Steven Sahiounie, journalist and political commentator
On June 12, three Russian ships and a nuclear-powered submarine will arrive in Havana, Cuba. While crossing the Atlantic, the ships performed maneuvers designed to enhance military capability, and are scheduled to remain in Cuba through June 17.
Recently, President Vladimir Putin made a threat to supply unspecified countries with weapons capable of striking Kyiv's Western allies.
The Kazan nuclear-powered submarine is capable of firing Kalibr cruise missiles, which have a range of up to 2,500 kilometers and can be equipped with nuclear warheads. Along for the ride are the Frigate Admiral Gorshkov, which is carrying new hypersonic Tsirkon missiles that are nuclear-capable, the Akademik Pashin refueling tanker, and Nikolay Chiker tugboat.
Russian President Vladimir Putin has portrayed Zircon as a potent weapon capable of penetrating any existing antimissile defenses by flying nine times faster than the speed of sound at a range of more than 1,000km (more than 620 miles).
While the visit to Cuba is not seen as a military threat to the US, and none of the vessels carry a nuclear war-head, it has brought back memories of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis involving the US and Russia in Cuba.
Cuba is Russia's most important partner in the Western Hemisphere from a geopolitical point of view, and both are critical of the US sanctions imposed on each other, and the enlargement of NATO. Havana also backed Russia's right to "self-defense" against NATO following its 2022 military operation in Ukraine.
In 1959, an uprising called the "26th of July Movement" led to the communist rule under the leadership of Fidel Castro in Cuba.
In April 1961, a group of 1,500 Cuban exiles opposed to Castro invaded Cuba supported by artillery, mortars, tanks aircrafts and naval ships, all of which was provided and financed by the US. This was one of a series of 'regime change' operations carried out by the US which failed, such as the 2011 US-NATO attack on Syria.
This incident came to be known as the Bay of Pigs invasion.
Early 1961 saw the American Jupiter missiles being deployed in Turkey and mid-April saw the failed Bay of Pigs invasion. This had the USSR worried as it saw the US planning something big.
Nikita Khrushchev of the USSR and Castro held a clandestine meeting in July 1962, and Khrushchev agreed to deploy nuclear missiles in Cuba.
US President John F. Kennedy was informed of the plans, and was advised to carry out an airstrike and invasion of Cuba, but he disregarded that advice and instead negotiated a deal that saw the USSR shelving its plans to deploy nuclear missiles in Cuba in exchange for an American assurance that Cuba would not be invaded.
The US policy of increased NATO membership from 1992 onwards has brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. In 1990, the US gave assurances to Mikhail Gorbachev that NATO would not expand, but US President Bill Clinton broke that promise, and we are faced with the realization that it was the US that provoked Putin to the February 2022 military operation in Ukraine in response to the threat of imminent NATO membership.
It took the negotiating skills of Kennedy to avert war in 1962, but today the US is led by President Joe Biden who is against ceasefire negotiations in both Ukraine and Gaza. Biden is a war-time President, who directly participates in both battlefields with funds, weapons, intelligence and the propaganda cranked out in Washington, which invented a narrative that Putin wants to conquer Ukraine and recreate a Soviet Empire.
In 2014, John J. Mearsheimer, a University of Chicago professor and one of the leading proponents of restraint in American foreign policy, explained why the Ukraine crisis is the west's fault, and how it has provoked Putin.
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