In a rather ironic twist, as Europe slips into recession and Russia’s economy flourishes, we see articles attempting to assert that Russia will suffer from losing its ties with the West.
This demonstrates an astonishing lack of understanding on behalf of Western nations towards the Global Majority and their ability to thrive without reliance on the West.
Likewise, the analogies drawn with the Cold War are utterly baseless, as the situation today is diametrically opposed - during the Cold War, the West was the dominant economic powerhouse, while now it is the BRICS that hold sway.
Oh, is that what happened, The Hill?
Because I recall reading/learning that after Castro overthrew the US-favored assclown Batista in a popular revolution, the US via CIA and other secret orgs funded the gathering together of ex-Cuban, now American, counterrevolutionaries, who had fled in the wake of Castro and Che cracking down on those pieces of shit. Eventually this resulted in the somewhat comical Bay of Pigs failed invasion of Cuba by the US- oh I mean by the American ex-Cubans working with CIA money and backing… but not the US official sanctioning. Classic. Btw if the US gov say they’ll pay for all your shit but won’t go as far as openly claiming you if shit hits the fan you can be sure shit is about to hit the biggest fan and you are about to die.
Anyway, the US had also conveniently and brazenly placed Jupiter missiles with nuclear payloads inside Turkey within easy striking distance of the Kremlin and Moscow. A massive provocation which the US would never tolerate in a role reversal (proven immediately after!).
So the Cuba and USSR work out a plan to move nukes, secretly, to Cuba so that the next time the US decides to start fucking around they can lean back and go “oh? What do you think about these big boys?” This effectively gave Cuba full protection from further US invasions because that would result in nuclear missiles landing in the continental US. It also allowed the USSR to be on equal footing again, with a counter to the US’s Turkish nukes. Win-win.
US: “Cuba and USSR consent, yes, but didn’t you forget to ask someone else?”
The United States caught wind of the nukes and, somewhat understandably, but also in a fully hypocritical fashion simultaneously, flipped its fucking shit. They were talking about invading Cuba still anyway and I guess just sort of “tanking” any resulting nuclear fallout to send a message of strength to the Soviets/world (ie that the Americans are fucking insane and willing to die in nuclear apocalypse before allowing Soviet victory. Not the first or last time this happened!). Luckily this all did get resolved basically only because the Soviets finally blinked, probably because they knew the Americans were actually insane enough to die. Of course the promise with Kennedy, before his brains got splattered all over his wife, was that the Soviets openly withdraw their missiles and the US would also withdraw the Jupiter missiles. Pretty sure the latter did not happen… the US got a little distracted, one might say.
So, the suggestion that the USSR was the aggressor is fucking imperial propaganda. No other term for it. You can argue the Soviets made mistakes, whatever, but to frame them as the ones to cause the crisis is purely and fully a lie. Unless you’re into victim blaming (the US is).
I also don’t think the withdrawal of the Soviets, who had gotten concessions from JFK, was seen as embarrassing for the USSR more so like “holy fuck, the US is batshit insane… this is worse than we ever imagined.” After the US military and intelligence reaction to events.
Again, imperial propaganda framing absolute bloodthirst and an objectively insane reaction based on a chain of events begun by an over reaction to the overthrow of a dictator. These right wing warhawk types think that immediately smashing the “withdraw right the fuck now or we will invade you, nukes be damned!” at the first slight reaction to your actions… is good?
They still act like this btw. Eg the retaliation against “Iranian-backed” MENA region militants recently. The US is doing a fucking genocide in Palestine, bombing Yemen again, and threatening the entire region. Three military die in a place the US never belonged to begin with and immediately everyone with Col or Gen in their name is screaming to the sky about nuking Tehran.
Dogshit, batshit country
The scary part is the summary in the article is actually how yanks are taught about it, and all their history in general. It’s always some variation of “Our evil enemy tried to do an evil thing, but we stopped them/attempted to stop them, and then everyone clapped.”
I think they did remove their nuclear ballistic missiles from turkey, but kept regular ballistic missiles. They did forget to remove the Italian nukes, so they could cover all of Europe and the balkans easily in the case of confrontation in Europe.
This is how it was portrayed in Polish media before 1989, USSR shown their goodwill and retreated before the USA aggression, while getting guarantees for Cuban independence, which was basically the reason for it happening in the first place, so essentially a win.
That seems like the most honest assessment of things. I know I tend towards a Soviet/Cuba bias, but the only possible way to see this as anything other than the US just being gigantic assholes and bullies (which is still an understatement) is if you adopt fully xenophobic, racist, whatever else views of the non-US world. That’s why there’s sort of two contradictory (but also not really) paths of domestic US propaganda.
One side focuses on like “we must secure every resource we can and kill everyone who opposes it! ‘Might makes right’, so let’s be mighty!” Hoorah, brother 😎
And the other path is “we don’t like killing people. And yeah, sure, the US has made mistakes. Maybe a lot of mistakes! But we have the right intentions and we must continue to strive towards our stated goals. Anyone who opposes us supports [list of every bad thing that the US probably also does]”
You let people take the koolaid that tastes better to them, just as long as they support the military when, say, concentration camp victims get sick of the shit and do something about it.
I guess time will tell, but I do think the amount of people in both groups is dwindling. People are moving further from “hell yeah, fuck around and find out brother” dipshit thinking to “well, we’ve made mistakes…” and some of those people are moving towards “ok, those weren’t mistakes. I was told a lie and willingly believed that my entire life. And now I’m fucking pissed because my government is actually the evil one.” I don’t want to pretend the furthest group is large, because it’s not, but I can see it growing as people are exposed to constant coverage of Palestine. It becomes harder and nearly impossible to think “this is our best ally? We support this without limitation?”
The issue with a movement towards anti-imperialism, anti-war, anti-supporting wars, etc. is it’s very en vogue right now. It’s been 23 years since that beautiful September day ( ✈️ 🏙️ ). If there’s ever another 9/11 style event, and if one doesn’t organically happen I can bet infinite money the CIA is working on something for decades now, Americans are gonna do exactly what “liberal Zionists” in Israel did on 10/7. Like a light switch go from “we can work together!” to “I am so sorry, friend. I must nuke you.”
But anyway, all that to say, people believe the story they want to make themselves feel good. They never ask why Cuba would want missiles or why the Soviets were involved or even what the Soviet Union was. They don’t ask any questions at all.
That’s probably the hardest part for me to deal with if I ever discuss these things irl. It’s like I can give them an hour long history lesson, and if I’m bothering to do so the person is probably receptive to it, so they go “oh ok.” But the next time something happens, perhaps a pipeline is blown up in Europe, “the fucking Russians!” is the immediate response. It’s as if all the bad things and lies are in the past and can be seen and acknowledged. The future is just truth and justice and everything good. And the present doesn’t exist at all. You close your eyes, and when you open them the future is still bright, and the past of death and lies is longer than ever.