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60TH ANNIVERSARY OF CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS Today marks the 60th anniversary of the beginning of the Cuban Missile Crisis, a 13-day nuclear standoff between the United States and Soviet Union. While we wish the tensions felt during that crisis were now distant history, unfortunately, that is not the case. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s dangerous nuclear threats have escalated nuclear tensions to levels unseen in the past 60 years. In keeping with our mission to advocate diplomacy and inform elected officials and the public about nuclear threats, we’ve put together a new fact sheet about the Cuban Missile Crisis as well as a timeline, below, to illustrate not only what happened 60 years ago, but how quickly things could escalate today. Thankfully, President John F. Kennedy and Premier Nikita Khrushchev knew their countries would not survive a nuclear war and kept the door to diplomacy open even at the height of the crisis. We must heed that lesson today and use diplomacy to pressure Russia to step back from the brink.
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RUSSIAN MISSILES RAIN ACROSS UKRAINE; BIDEN WARNS OF ARMAGEDDON A barrage of airstrikes has showered across Ukraine in the last week, hitting Kyiv, Odesa, Kharkiv and Lviv among other major cities. The missiles have targeted civilian infrastructure including heating and electrical stations and killed 11 people as well as injuring dozens more. President Joe Biden warned that President Putin’s threats to use tactical nuclear weapons raised, “the prospect of Armageddon” to a degree not seen since the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis. Senior Policy Director John Erath spoke with Yahoo! News about the seriousness of the Russian threat and said, “I think they are prepared to follow through on the threat. I don’t think they want to. What [Biden] is saying is, ‘Hey, be careful. This is a road nobody wants to go down.'” Erath and Policy Analyst Monica Montgomery have spoken to a variety of outlets about the war in Ukraine in recent weeks, including Newsweek, Univision and The Hill. Research Analyst Matthew Teasdale wrote a blog post about recent talks to demilitarize the Zaporizhzhia nuclear power plant, one of few possibilities for dialogue for nuclear security issues at the moment. The Center has recently updated its FAQs about the situation in Ukraine and its fact sheet on Russia’s nuclear capabilities.
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IRAN NEGOTIATIONS ‘NOT U.S. FOCUS RIGHT NOW’ Secretary of State Antony Blinken revealed in late September, following widespread protests in Iran, that he did not “see any prospects in the very near term” of returning to the Iran deal. He lamented that Tehran has continuously added extraneous issues to negotiations that the United States simply cannot accept. American diplomats are also concerned about a UN probe that found unexplained traces of uranium at undisclosed Iranian sites. State Department spokesperson Ned Price later announced that the Iran nuclear deal is “not our focus right now,” saying, “the Iranians have made very clear that this is not a deal that they have been prepared to make, a deal certainly does not appear imminent.” Price went on to praise the protestors in Iran and expressed American support for their rights to assembly and expression. Some officials hope that domestic unrest in Iran may incentivize leaders to agree to limiting their nuclear program in return for sanctions relief. The U.S. Treasury Department recently sanctioned the Morality Police for their role in the killing of the woman whose death sparked wide-scale protests across the country.
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NEW FACT SHEET SERIES HIGHLIGHTS CLOSE NUCLEAR CALLS The Center has developed a new series of fact sheets highlighting four nuclear crises and close calls: the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Soviet False Alarm Incident and Able Archer 83, the Norwegian Rocket Incident (the Black Brant Scare) and the Goldsboro B-52 Crash. As we seek to inform lawmakers and the public about the past, these history lessons also serve as a warning for the present and future: as long as nuclear weapons exist, so do severe dangers.
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CONGRESS LEAVES TOWN WITHOUT FINISHING DEFENSE AUTHORIZATION AND APPROPRIATIONS With the start of the new fiscal year on October 1, Congress still has not completed its annual defense authorization and appropriations process. Before leaving town at the end of September, both chambers passed a short-term Continuing Resolution to fund the government at last year’s spending levels but still have to negotiate and pass funding bills for fiscal year 2023 by December 16 or pass additional stopgaps. The status of the fiscal year 2023 appropriations and authorization bills depends heavily on the outcome of the election. On the defense authorization bill, which the House has already passed, the Senate took procedural steps to begin debate on its version of the National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) this past week. Senators submitted more than 900 amendments to the Senate version, but only 75 were included in a manager’s package submitted by Sen. Jack Reed (D-RI). Senate leadership says they intend to pass the NDAA on the floor following the midterm elections recess and the House and Senate-passed versions of the bill will then be formally conferenced to produce a final bill. Read our just-published analysis of the Senate version of the bill.
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NUCLEAR READING RECOMMENDATIONS Last month, we shared with you reading recommendations from Executive Director and Former Congressman John Tierney and asked if you had any of your own. Here’s what one of our readers recommends:
She also recommends the Dr. Atomic opera by John Adams.
Do you have any favorite nuclear weapons books, media or art? We’d love to hear from you; email Communications Director Anna Schumann and let us know!
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IT’S NOT TOO EARLY TO MAKE YOUR YEAR-END DONATION Donations to the Center are tax-deductible, and it’s not too early to make your year-end donation now. Consider making a one-time or monthly gift, or coordinating with us on planned giving.
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