We all lost the Cuban missile crisis

Benoît Pelopidas (1)

1 CERI - Centre de recherches internationales (Sciences Po, CNRS)

Richard Ned Lebow and Janice Stein’s We all lost the Cold War remains an important and widely quoted contribution in the fields of political science and political psychology twenty years after its publication. As opposed to other classics on the so- called “Cuban Missile Crisis”, which are also analysed in this edited volume, this book is not exclusively focused on t his crisis. It is recognized as “the most acute confrontation of the Cold War” (p.5) and is one of the two case studies in the book, the other one being the 1973 Middle Eastern crisis. These case studies support the conclusion that the end of the Cold War was delayed rather than caused by the strategy of nuclear deterrence. As is abundantly clear from the title of the book, its main target is American Cold War triumphalism, of which victorious nuclear crisis management through strength and resolve is just one aspect. The limitations of this important book only constitute a powerful invitation to build upon its main argumentation. I will suggest avenues for doing so in the last part of this chapter...

Mots clés: Cuban Missile Crisis; nuclear weapons

Domaines: Science politique

Benoît Pelopidas. We all lost the Cuban missile crisis. The Cuban Missile Crisis. A Critical Reappraisal, Routledge, pp.167 - 182, 2015, 9781138840928. ⟨hal-03398900⟩