The confrontation between Moscow and Washington is intensifying while the nuclear danger inches towards the point of no return. In recent days, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced successful tests of unprecedented nuclear-powered missiles, and U.S. President Donald Trump responded with an urgent order to resume American nuclear testing.
Today’s great powers appear to be re-enacting the arms race that kept humanity on the brink of annihilation from Hiroshima to the Cuban Missile Crisis. History is full of lessons, yet leaders charge towards the abyss with the same impulses of power and domination.
This article draws on a piece by Jeffrey Goldberg, editor-in-chief of The Atlantic, who warns that unconsidered decisions could drag the world into a new nuclear war — a decision, as President Ronald Reagan once noted, that might take only six minutes.
Despite the author’s attempts to absolve the American establishment — even as he criticises Trump — the core moral remains: the ignorance of nuclear leaders may be more dangerous than the weapons themselves.
1962: A Letter from Havana at the Edge of the Abyss
On 27 October 1962, day twelve of the Cuban Missile Crisis, Cuba’s leader Fidel Castro, agitated and furious, sent a letter urging his Soviet ally Nikita Khrushchev to destroy the United States if it invaded Cuba:
“Imperialist aggression only grows more savage and dangerous. If they invade Cuba — a barbaric act violating human and moral law — that would be the moment to uproot this danger forever… Whatever the cost, this is the highest form of legitimate self-defence… however harsh and terrifying the means.”
We are alive today precisely because Khrushchev refused Castro’s plea. Khrushchev had himself driven the planet to the brink by placing missiles in Cuba and misjudged the severity of Washington’s reaction, yet he groped his way back to a settlement with John F. Kennedy.
His reply to Castro read in part:
“In your cable of 27 October you propose that we deliver the first nuclear strike on enemy territory. You understand what this would mean. It would ignite a global thermonuclear war… Dear Comrade Fidel Castro, you are mistaken in this proposal, however understandable your motives.”
When the crisis erupted, Castro was 36. When the author met him in Havana in late 2010, he was 84, semi-retired but still central to Cuba’s story. A week of conversations — including on the “demonic branches” of the nuclear age — revealed a man still committed to the revolution’s hard doctrines, yet more reflective about past errors. Asked if he still stood by his 27 October cable, he answered:
“After all I have seen and learned, I realised it was not worth paying such a terrible price.”
LeMay’s Shadow and the Doctrine of “Quick Action”
Human beings often recognise the truth too late. We are not built to make measured, rapid choices about life and death while panic surges. Biologist E.O. Wilson captured the dilemma:
“We have Palaeolithic emotions, mediaeval institutions, and god-like technology.”
Eight decades after Trinity, humanity still lacks the cognitive, spiritual, and emotional maturity to manage nuclear arsenals without courting catastrophe. In 1962, Khrushchev and Castro miscalculated; some of Kennedy’s advisers stumbled too — notably Gen. Curtis LeMay, the Air Force chief, who denounced a naval quarantine without immediate strikes as another Munich, the byword for appeasement.
Today, U.S. Strategic Command — custodian of America’s arsenal — houses its global operations centre at Offutt Air Force Base in a building bearing LeMay’s name. The symbolism hints at an ingrained bias toward “action first” that LeMay embodied — a real-world echo of Dr Strangelove’s grim satire.
In nuclear planning, “bias for action” became doctrine. As former missileer and arms-control scholar Bruce Blair explained, U.S. procedures assume an adversary will try to decapitate missiles in their silos. Hence the logic of “launch on warning”: fire on the basis of an alarm before full confirmation.
American presidents since 1945 have been stunned by the tiny decision window. George W. Bush joked darkly there isn’t even time to leave the bathroom. Reagan discovered the window could be six minutes. Barack Obama called the notion of deciding the most consequential act in human history within minutes “madness”.
A Planet on a Hot Nuclear Plate
We live one of the most turbulent phases of the nuclear era. The Ukraine war hints at a wider clash, with Russia — backed by Iran and North Korea — facing Europe and the United States, at least for now.
India and Pakistan have had recent close calls. Israel and the United States have struck Iranian nuclear sites. In East Asia, North Korea expands its arsenal while South Korea and Japan openly debate nuclear options.
Humanity will need unusual luck to survive this passage. We were saved before — not only in 1962 — by rare individuals whose clarity under fear averted disaster. Two come to mind: Soviet officer Stanislav Petrov and retired U.S. General John Kelly — each in his own way.
Petrov faced a blaring alert in September 1983: sensors reported five American ICBMs inbound. Weeks earlier, the U.S.–Soviet temperature had spiked after the downing of KAL-007. Petrov, knowing the system was new and reasoning a real U.S. strike wouldn’t be merely five missiles, judged the alarm false, defying protocol and likely saving the world. (A Soviet satellite had misread sunlight on clouds over Montana and North Dakota.)
Kelly fought a different battle: inside the Trump White House. As chief of staff for 17 months, he concluded that Trump’s thin knowledge, authoritarian instinct, and volatility made him dangerous on national security. In 2017, as Trump taunted Kim Jong-un — “fire and fury… power the likes of which this world has never seen” — Kelly warned such language could corner Kim and spark war. When warnings failed, Kelly redirected Trump’s impulses, appealing to his self-image as a deal-maker: no U.S. president had tried to negotiate with North Korea; why not him? The lure of a grand bargain helped distract Trump from a path of nuclear brinkmanship — a fragile reprieve, not a cure.
An Unsteady Nuclear Leader in a Shakier World
Trump remains a mercurial leader in a world more unstable than during his first term. No U.S. president is the ideal custodian of Armageddon, but Trump is less suited than most to manage a nuclear crisis. He is quick-tempered, easily slighted, and restless. To be fair, he has at times voiced dislike of nuclear weapons and general aversion to war. The danger is not a cartoonish impulse to “push the button”, but mismanagement and miscalculation that re-ignite a cycle of escalation.
The Cold War’s end seduced many into believing the nuclear peril had faded. Yet as Albert Einstein wrote in The Atlantic in 1947, humanity often forgets the unthinkable rather than preparing for it. That forgetfulness can be fatal.
Eighty years after 1945, the U.S. and Russia still hold planet-killing stockpiles; China is surging; the nuclear age is littered with near-misses, accidents, and misread signals. Most people are not Petrov or Kelly. And, as cryptographer Martin Hellman cautioned, the only way to survive Russian roulette is to stop playing.
