Graham Allison’s “The Cuban Missle Crisis at 50” looks back at Kennedy’s showdown with the Soviet Union with historical hindsight and offers contemporary policymakers some valuable lessons on brinksmanship, diplomacy, military strategy and foreign relations. Allison compares the Cold War crisis to the current situation in Iran and U.S. relations, which makes the analysis and narrative so relevant today.
According to Allison, Kennedy’s advisors believed they had two options, attack the Soviet Union or accept nuclear missiles in Cuba. Kennedy however, ignored his hawkish advisors and developed an “imaginative alternative”; a more nuanced strategy that involved
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