How We Barely Avoided Nuclear War 40 Years Ago
Will We Be as Lucky This Time?
by Jim Maier, M.D.

In October of 1962 the threat by the U.S. to use nuclear arsenal against Cuba or the Soviet Union very nearly triggered a third world war. Then as now, a policy of "first use" of any nuclear weapons was a catastrophic idea.

Although much of what was occurring during those Indian summer days during my sophomore year of high school was shrouded in secrecy, we were all scared as hell and expecting imminent disaster. President Kennedy was exchanging threats with Premier Nikita Khrushchev about the missile silos newly discovered in Cuba, Robert Kennedy was conducting secret meetings with Soviet Foreign Minister Gromyko, and American B-52's with nuclear payloads were airborne en route to designated targets.

One of the most dramatic scenes in this drama was played out inside the mountain which lies between Amherst and Mt. Holyoke Colleges. At a recent college reunion I got my first chance to go inside the former "nerve center" for the Strategic Air Command base at Westover, Mass. Now simply a storage center and archive for Amherst College, during the cold war this was a heavily-guarded set of rooms and offices protected within hundreds of tons of granite from nuclear attack (and college fraternity pledge mischief).

The high point of the tour offered to alumni and their families was a cavernous, bare open "war room" reminiscent of scenes from Dr. Strangelove. During those tense fall days of 1962, polar projections of the world on walls several stories high would have shown moving green dots marking B-52s streaking north from Massachusetts over the pole toward the Soviet Union. A now-empty glass-fronted observation booth on the opposite wall contained a secure telephone link to the White House. According to our guide, a conversation took place in this booth between Air Force General ("bomb 'em back to the stone age!") Curtis LeMay and President Kennedy. The dialogue must have gone something like this:

The President: "General, Mr. Khrushchev has agreed to remove the missiles from Cuba. Tell the planes to turn back immediately."

The General: "But we've got the jump on them, Mr. President. Our planes are already approaching Soviet airspace. Let's push the attack and cripple the enemy before he can strike back!"

The President: "As the Commander in Chief of the armed forces of the United States, I am ordering you to call off the attack!".

I submit that we're all here today because John Kennedy narrowly won that argument.

But now that President Bush has tipped his hand about willingness to use "tactical" nuclear weapons, and to abrogate treaties, we again are living in precarious times. It is as if the frightening lessons about "nuclear winter" have been forgotten in talk about a "Robust Nuclear Earth Penetrator" and "Strategic Missile Defense".

In some respects it would be better for all of us to be experiencing the high anxiety of 1962, and converting our fear into action to change genocidal priorities. The challenge remains to mobilize ourselves and others about the less obvious but even more dangerous possibilities today.

Jim Maier, M.D. is a Maine psychiatrist and member of Physicians for Social Responsibility