October 24 2022 | La Nuvola
FORUM 9 - 1962-2022: THE CUBAN CRISIS AND THE NUCLEAR RISK, YESTERDAY AND TODAY
At the height of the Cold War and the rebirth of many of the world's countries after World War II, 17 years after the bombs of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, at the height of decolonization that progressively emancipated Africa from centuries of European colonialism, the "Cuban crisis" confronted the world with the real risk of nuclear war and self-destruction. The protagonists had the names of Nikita Kruschev, John F. Kennedy, and Pope John XXIII. The risks implicit in an escalation that must answer to one's public opinions and apparatuses rather than to the supreme good of security and peace for all, the possibility of a "nuclear accident" capable of triggering a chain reaction, 60 years later, acquire dramatic relevance and a lesson for the present.