Kennedy’s finest hour

Forty years ago the Americans won what I hope will be the nearest thing to nuclear war between superpowers – of which only one is left – ever fought; and the fact that they won it without firing a shot should not diminish but rather increase the extent of the victory.

What I am referring to is known, of course, as the Cuban Missile Crisis, which is how it will go down in history. But for those of us who lived through that extraordinary fortnight in October 1962, it was more than a crisis. First, the placing of Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba, within 90 miles of the American coast, was an explicit and unequivocal casus belli; as explicit and unequivocal as would have been the placing of American nuclear missiles in Tito’s anti-Soviet Yugoslavia. What followed was a fortnight of bloodless battle in which nuclear armed missiles were deployed by both sides – with the Russian commanders, at least, free to use them – and finally a Russian surrender when her ships carrying nuclear reinforcements to Cuba were threatened with force by the American navy and air force unless they turned back.