What is the fundamental difference between the Cuban Missile Crisis and Ukraine 2022?

Question

Events leading to the The Cuban Missile Crisis

• USSR moves nuclear intercontinental ballistic missiles to the coast of Cuba
• Cuba is a communist country
• It is a non-member of the Warsaw Pact, but a close Soviet Ally
• USA threatens to invade Cuba
• Direct talks between head of USA and head of USSR
• USSR withdraws submarines
• Crisis resolved

Events leading to the Ukraine 2022

• The parliament of Ukraine overwhelmingly approves association agreement with European Union (≈ 70% NATO)
• Pressure from the Russian Federation instead forces incumbent President to join the Eurasian Economic Union (100% former USSR)
• Orange Revolution in Ukraine
• Russian Federation takes over Crimea and opens a warm front in Donbass
• The parliament of Ukraine votes to remove the neutrality clause in their constitution to enable themselves to join NATO
• Russian Federation demands a ban on the entry of former Soviet countries from joining NATO and asks NATO to cease operations in Easter European countries
• NATO disagrees and denies request
• Russian Federation invades Ukrainian mainland and starts a full-fledged war

Common pattern

• Country A and Country B are not friends.
• Country A is nervous about Country B getting and developing an ally in Country A's backyard.
• Country A uses threat of military action to tell Country B to back off

Given the above patterns of similarities in leading events, what is the fundamental difference between these two situations? The answer should be about geopolitico-strategic differences and not about ohh the second situation resulted in a war. What needs to be found, is why was war avoided in the first situation and not in the second.

Answer 1

Let's start with similarities first: Cuba and Ukraine both had recently changed regimes, going from US aligned to USSR aligned in Cuba and from Russia aligned to US/NATO aligned in Ukraine. Both these regime changes were popular revolutions against corrupt governments. In response both US and Russia funded terrorist/separatist groups to destabilize the countries. Here similarities end.

Communist Cuba feared American invasion to conduct regime change, so it allowed USSR to place its nuclear missiles in Cuba. At that time USSR did not have enough ICBMs to win a nuclear war with America without Cuba, because the Russian missiles lacked ranged necessary to reach the US, while America had nukes in Europe which could reach Moscow and Leningrad.

Ukraine had no chance of joining NATO and being a threat to Russia because ascension requires unanimous consent of all NATO members, and unofficially that the country have no territorial disputes, but any NATO country could demand any sort of requirement from Ukraine to let them join NATO. Since Ukraine was in a territorial dispute with Russia in the Donbass since 2014, and Hungary being governed by pro-Russian Orban, as well as high dependency of Germany on Russian gas, and general meekness, it effectively meant Ukraine would not join NATO in the near decades and be a threat to Russia as a staging ground for a NATO military invasion. Additionally, the Ukrainian constitution prohibits foreign military bases, so unlike Cuba, Ukraine wouldn't even allow any NATO installations on its territory.

So, the difference between Cuban Missile Crisis and Ukraine in 2022 is that Ukraine was not a military threat to Russia in the same way as Cuba has been to the US.

Answer 2

They are very, very, unrelated.

1962 Cuba was a nuclear crisis in which the US sought to stop the establishment of nearby Soviet nuclear missile bases (akin to those deployed by the US itself in Turkey).

There was at the time, no combat taking place in Cuba and Cuba was already firmly a Soviet ally.

For better or worse, Kennedy's administration declared a blockade around Cuba and dared the USSR to run it:

After many long and difficult meetings, Kennedy decided to place a naval blockade, or a ring of ships, around Cuba. The aim of this "quarantine," as he called it, was to prevent the Soviets from bringing in more military supplies. He demanded the removal of the missiles already there and the destruction of the sites.

This would have been a direct US-on-Soviet combat. It came close to that, notably when a nuclear armed Soviet attack sub thought of launching its nuclear torpedoes at US destroyers that were harassing it (not attacking it, though the difference would have not been that apparent) via depth charges.

Had it escalated, there would have been a strong possibility many of us would not be alive today. Also, this took place only over 13 days and there was very little time for the parties involved to reason through the issues, whereas Ukraine is not a quick-moving target prone to miscalculations.

The main reason Kennedy thought that he could get away with is that he knew there was a massive missile gap, to the US's advantage and we was willing to run that risk to remove Soviet missiles on Cuba.

This has very little resemblance to Ukraine, which, at most, can be considered a proxy war via Ukraine (and much more reasonably can be considered a war of aggression by Russia). Even taking Russia point of view, Russia is presented with the same challenges as the US was in Vietnam.

Unlike the US's capacity to browbeat the Soviets in Cuba, there is no meaningful nuclear advantage on either side in the Ukraine context, so a nuclear war would be fully suicidal. And even the US and the USSR learned from Cuba not to engage in this type of brinkmanship. And unlike 1962's USSR Russia is militarily quite weak compared to NATO, especially after 2 years of war.

It is advantageous for Putin's Russia to talk up nuclear risks to get its way, but, unlike Cuba, there is no nuclear-side incentive to motivate acting on it (not that Kennedy's incentives, IMHO, were very valid, even in the wider, very valid, scheme of containing the USSR).

No, we can't rule out irrationality by Putin. And it is in the nature of nuclear brinkmanship that sometimes appearing irrational can allow successful bluffing, so even appearing to be irrational can be a calculated ploy. But Russia is not under any existential threat from its self-inflicted Ukraine adventures.

Last, to quote the question:

US threatened to invade Cuba

No, that was not the case. The Cuban missile crisis was in October 1962 and only concerned a naval blockade. There was an attempt to invade Cuba in April 1961, as part of the Bay of Pigs fiasco, also launched by JF Kennedy. This was a CIA-backed, wholly inadequate invasion force of Cuban expats that got cut to pieces, with US-loaned, expat-crewed obsolete aircraft as aircover. This was more closely comparable to the 2014 Donbas separatists (Crimea's 2014 Lil Green Men were Russian main force, not separatists).

Answer 3

1. The Cuban Missile Crisis was a defensive move by the USSR. The USSR placed missiles in Cuba primarily to counter U.S. missiles stationed in Turkey and Italy, which threatened Soviet territory. This move aimed to restore the nuclear balance, deter U.S. aggression, and protect Cuba, a new communist ally, from potential invasion after the failed Bay of Pigs invasion and ongoing U.S. hostility toward Fidel Castro’s regime. On the other hand, the Russian invasion of Ukraine is an offensive act. It is aimed at reasserting control over a neighboring state.

2. In the case of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the USA was an aggressor, but the agression didn't violate any country's sovereignty. In the case of the Ukraine invasion, Russia is an aggressor, and the agression violated Ukraine's sovereignty.

3. The USA viewed the Cuban missiles as an immediate and existential nuclear threat to the USA and the threat was justified. On the other hand, Ukraine's bid for NATO membership represents a choice by a sovereign nation to seek security, not an existential threat to Russia. If the USA placed a nuclear missile in Ukraine, that would have been an existential threat to Russia. Whether that could have happened in future is a matter of debate, not a certainty.

Answer 4

What is the fundamental difference between the Cuban Missile Crisis and Ukraine 2022?

I'd say the first of the fundamental differences is that ultimately the US didn't force Cuba to do more than give up some Soviet (very likely nuclear) missiles. Cuba stayed firmly in the communist/Soviet camp, with all that entailed: other Soviet troops etc. The US didn't force or demand that Cuba become neutral. (At least not as part of the Crisis. If one considers the economic sanctions, those are in that direction. But those are sanctions and not a military invasion.)

Some Russian leaders said among other things that if Ukraine were to join NATO, hypersonic missile in Ukraine would be a mortal threat to the Black Sea fleet etc. But despite Ukraine aspiring to join NATO, it was less than obvious it was actually going to happen because that requires unanimity from other members. And there were strong objections from some members.

Ukraine neutrality (and more complete disarmament) is precisely one of the main demands of Putin, and was in fact before the full-scale invasion started. So, he wants more than what the US asked for in Cuba, status-wise. Yeah, the US gave some non-nuclear missiles to Ukraine, and 2+ years into the war allowed them to fire them at Russia's pre-war territory too.

One could well argue that the Bay of Pigs invasion (which preceded the Crisis by about a year) was a regime change attempt, even if poorly supported. But that was not quite a full-scale invasion of Cuba by overt US forces.

Thirdly, Putin has formally annexed part of Ukraine. The US didn't quite do that with Cuba, although surely there are some debates of how fairly Guantanamo was leased by Batista. But, in theory, the US could eventually evacuate the base without triggering a constitutional crisis back home. Russia can't really do that with the bit of Ukraine they've formally annexed.

Answer 5

They are pretty much unrelated.

So first of all the Cuban missile crisis happened (~60 years ago) in the context of the cold war. Which at least superficially was an ideological and military conflict of Western capitalism vs "Communism" where Western capitalism mostly represented by the U.S. and it's allies fought to contain the expansion and encroachment of Soviet "communism". Or if you want to frame it the other way around the Soviet Union aided third world countries in their struggle against Western colonialism. Or if you're more of a cynic. 1 power block rivaled a different power block for global imperialist influence.

But no matter how you frame it there was a climate of hostility, battles were already fought, though by proxy as both sides began testing and stockpiling nukes that made direct confrontations and full scale assaults on the respective enemy unlikely or very costly.

So the Cuban missile crisis was significant as it's one of the closest points these two cold warring factions came to direct assaults and open nuclear war. Now the U.S. had positions nukes in Italy and Turkey a year prior and when Cuba was asking the Soviets for help with the ongoing U.S. attempts to invade them (and apparently because the Soviets wanted to secure influence over Cuba and not have the rivaling "communist" system in China take that role), they send short and mid ranged nukes to Cuba.

Combined with apparently a fear of the U.S. of not having enough capable weapons it got the U.S. president sweating and the situation came close to an escalation of actual nuclear war. Luckily for literally everyone, that didn't happen, the the Soviets retreated, the U.S. vowed not to invade Cuba and apparently secretly also dismantled the rocketry in at least Turkey, plus a direct line between the leaders was established to avoid such confrontations in the future.

Now back in our timeline, the cold war has ended in the 1990s. The ideological pretense of the USSR was dropped and the USSR itself ceased to exist. So rather than a union of socialist soviet republics, it's just one "republic" (Russia) which doesn't even claim to be socialist or soviet anymore.

So unlike the cold war where you already have hostilities and where you can argue that the U.S. made the first move in terms of actually threatening Russia, with nuclear missiles at its border. In this case you have no or very little prior conflict to that to begin with.

Seriously I cannot stretch that enough, but the reason why every escalation mattered during the cold war was because you had 2 global empires basically considering each other as a mortal threat to their existence also being on the edge of having that one situation that breaks the camels back and make it go from a cold war to a literally temperatures-on-the-sun-levels hot war... So every new weapon or battle ground could be the beginning of the end. Which even includes defensive systems and anything that could tilt the fragile balance of power one way or another and make nuclear assault a feasible option.

However, again, we're no longer in that context anymore. The 2 systems with their narrative of mutually incompatible ideologies and their fears of annihilation at the hand of the other ceased to be present.

Like there were NATO-Russia cooperations, there were several institutions to move on together, Russia was part of the G8 and whatnot, Russia got the nukes of the former soviet republics in exchange for guarantees of their sovereignty (including Ukraine, who at some point was the 3rd largest nuclear power in the world), and so on. The thing is having that nukes with a stable Russia was seen as more secure than having them fracture over a lot of smaller countries who might eventually use them at some point.

Now in hindsight Russia has apparently never ditched the mindset of the cold war and has for quite some time pursued to extend it's influence via military means: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_wars_involving_Russia#Russian_Federation_(1991%E2%80%93present)

But even now I'm not sure the West fully acknowledges to what extend Russia seems to see this as a cold war and not as a local conflict.

Like Russia's propaganda seems to play that up to the point of mortal threat, of the West encroaching upon Russia, preparing for an assault and whatnot. When in reality... the West more or less lost interest in Russia to begin with. Like there's no reason and no intent to nuke Russia off the map and there's very little to gain from it, likewise Russia attempting that with any NATO country can only result in tremendous loses. So for the longest time Russia wasn't really on most people's mind anymore and contrary to the Russian narrative for the last decades there was pretty few hostility towards Russia and an ever decreasing willingness to fight a total nuclear annihilation war or a war at all after the disasters that have been Afghanistan and Iraq.

So to a large extend Russia has to build it's own enemy, because quite frankly the West for a long time has not been up for that. Like even when Russia broke it's treaties with Ukraine and got involved in their politics and annexed part of that country, the West was... ok, diplomacy, sanctions, peace talks and were eventually already preparing to get Russia back at the table.

So unlike the Cuban missile crisis where the U.S. did firmly acknowledge being at war with the USSR and where the U.S. themselves have taken aggressive steps towards Russia and where an actual U.S. assault was not even that far fetched or at least where a global nuclear conflict was in the realm of possibilities.

In this case the U.S. (at least the population) by and large probably isn't even aware that they are at war with Russia and even the leadership didn't seem to have been taking this serious either. And you really have to stretch and twist the facts to construct a narrative in which the U.S. made the first move in this. And even if you find such a fact, that is not comparable with bringing nuclear missile in shooting range and with a real threat of them being launched while having no defense system against that beyond nuclear retaliation.

It's only if you see that in the context of a cold war that you could pump up any talks about potentially joining an alliance years into the future to the point where this is a mortal danger.

So what is much more realistic is that Putin is simply playing plain old imperialistic power politics, where he has little to offer to his neighbors and can't pursue them with soft power and so he uses hard power to coerce them into his sphere of influence. And in that regard a NATO membership of these countries hurts his aspirations as any of those with one could just whisper gently "article 5" and he'd have a problem.

But that has nothing to do with NATO planning to attack Russia or with Russian security interests.

On the contrary, it's not even that NATO is pursuing countries to join the alliance, pretty much the opposite of that. Often enough the admission is vetoed or delayed because those countries lack the military, economic or even the political standards and stability to be an asset and not a burden for the alliance. So most often it's not NATO annexing countries (those countries need to apply to NATO and be affirmed by NATO and can leave NATO whenever they want to anyway...), but rather countries within the Russian sphere of influence or whatever they like to be that, who fear for their very existence (and after 2014 and 2022 might have good reason to), that seek admission to NATO as additional security against tyrannic imperialistic claims of a Russian hegemony.

But that's not the kind of narrative that gets you any sympathy for pursuing a war, neither internally nor internationally and so Putin tries with anything but that.

However the West is in a very tricky situation now, as Putin seems to have given up on any pretense of international law, not even trying to disguise it as something else or as a one off thing, he's essentially presenting himself as unstable megalomaniac. And as the 20th century has shown with Hitler, just giving a megalomaniac what he wants to appease him hasn't worked particularly well and the fact that after basically getting Crimea without much resistance has not stopped him from pursuing Ukraine further is not a good sign in that regard. So there's little that makes that seem issue specific or that indicates Putin has any plan where to stop and call it a day and settle for a new permanent peace.

On the contrary he seems to be in full cold war mode and not attempting to step on the breaks any time soon.

So on the one hand the West has to react to that as it a dangerous escalation away from any framework of peace and stability and closer to a traditional imperialist war driven order, except this time with the threat of nuclear annihilation. On the other hand Russia is a thermonuclear power that you don't want to seek direct conflict with.

The problem is that within Russian narrative any move that the west is making that is not total submission and letting Russia expand, is framed as escalation and aggression and Russia draws a lot o offensive red lines. Which is dangerous. Like the West is probably justified in assuming that Russia isn't going to set the world on fire over a regional conflict and seek WWIII if they are more than busy fighting a regional war with a much smaller neighbor. But at the same time Putin has to defend at home that he's drawing all these red lines and then isn't committing on them.

So ultimately it's very hard to tell whether this is FOR PUTIN, close to the Cuban missile crisis where he actually risks to blow shit up to get things his way or where he just threatens that with the assumption that the West isn't willing to blow things up either with respect to a regional conflict and where thus threatening with nukes, WWIII and global conflict scares them out of any further intervention.

Either way (TL;DR), the Cuban missile crisis actually had real escalations and threats to the mortal existence of both major players and so there was a clear out that is mutual deescalation that benefited both sides. In this case, this presents itself as a very one sided escalation without a mortal threat for either side (yet) and the search for an exit strategy that is not basically giving in to the violent demands of a megalomaniac and thus validating that strategy and encouraging more of it and that is not a humiliation of a nuclear superpower on the global stage (which is also not great either), is not that easy. So how serious that actually is or has been can probably only be told in hindsight...

Answer 6

It's difficult to fully perceive the comparison.

The short story of the 1962 Missile Crisis was that the US had installed nuclear missiles in Turkey (a NATO member) in 1961, to target the Soviet Union.

In 1962, the Soviets arranged to install nuclear missiles in Cuba. For the Soviets, this placed missiles comparably close to the US homeland, tit-for-tat. For the Cubans it provided a nuclear deterrent. The US had also recently at that time been harassing the Cuban regime with CIA-backed plots, hence the Cuban willingness to host such weapons.

The US belatedly discovered the Soviet launch sites through satellite photography (although not the full extent of the nuclear equipment already delivered). This then triggered the crisis.

In the event, both sides agreed to back down and withdraw their nuclear missiles from such close proximity to the other. A Washington-Moscow telephone hotline was also installed in 1963.

Retrospective analysis afterwards showed that the situation had become incredibly dangerous, perhaps the highest level of danger ever reached during the Cold War.

Now there are some similarities with the Ukraine War. The US and Russia are the main underlying combatants. Nuclear strikes are seemingly at stake. The first move in the conflict consisted of the US implicitly threatening the Russians at home.

There are differences though. Diplomacy has failed. A war has actually broken out, with the US as proxy. Neither side appears to be hovering over pre-emptive, all-out nuclear strikes against the others territory - instead, an inexorable spiral of escalation appears to be the path to nuclear winter.

And the underlying differences are not apparently about differing ideological or economic systems between the combatants. For the US, the principle seems to be whether it can defend the most remote outposts of its empire. For Russia, it seems to be whether it can defend its doorstep from the US empire.

Whether these differences are "fundamental" probably depends on the question being asked of the situation.