There is an incredibly good minute-by-minute account of the Cuban crisis: "One Minute to Midnight: Kennedy, Khrushchev and Castro on the Brink of Nuclear War" - it covers a lot of areas that aren't often mentioned such as the U2 flight at the North Pole going astray or the Soviet nuclear cruise missile teams targetting Guantanamo that taken together with the more well known events make it seem remarkable to me that we survived.
In first 20 minutes of the documentary The Fog of War Robert McNamara goes over the Cuban missile crisis in detail. Even he admits it came down to luck.
His meeting with Cuba in the 90s and the new information presented that McNamara didn’t have during the crisis was especially sobering. McNamara ended the meeting early because he was “unprepared” to learn there were missiles already operational and authorization was already granted to launch if the Cuban build sites were struck.
Didn't watch it. So what about the million dollar question: would nuclear (or global) war have started if the US didn't have nuclear weapons? I mean, it's the basis of the US nuclear strategy after all.
MANPADS are designed to be used against small CAS aircraft. Attacking large transport aircraft effectively requires a considerably larger air defense system. That also assumes you can move a MANPADS within range; the US already controls a large military airfield on Greenland.
The end of the US as we know it happens. Sure the US could win a war ("win"), but the US without US Europe trade, EU turning to China as its main trading partner including in military equipment, no more bases in EU, less access to other parts of the world, and so on. That would be a US that would wither and die.
We really are in a weird state of dependency with the US regarding deterrence - missiles sourced from US stocks, UK nuclear material built into warheads using a US design.
I wonder if there is a block in the missiles to stop them being used against the US?
Edit: I don't think there is any dependency on the US once a UK Trident sub is at sea - for the simple reason there no external dependencies (no codes or anything) - the crews have all they need to launch.
What does this remind you of?
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