[Peace-discuss] Could a "Great Negotiation" End the War in Afghanistan?

[C. G. Estabrook]

Captain Savitsky was not a "rogue" - he was acting in accordance with the ROE
given him. Three officers on board the submarine — Savitsky, the political 
officer Ivan Semonovich Maslennikov, and the second-in-command Arkhipov — were 
authorized to launch the torpedo if they agreed unanimously in favor of doing 
so. Arkhipov's (sole) objection persuaded Savitsky to surface the submarine and 
await further orders from Moscow.

If Arkhipov had agreed to the launch on October 27 - if a tactical nuclear 
weapon had been used - it's clear what the US response would have been.


On 7/14/10 10:12 PM, Morton K. Brussel wrote:
> Quite a (hi)story.
>
> It was interesting that 1) the U.S. seemed not intent on sinking the Soviet
> sub, but forcing it to reveal itself by surfacing, and 2) that the " orders"
> to fire a nuclear torpedo (not a "nuclear missile", i.e., an airborne weapon)
> came from the captain of the submarine, not from Moscow, as might have been
> assumed. "Cooler heads prevailed". 3) The 4pm deadline for an attack on Cuba
> is also frighteningly interesting, barely averted. --mkb
>
> On Jul 14, 2010, at 11:33 AM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
>
>> [1] That's what was revealed at the 2002 Havana conference:
>>
>> "In October 2002, a summit meeting took place in Havana on the fortieth
>> anniversary of the Cuban missile crisis, attended by key participants from
>> Russia, the US, and Cuba. Startling information was revealed: the world
>> was saved from possibly terminal nuclear war by a Russian submarine
>> commander who countermanded an order to fire nuclear-armed missiles when the
>> subs were under attack by US destroyers at the tensest moment of the
>> missile crisis – ‘the most dangerous moment in human history’, Arthur
>> Schlesinger observed, realistically. The current Iraq crisis ‘was a
>> recurrent theme at the meeting’, the press reported, ‘with many
>> participants accusing Bush of ignoring history . . . [saying] they had come
>> to make sure it does not happen again, and to offer lessons for today’s
>> crises, most notably President George W. Bush’s deliberations about whether
>> to strike Iraq.’54 [54 Marion Lloyd, ‘Soviets close to using A-bomb in 1962
>> crisis, forum is told’ Boston Globe, 13 October; Kevin Sullivan, ‘Nuclear
>> War, One Word Away’, Washington Post, 14 October 2002.]"
>>
>> --Noam Chomsky, "Commentary: moral truisms, empirical evidence, and
>> foreign policy," Review of International Studies 29 (2003) 605–620, p. 615
>> and n. 54.
>>
>> [2] The story is told at<http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vasili_Arkhipov>,
>> the Wikipedia article I mentioned:
>>
>> "On October 27, 1962, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, a group of eleven
>> United States Navy destroyers and the aircraft carrier USS Randolph trapped
>> a nuclear-armed Soviet Foxtrot class submarine B-59  near Cuba and started
>> dropping practice depth charges, explosives intended to force the submarine
>> to come to the surface for identification. Allegedly, the captain of the
>> submarine, Valentin Grigorievitch Savitsky, believing that a war might
>> already have started, prepared to launch a retaliatory nuclear-tipped
>> torpedo.
>>
>> "Three officers on board the submarine — Savitsky, the Political Officer
>> Ivan Semonovich Maslennikov, and the Second in command Arkhipov — were
>> authorized to launch the torpedo if they agreed unanimously in favor of
>> doing so. An argument broke out among the three, in which only Arkhipov was
>> against the launch, eventually persuading Savitsky to surface the submarine
>> and await orders from Moscow. The nuclear warfare which presumably would
>> have ensued was thus averted...
>>
>> "At the conference commemorating the 40th anniversary of the Cuban Missile
>> Crisis held in Havana on 13 October 2002, Robert McNamara admitted that
>> nuclear war had come much closer than people had thought.
>>
>> "In Aleksandr Mozgovoy's 2002 book, Cuban Samba of the "Foxtrot" Quartet:
>> Soviet Submarines during the Year 1962 Caribbean Crisis, a participant of
>> the events, retired Commander Vadim Pavlovich Orlov, presents the events
>> less dramatically (the captain lost his temper, but the two other officers
>> calmed him down)..."
>>
>> [3] "The most surprising new evidence revealed that we were even closer to
>> nuclear war than the policymakers knew at the time, and that's saying
>> something, because on Saturday, October 27, Robert McNamara thought he
>> might not live to see the sunrise. At the time, there was a crescendo of
>> bad news: a U-2 shot down over Cuba, another U-2 straying over Siberia with
>> US Air Force jets (also armed with nuclear air-to-air missiles) scrambling
>> to head off possible MIG interception. The Joint Chiefs had recommended air
>> strike and invasion of Cuba, as of 4 p.m. The Cubans were firing on all the
>> low-level US recon flights. At the conference, we found out that exactly at
>> that moment, US destroyers were dropping signaling depth charges on a
>> Soviet submarine near the quarantine line that was carrying a
>> nuclear-tipped torpedo -- totally unbeknownst to the US Navy. The Soviet
>> captain lost his temper, there could be a world war up there, let's take
>> some of them down with us, etc. Cooler heads prevailed, specifically the
>> sub brigade deputy commander named Vasily Arkhipov, who was onboard and
>> calmed the captain down. The sub came to the surface about 15 minutes
>> after Soviet ambassador Dobrynin left Bobby Kennedy's office carrying RFK's
>> urgent message to Khrushchev, time is running out, invasion in 48 hours, if
>> you take the missiles out, we will pledge not to invade Cuba, plus we'll
>> take our missiles out of Turkey as long as you don't mention that part of
>> it publicly. Early the next morning, Khrushchev announced the Soviet
>> missiles would be coming out.
>>
>> --"The Cuban Missile Crisis: 40 Years Later" With Thomas S. Blanton,
>> Executive Director, National Security Archive, Wednesday, Oct. 16, 2002;
>> The Washington
>> Post<http://discuss.washingtonpost.com/zforum/02/sp_world_blanton101602.htm>.
>>
>>
>>
>>
On 7/14/10 10:56 AM, Morton K. Brussel wrote:
>>> Thanks for your research into this, but i would like specific references
>>> to two points mentioned, namely the attack on the Soviet submarine (what
>>> kind of attack, for instance) and the orders to that submarine to fire a
>>> nuclear missile. Where, exactly, do these pieces of information come
>>> from? I understand that this is water already over the dam, but these are
>>> key points…
>>>
>>> --mkb
>>>
>>> On Jul 13, 2010, at 8:50 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
>>>
>>>> Wikipedia as usual is a good place to start for references; e.g., its
>>>> article on the Soviet submarine commander explains how (as the director
>>>> of the National Security Archive Thomas Blanton expressed it in 2002)
>>>> "a guy called Vasili Arkhipov saved the world".
>>>>
>>>> A contemporary account of the 2002 Havana conference in the Boston
>>>> Globe is found
>>>> at<http://www.latinamericanstudies.org/cold-war/sovietsbomb.htm>.
>>>> Arthur Schlesinger's writings on the subject are unavoidable. He was
>>>> the very model of a modern historian when I was taking history as an
>>>> undergraduate, and I did all I could to avoid him (and Kissinger).
>>>>
>>>> Before the 2002 conference, the best single summary is probably
>>>> Raymond Garthoff, "Reflections on the Cuban Missile Crisis" (Washington,
>>>> DC: Brookings Institution, 1987). (I went to school with his brother.)
>>>>
>>>> Historian Thomas Bailey's contemporary praise for Kennedy's "finest
>>>> hour," in which he demonstrated his skill at the game of "nuclear
>>>> chicken," was published in the New York Times Magazine, November 6,
>>>> 1965. The phrase has been used elsewhere - see "The Reader's Companion
>>>> to Military History" by Robert Cowley and Geoffrey Parker (formerly of
>>>> this faculty).
>>>>
>>>> Theodore C. Sorensen ("Counselor: A Life at the Edge of History," 2008)
>>>> was named by Secretary of Defense Robert S. McNamara as one of the
>>>> "true inner circle" members who advised Kennedy during the missile
>>>> crisis, the others being Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, National
>>>> Security Adviser McGeorge Bundy, Secretary of State Dean Rusk, General
>>>> Maxwell D. Taylor (the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs), former Ambassador
>>>> to the Soviet Union Llewellyn Thompson and McNamara himself. Sorensen
>>>> even drafted Kennedy's correspondence with Nikita Khrushchev and
>>>> Kennedy's speech about the crisis on October 22.
>>>>
>>>> On Kennedy's terrorist attacks on Cuba, see Garthoff and (another
>>>> acquaintance) Jules Benjamin, "The United States and Cuba" (Pittsburgh
>>>> UP 1977); much subsequent information through the National Security
>>>> Agency, especially "Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962: A National Security
>>>> Archive Documents Reader" by Laurence Chang, Peter Kornbluh, and
>>>> National Security Archive (1999); subsequent material
>>>> at<http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/>.
>>>>
>>>> I'm told that the best thing on the fall of Khrushchev is William
>>>> Taubman, "Khrushchev: The Man and His Era" (2003), but I haven't read
>>>> it. Khrushchev's son was at Brown when I was a post-doc there.  I'm
>>>> still looking for a good analysis of the collapse of the Soviet Union,
>>>> but it seems clear that it began with the missile crisis.
>>>>
>>>> The National Security Archive has National Security Memorandum No. 181
>>>> at<www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/.../620823%20Memorandum%20No.%20181.pdf>.
>>>>
>>>> My penultimate paragraph is almost verbatim from Chomsky, "Hegemony or
>>>> Survival" (2003), pp. 84-87, with references. (It's too close to
>>>> publish.) --CGE
>>>>
>>>>
>>>> On 7/12/10 10:50 PM, Morton K. Brussel wrote:
>>>>> This is quite an impressive response to what Naiman wrote. Much is
>>>>> familiar but some is not. It would be useful if your could addend
>>>>> references to what was going on before, during, and after the Cuban
>>>>> missile crisis. For example, I was not aware that a Soviet submarine
>>>>> had been attacked by U.S. forces, or that the submarine commander
>>>>> had *orders* to fire his nuclear missiles. It is in particular your
>>>>> last three paragraphs that could use references (where they are not
>>>>> given).
>>>>>
>>>>> --mkb
>>>>>
>>>>> On Jul 12, 2010, at 9:00 PM, C. G. Estabrook wrote:
>>>>>
>>>>>> It's certainly worthwhile to think about ways out of the US
>>>>>> government's Long War in the Middle East, but there are a number
>>>>>> of things wrong with this proposal. Here are some examples.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> [1] It ignores the reason for the Long War. All recent US
>>>>>> administrations have been determined to control the 1500-mile
>>>>>> radius around the Persian Gulf - the Greater Middle East, as the
>>>>>> Pentagon says - where the bulk of the worlds' hydrocarbons (oil&
>>>>>> gas) are found. Not because the US needs them domestically - in
>>>>>> fact we import very little gas and oil from the Mideast - but
>>>>>> because of the advantage that control over them gives the US in
>>>>>> competition with its real economic rivals in Europe and Asia. SW
>>>>>> Asia is far more important to the US economic elite than SE Asia
>>>>>> (where we killed many more people) ever was: no US administration
>>>>>> will leave willingly.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> [2] It ignores the fact that the US wants war, and the Afghans (and
>>>>>> the other people of the region) don't. War gives the US an excuse
>>>>>> for having its military occupy the Greater Middle East in one form
>>>>>> or the other (alliance, intimidation, subversion, military
>>>>>> occupation). The Afghans and others simply want the invaders to
>>>>>> leave. Since its real reasons for domination are inadmissible, the
>>>>>> US has to pretend it's "fighting terrorism," when all can see that
>>>>>> US attacks simply produce more "terrorists" (i.e., armed resistance
>>>>>> to American domination).
>>>>>>
>>>>>> There's a further legal problem for Obama; the only Constitutional
>>>>>> authority he has for making war in the Mideast - since there is no
>>>>>> congressional declaration of war - is the "Authorization for the
>>>>>> Use of Military Force" passed by Congress a week after 9/11. It
>>>>>> said, "...the President is authorized to use all necessary and
>>>>>> appropriate force against those nations, organizations, or persons
>>>>>> he determines planned, authorized, committed, or aided the
>>>>>> terrorist attacks that occurred on September 11, 2001, or harbored
>>>>>> such organizations or persons, in order to prevent any future acts
>>>>>> of international terrorism against the United States by such
>>>>>> nations, organizations or persons." So if he's going to kill people
>>>>>> in the Mideast, Obama must contend that they are connected to the
>>>>>> 9/11 attacks! Stopping terrorism in the Mideast is what stopping
>>>>>> Communism was in Vietnam - not the reason for mass murder, but the
>>>>>> excuse.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> [3] The account of the Cuban missile crisis - and the heroic
>>>>>> efforts of John Kennedy to avoid war - is pure fantasy (and
>>>>>> American propaganda). The call for attention to history is
>>>>>> admirable - but the history has to be accurate.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The Cuban missile crisis of October 1962 was "the most dangerous
>>>>>> moment in human history," as Arthur Schlesinger, historian and
>>>>>> former adviser to President John F Kennedy, observed in October
>>>>>> 2002 at a retrospective conference in Havana. The world "came
>>>>>> within a hair's breadth of nuclear disaster," recalls Robert
>>>>>> McNamara, Kennedy's defense secretary, who also attended the
>>>>>> retrospective. He concluded that we should today speak of
>>>>>> "apocalypse soon".
>>>>>>
>>>>>> In 1962 the Kennedy administration brought the world very close to
>>>>>> total destruction in order to establish the principle that we had
>>>>>> a right to have missiles on the borders of the Soviet Union while
>>>>>> they did not have the same right to have missiles on our border.
>>>>>> One finds little mention of the criminal insanity of those willing
>>>>>> to risk nuclear war to defend such a principle within mainstream
>>>>>> American opinion.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> In the 2002 conference it became clear that the world was saved
>>>>>> from nuclear devastation by one Russian submarine captain, Vasily
>>>>>> Arkhipov, who blocked an order to fire nuclear missiles when
>>>>>> Russian submarines were attacked by US destroyers near Kennedy’s
>>>>>> “quarantine” line. Had Arkhipov agreed, the nuclear launch would
>>>>>> have almost certainly set off an interchange that could have
>>>>>> “destroyed the Northern hemisphere,” as Eisenhower had warned.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> President Kennedy was willing (according to Ted Sorensen,
>>>>>> Kennedy's brains trust, who wrote his books for him) to accept a
>>>>>> probability of 1/3 to 1/2 of nuclear war, in order to establish
>>>>>> that the United States alone has the right to maintain missiles on
>>>>>> the borders of a potential enemy. The probabilities are meaningless
>>>>>> with respect to the objective situation, but not with respect to
>>>>>> the mentalities of those who use them as a guide to action. If
>>>>>> anything can be more frightening than the behavior of the
>>>>>> self-styled "pragmatic" and "tough-minded" policy makers of the
>>>>>> Kennedy administration in this crisis, it is the attitude that
>>>>>> remains, long after the crisis has cooled, that this was Kennedy's
>>>>>> "finest hour," in which he demonstrated his skill at the game of
>>>>>> "nuclear chicken" (as presidential historian Thomas Bailey wrote
>>>>>> in 1965).
>>>>>>
>>>>>> The roots of the missile crisis lay in US terrorist attacks
>>>>>> against Cuba, which began shortly after Castro took power in 1959
>>>>>> and were sharply escalated by Kennedy, leading to a very plausible
>>>>>> fear of invasion, as Robert McNamara has acknowledged. Kennedy
>>>>>> resumed the terrorist war immediately after the crisis was over;
>>>>>> terrorist actions against Cuba, based in the US, peaked in the late
>>>>>> 1970s.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> In 1954, when Khrushchev became Soviet premier, he had offered
>>>>>> Eisenhower a proposal to the effect that both sides should reduce
>>>>>> military spending and cut back offensive military forces. The
>>>>>> Eisenhower Administration disregarded it, but Khrushchev did it
>>>>>> anyway, unilaterally and over the objections of the Russian
>>>>>> generals. Later, he cut back Soviet offensive military forces quite
>>>>>> sharply and asked the Kennedy Administration to do the same.
>>>>>> Instead, the Kennedy administration escalated military spending.
>>>>>> (Kennedy had quite consciously lied about a "missile gap" during
>>>>>> the 1960 campaign.) Then came the Cuban missile crisis in which the
>>>>>> Kennedy Administration did as much as it could to humiliate
>>>>>> Khrushchev, and it worked: the Russian military in response threw
>>>>>> Khrushchev out and went into a mad arms race that closely matched
>>>>>> the US in military spending (on a much smaller economic base) - and
>>>>>> ruined the economy. It's in the 1960's that the Soviet economy
>>>>>> started to stagnate - e.g., health statistics started to decline.
>>>>>> It was the Kennedy Administration that drove them into bankruptcy.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On August 23, 1962, President Kennedy issued National Security
>>>>>> Memorandum No. 181, "a directive to engineer an internal revolt
>>>>>> that would be followed by U.S. military intervention," involving
>>>>>> "significant U.S. military plans, maneuvers, and movement of forces
>>>>>> and equipment" that were surely known to Cuba and Russia. Also in
>>>>>> August, terrorist attacks were intensified, including speedboat
>>>>>> strafing attacks on a Cuban seaside hotel "where Soviet military
>>>>>> technicians were known to congregate, killing a score of Russians
>>>>>> and Cubans"; attacks on British and Cuban cargo ships; the
>>>>>> contamination of sugar shipments; and other atrocities and
>>>>>> sabotage, mostly carried out by Cuban exile organizations permitted
>>>>>> to operate freely in Florida. A few weeks later came "the most
>>>>>> dangerous moment in human history."
>>>>>>
>>>>>> In the middle of the crisis, President Kennedy and his brother are
>>>>>> on record as saying that one of the big problems Cuban missiles
>>>>>> posed was, "They might deter an invasion of Venezuela, if we decide
>>>>>> to invade." Terrorist operations continued through the tensest
>>>>>> moments of the missile crisis. They were formally canceled on
>>>>>> October 30, several days after the Kennedy and Khrushchev agreement
>>>>>> but went on nonetheless. On November 8, "a Cuban covert action
>>>>>> sabotage team dispatched from the United States successfully blew
>>>>>> up a Cuban industrial facility," killing 400 workers, according to
>>>>>> the Cuban government. One historian of the events writes that "the
>>>>>> Soviets could only see [the attack] as an effort to backpedal on
>>>>>> what was, for them, the key question remaining: American assurances
>>>>>> not to attack Cuba." After the crisis ended, Kennedy renewed the
>>>>>> terrorist campaign. Ten days before his assassination he approved a
>>>>>> CIA plan for "destruction operations" by US proxy forces "against a
>>>>>> large oil refinery and storage facilities, a large electric plant,
>>>>>> sugar refineries, railroad bridges, harbor facilities, and
>>>>>> underwater demolition of docks and ships." A plot to kill Castro
>>>>>> was initiated on the day of the Kennedy assassination.
>>>>>>
>>>>>> Kennedy may well be Obama's model for peace in Afghanistan, I'm
>>>>>> sorry to say. Obama's policy seems almost as lunatic as Kennedy's.
>>>>>> --CGE
>>>>>>
>>>>>>
>>>>>> On 7/12/10 12:52 PM, Robert Naiman wrote:
>>>>>>> A key obstacle to moving the debate on negotiations to end the
>>>>>>> war in Afghanistan is that most Americans don't know much
>>>>>>> diplomatic history. This ignorance makes us vulnerable to facile
>>>>>>> slogans: for the neocons, it's a noun, a verb, and Neville
>>>>>>> Chamberlain. But Fredrik Stanton has published a corrective:
>>>>>>> "Great Negotiations: Agreements that Changed the Modern World"
>>>>>>> shows how U.S. leaders entered successful negotiations with
>>>>>>> realistic goals for their adversaries. If President Obama engages
>>>>>>> Taliban leaders as President Kennedy engaged Premier Khrushchev,
>>>>>>> we could end the war.
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> http://www.huffingtonpost.com/robert-naiman/could-a-great-negotiation_b_643147.html
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>>
>>
>>>>>>>
http://www.dailykos.com/story/2010/7/12/133610/993
>>>>>>>
>>>>>>> http://www.justforeignpolicy.org/node/645
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