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NATO nuclear missiles aimed at Moscow were removed in Cuban missile crisis trade

1 points by EGreg 4y ago

EGreg 4y ago
When researching the Cuban Missile crisis, to better understand the Russian reaction to NATO, I came across something very surprising: the USA declassified, a quarter century later, that they had put nuclear missiles in Turkey first! The cold war seems to be a lot of pot calling kettle black, because of legitimate concerns on both sides. But all the while concealing information / lying to their own people in the name of “national security”. When it comes to taxes, I just don’t get the fervor of many libertarians to protest. But when those taxes pay for a weapons industry and perpetual proxy war on an industrial scale, the libertarian in me is awakened. Geopolitical rivalries + lots of new weaponry = incentives to threaten or escalate in a variety of ways. People in countries like Afghanistan, Yemen, Cuba and Ukraine are caught between larger military powers, and the bombs rain down on them. Instead of diplomatic solutions, there is general mistrust and talking past each other. How can we fix it? One way is to grow an alternative media that is collaborative (like wikinews), by the people rather than for the people. It must be open source and not profit-driven. People have mobile phones and drones today and can show what is going on in their part of the world, without relying on governments and mass media companies to do it for them. We can self-organize to at least show each other what is going on in our corners of the world. Sa’ana, Mariupol, etc.
- goatsneez 4y ago
  A reaction to some of your paragraphs from my neck of the woods: 1) See John Mersheimer writing and/or youtube vids on that (Turkey nuke and Cuba crisis) (On Lying by states video -- sober and pragmatic analysis. Internal vs External affairs of state often have different constraints, motivations, interests) 2) Why you single out Afganistan, Yemen, Cuba, Ukraine? Diplomacy and war are two sides of the same coin (just like law and punishment for civic life) - and stronger will exploit weaker. A) Mistrust is a nature of human psychology. B) Cooperation is only sought after if it makes a person more competitive wrt to other (group) and/or individual (competition is the overarching law of nature over all scales - micro- to marco- biological life. That is why states are formed to begin with. This is the law of nature by empirical and theoretical considerations [there are sci. journals dealing with this for nearly a century]. 3) I do not think your "equation" is how the world functions, and wars are not waged just through direct armed conflict (these days). 4) Your outline of "how can we fix it?", seems like you do not yet understand (or did not explain properly) the real-world constraints. One is not free to presuppose nature of things or wish them to be certain way. E.g., there will be adversarial actors who will seek and certainly find and exploit to their advantage whatever plan you suppose will "fix it" (dont forget). Another feature of reality is that people/societies cannot and will not self-organize on the "global scale" (in other words, there are hard-limits to self-organization). In fact such system, which is fully correlated over entire domain, is "infinitely" fragile. That is why nature is build up from small, elementary if you will, elements. From atoms, to cells, to our bodies, to societies. Building blocks and diversity at scales is a feature of nature !

1 points by EGreg 4y ago

When researching the Cuban Missile crisis, to better understand the Russian reaction to NATO, I came across something very surprising: the USA declassified, a quarter century later, that they had put nuclear missiles in Turkey first! The cold war seems to be a lot of pot calling kettle black, because of legitimate concerns on both sides. But all the while concealing information / lying to their own people in the name of “national security”. When it comes to taxes, I just don’t get the fervor of many libertarians to protest. But when those taxes pay for a weapons industry and perpetual proxy war on an industrial scale, the libertarian in me is awakened. Geopolitical rivalries + lots of new weaponry = incentives to threaten or escalate in a variety of ways. People in countries like Afghanistan, Yemen, Cuba and Ukraine are caught between larger military powers, and the bombs rain down on them. Instead of diplomatic solutions, there is general mistrust and talking past each other. How can we fix it? One way is to grow an alternative media that is collaborative (like wikinews), by the people rather than for the people. It must be open source and not profit-driven. People have mobile phones and drones today and can show what is going on in their part of the world, without relying on governments and mass media companies to do it for them. We can self-organize to at least show each other what is going on in our corners of the world. Sa’ana, Mariupol, etc.

goatsneez 4y ago
A reaction to some of your paragraphs from my neck of the woods: 1) See John Mersheimer writing and/or youtube vids on that (Turkey nuke and Cuba crisis) (On Lying by states video -- sober and pragmatic analysis. Internal vs External affairs of state often have different constraints, motivations, interests) 2) Why you single out Afganistan, Yemen, Cuba, Ukraine? Diplomacy and war are two sides of the same coin (just like law and punishment for civic life) - and stronger will exploit weaker. A) Mistrust is a nature of human psychology. B) Cooperation is only sought after if it makes a person more competitive wrt to other (group) and/or individual (competition is the overarching law of nature over all scales - micro- to marco- biological life. That is why states are formed to begin with. This is the law of nature by empirical and theoretical considerations [there are sci. journals dealing with this for nearly a century]. 3) I do not think your "equation" is how the world functions, and wars are not waged just through direct armed conflict (these days). 4) Your outline of "how can we fix it?", seems like you do not yet understand (or did not explain properly) the real-world constraints. One is not free to presuppose nature of things or wish them to be certain way. E.g., there will be adversarial actors who will seek and certainly find and exploit to their advantage whatever plan you suppose will "fix it" (dont forget). Another feature of reality is that people/societies cannot and will not self-organize on the "global scale" (in other words, there are hard-limits to self-organization). In fact such system, which is fully correlated over entire domain, is "infinitely" fragile. That is why nature is build up from small, elementary if you will, elements. From atoms, to cells, to our bodies, to societies. Building blocks and diversity at scales is a feature of nature !