 'em first then conquer then with what you've got left" mentality was misunderstood and underestimated by a POTUS who cavalierly committed acts of war.
Apologize for pissing on this movie recommendation, but the parallels from that era's crises to the ones we face today are obvious. So much misunderstanding or outright ignorance of Russian/Soviet doctrine by an administration that refuses to think ahead and act clearly.
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