§ 1. Convergent sequences and series
89
to be neglected at the beginning of the 22 1950s and considered, right
or wrong, as very serious during the Reagan period.
(5) By far the most grave crisis of the Cold War was triggered by
the clandestine installation in Cuba in 1962 of Soviet nuclear arms
in response to the American arms in Europe, principally the missiles in Turkey, and the preparatory moves to invading Cuba. Some
claim that the peaceful resolution of the crisis proved the efficacity
of "deterrence" . Apart from the fact that there would not have been
a "Cuban crisis" of such dimensions if not for nuclear arms, new
information has been available for some years. At the height of the
crisis, at the point of being stopped, the famous Colonel Penkowski,
who had communicated a mass of information to the Americans concerning the arms of his country, is supposed to have sent a coded
message to the CIA informing them of an imminent Soviet attack; in
view of his personality the two employees of the CIA who received
the message decided not to transmit it to their superiors (information
impossible to confirm, but published by Raymond Garthoff, author
of massive studies on American-Soviet relations). One knows that the
Soviets left more than 40,000 men in Cuba, and not 10,000 as the
CIA believed, with tactical nuclear arms which the local Soviet commandant was authorised to use in case of an American invasion, a
contingency which might very well have been realised if Khrushchev
had waited a few more days before throwing in the sponge: imagine
the American reaction in such a case. One knows that, in the two
camps, the military chiefs protested violently against the outcome of
the crisis: they were for immediate invasion by the USA - everything
was ready - and against "capitulation" in USSR. At the height of
the crisis, the chief of the Strategic Air Command took it on himself
to send the order in clear to the B-52s loaded with bombs which flew
constantly towards the USSR to go on a state of quasi-maximum
alert, the American Navy harassing the Soviet submarines even in
the Pacific. The then Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, later
became the principal advocate of total abolition of nuclear arms.
22 At this time, which follows the first Soviet explosion of August 1949, one sees a
part of the press and numerous civilian or military personnel advocate a preventive attack while the Russians did not yet have a stock of bombs; for example, our
colleague von Neumann (Logic and Set Theory, Hilbert Spaces, Game Theory,
Implosion Theory for the Nagasaki Bomb, Programmable Computers, H Bomb,
Missiles), then one of the most influential advisers of the Pentagon, is supposed
to have said: If you say why not bomb them tomorrow, I say why not today.
If you say today at five o'clock, I say why not one o'clock, if you believe Life,
25/2/1957, on the occasion of his death. But neither Truman nor Eisenhower
was disposed to take this risk, as, among other historians, Marc Trachtenberg
explains lucidly, History and Strategy (Princeton UP, 1991), in a chapter entitled A "Wasting Asset": American Strategy and the Shifting Nuclear Balance,
1949-1954. See also Rhodes, Dark Sun, pp. 562-568.
89
to be neglected at the beginning of the 22 1950s and considered, right
or wrong, as very serious during the Reagan period.
(5) By far the most grave crisis of the Cold War was triggered by
the clandestine installation in Cuba in 1962 of Soviet nuclear arms
in response to the American arms in Europe, principally the missiles in Turkey, and the preparatory moves to invading Cuba. Some
claim that the peaceful resolution of the crisis proved the efficacity
of "deterrence" . Apart from the fact that there would not have been
a "Cuban crisis" of such dimensions if not for nuclear arms, new
information has been available for some years. At the height of the
crisis, at the point of being stopped, the famous Colonel Penkowski,
who had communicated a mass of information to the Americans concerning the arms of his country, is supposed to have sent a coded
message to the CIA informing them of an imminent Soviet attack; in
view of his personality the two employees of the CIA who received
the message decided not to transmit it to their superiors (information
impossible to confirm, but published by Raymond Garthoff, author
of massive studies on American-Soviet relations). One knows that the
Soviets left more than 40,000 men in Cuba, and not 10,000 as the
CIA believed, with tactical nuclear arms which the local Soviet commandant was authorised to use in case of an American invasion, a
contingency which might very well have been realised if Khrushchev
had waited a few more days before throwing in the sponge: imagine
the American reaction in such a case. One knows that, in the two
camps, the military chiefs protested violently against the outcome of
the crisis: they were for immediate invasion by the USA - everything
was ready - and against "capitulation" in USSR. At the height of
the crisis, the chief of the Strategic Air Command took it on himself
to send the order in clear to the B-52s loaded with bombs which flew
constantly towards the USSR to go on a state of quasi-maximum
alert, the American Navy harassing the Soviet submarines even in
the Pacific. The then Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, later
became the principal advocate of total abolition of nuclear arms.
22 At this time, which follows the first Soviet explosion of August 1949, one sees a
part of the press and numerous civilian or military personnel advocate a preventive attack while the Russians did not yet have a stock of bombs; for example, our
colleague von Neumann (Logic and Set Theory, Hilbert Spaces, Game Theory,
Implosion Theory for the Nagasaki Bomb, Programmable Computers, H Bomb,
Missiles), then one of the most influential advisers of the Pentagon, is supposed
to have said: If you say why not bomb them tomorrow, I say why not today.
If you say today at five o'clock, I say why not one o'clock, if you believe Life,
25/2/1957, on the occasion of his death. But neither Truman nor Eisenhower
was disposed to take this risk, as, among other historians, Marc Trachtenberg
explains lucidly, History and Strategy (Princeton UP, 1991), in a chapter entitled A "Wasting Asset": American Strategy and the Shifting Nuclear Balance,
1949-1954. See also Rhodes, Dark Sun, pp. 562-568.