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Commentary: The Cuban Missile Crisis

By Ray S. Cline
Fall 1989
Article Summary and Author Biography

"Mikhail Gorbachev's team of official intellectuals is engaged in a program of historical revisionism serving Moscow's interest", by means of exaggerating Khrushchev's 'reasonable flexibility' in averting nuclear war. The superpowers were not at the brink of nuclear war, and took great care not to be. The Soviet purpose in deploying the missiles was not to defend Castro, but to force a change in US perceptions of strategic superiority over the USSR, and thereby to de-stabilize US commitment to NATO and the FRG.

Ray S. Cline is Chairman of the United States Global Strategy Council and Professor of International Affairs at Georgetown University; from 1962-66 he was CIA Deputy Director for Intelligence.

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