The Russian military in Cuba — a crisis then and maybe now

On Wednesday, June 12, history repeated itself when the Russian military arrived in Cuba, this time with three warships and a submarine, and in the process positioned a nuclear-capable enemy less than 150km (93 miles) from the US mainland.Cuba said the vessels carried no nuclear weapons. Still, the arrival of the Kazan submarine and the Admiral Gorshkov frigate had people drawing comparisons to 1962—when the world faced nuclear Armageddon.On October 12, 1962, a CIA pilot flying a U-2 spy plane over communist Cuba took pictures of nuclear missile sites being built by the Soviet Union.US President John F Kennedy was briefed on October 16. The challenge was how to get rid of the missiles without starting a nuclear war.On October 22, Kennedy went public, telling Americans that the Soviets had deployed missiles on the island.While Americans—and the world—worried about nuclear annihilation, Kennedy imposed a naval blockade around Cuba, and gave Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev an ultimatum: Remove the missiles, or else.In the end, the Soviets agreed to take back their missiles, but not before the US promised it would not invade Cuba, and would also remove its nuclear missiles in Turkey. “Who won?” asked Khrushchev. “In this respect, one may say it was sanity.”These days, sanity is arguably needed more than ever. The Admiral Gorshkov is armed with nuclear-capable Zircon hypersonic missiles that fly at almost 10,000 km/h (6,214 mph), say the Russians.The US said it does not consider the Russian action a threat—surprising, perhaps, given the war in Ukraine and the historic low in relations between the two at the moment. “This is about Russia showing that it’s still capable of some level of global power projection,” said a US official. If projecting power was Russia’s goal, say critics, well then, mission accomplished.