Nuclear time clock during cuban missle crisis

Moreover, given the above mentioned developments that contribute to crisis instability, it has become more urgent than ever to address the question of whether crisis management concepts are robust and flexible enough to withstand the possibly destabilizing and escalatory potential of the military alerts and actions that each side may feel obliged to take to protect their own interests and hedge against the possibility that crisis management may break down in a new confrontation. It is a genuinely challenging and difficult task for policymakers to adapt knowledge of these general crisis management principles to the specific, idiosyncratic configuration of each new crisis situation (George, 1984). However, mere awareness of crisis management requirements does not guarantee that they will be effectively implemented in a new confrontation. Both sides are familiar with the general principles and operational requirements of crisis management. Given their shared fear of thermonuclear war, American and Soviet leaders can be counted on to be powerfully motivated to manage and terminate any new diplomatic crisis before it erupts into war. As a result of these developments in the strategic military environment in which deterrence must operate, both American and Soviet analysts express increasing concern over the heightened danger of crisis instability and the associated possibilities of inadvertent or accidental war. Increased missile accuracies, the deployment and forward basing of highly accurate strategic systems that reduce available warning time, and developments in warning and alert systems raise the possibility of so-called decapitation strikes against vulnerable political and military command posts. We cannot exclude the possibility that the superpowers may again be drawn into dangerous war-threatening crises at some point in the future.Д¬oncern over the danger of nuclear war has mounted in recent years in response to developments in military technology and changes in force postures. While the frequency of crises involving the superpowers appears to have declined since the outset of the Cold War and there has been no war-threatening crisis since 1973, it is premature to conclude that the United States and the Soviet Union have learned to manage their rivalry without plunging periodically into dangerous confrontations. At the same time, however, it needs to be recognized that the superpowers have been more successful in managing war-threatening crises than in avoiding them.

Moreover, during the 40 years of competing with each other on a global scale, the two superpowers have learned some fundamental rules of prudence for managing their rivalry without becoming embroiled in warfare with each other. The mutual fear of igniting a fuse that could result in thermonuclear holocaust is undoubtedly the major factor that accounts for this success. It is remarkable that all U.S.-Soviet diplomatic confrontations-over Berlin, Korea, the Middle East, Cuba, and the Indian Ocean-have been successfully terminated without any kind of shooting war between U.S. Stanford University, Stanford, California

Nuclear time clock during cuban missle crisis