Same Castro regime that wanted to start World War 3 remains in power in Cuba today: Some lessons from 1962 for 2020 https://cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/10/same-castro-regime-that-wanted-to-start.html 1/

"Those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it." - George Santayana, The Life of Reason ( 1906 ) https://cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/10/same-castro-regime-that-wanted-to-start.html 2/

The world is marking another anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the days in Oct 1962, when the #USSR introduced offensive nuclear missiles into Cuba, and the #USA blockaded the island and after 11 tense days Moscow withdrew its missiles. https://cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/10/same-castro-regime-that-wanted-to-start.html 3/

This crisis brought the world perilously close to nuclear Armageddon. https://cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/10/same-castro-regime-that-wanted-to-start.html 4/

Professor Jaime Suchlicki of the Cuban Studies Institute draws on this history in the essay "What We Learned From The Cuban Missile Crisis", & concludes that this crisis was precipitated by perceptions of American weakness. https://cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/10/same-castro-regime-that-wanted-to-start.html 5/

Most analysts focus on the interplay in the crisis between the #USSR and the #USA, and justifiably so, these two great powers had the stockpiles of nuclear weapons, but only touch superficially on Cuba, and its reactions during and after the crisis. https://cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/10/same-castro-regime-that-wanted-to-start.html 6/

This is a mistake, and one that has had dire consequences in the past, when great powers ignored the agency of small countries, such as Serbia, and the Serbian terrorist group, Black Hand, whose assassination of an Archduke unleashed a series of events that sparked WWI. 7/

Fidel Castro personally came very close on October 27, 1963 to starting World War Three. https://cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/10/same-castro-regime-that-wanted-to-start.html 8/

On Oct 14, 2012 the National Archives & the @JFKLibrary held a forum titled "50th Anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis" during which Brian Latell outlined Castro's attempts to spark a conflict while Kennedy and Khrushchev were seeking to avoid war: https://cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/10/same-castro-regime-that-wanted-to-start.html 9/

"Fidel Castro was stimulating military conflict. Castro, on the morning of October 27th -- “Black Saturday” that we keep hearing about, the worst, the most dangerous, the most tense day of the Missile Crisis" https://cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/10/same-castro-regime-that-wanted-to-start.html 10/ ...

-- Fidel Castro ordered all of his artillery to begin firing on American reconnaissance aircraft at dawn, at sunrise that morning of “Black Saturday.” https://cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/10/same-castro-regime-that-wanted-to-start.html 11/

Fidel Castro said later on the record, “War began in those moments.” And the commander, one of the Soviet generals there with the expeditionary force, General Gribkov, said essentially the same thing. https://cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/10/same-castro-regime-that-wanted-to-start.html 12/

He said that, “We Soviet commanders, all the way from the generals down to the lieutenants in the Soviet force, we all agreed that conflict, military conflict, essentially began that morning.” https://cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/10/same-castro-regime-that-wanted-to-start.html 13/

October 27th, “Black Saturday,” Kennedy and Khrushchev are desperately trying to bring this crisis to a peaceful end, and Castro is stoking the fan of conflict. https://cubanexilequarter.blogspot.com/2020/10/same-castro-regime-that-wanted-to-start.html 14/