The Missiles of August
Ross Douthat AUG. 12, 2017
Here’s the good news, America: The Donald Trump versus Kim Jong-un showdown may be making you nervous, but it isn’t the first time a reckless, lecherous U.S. president obsessed with his own vigor and out of his depth on foreign policy faced off against a thirtysomething dictator armed with nukes. If we survived the Cuban missile crisis without a thermonuclear war, there’s probably a way to get through this one, too.
I know, I know: According to official baby boomer history, we’re supposed to be grateful for the “combination of toughness and restraint, of will, nerve, and wisdom,” in the hagiographic words of Arthur Schlesinger Jr., with which John F. Kennedy forced Nikita Khrushchev to remove Soviet missiles from Fidel Castro’s island without war.
But this is mostly mythmaking. In reality, the Cuban missile crisis was the kind of scenario many of us feared could follow the election of Donald Trump: An inexperienced president gets elected on promises of toughness and flagrant lies, makes a series of bad decisions that provoke escalation from our foes, at which point political considerations make him feel he can’t back down, and suddenly we’re staring at nuclear war.
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https://www.nytimes.com/2017/08/12/opinion/sunday/trump-korea-kennedy-cuba.html?ref=opinion
