Tale of two tests
“The nuclear weapon, invented 70 years ago, has shown itself to be an effective means of preventing war since there has been no conflict between major powers since then,” Bruno Tertrais of Foundation for Strategic Research told AFP. But critics of the deterrence doctrine reject these arguments. This policy has faced two serious tests
Cuban missile crisis
In 1962, at the height of the Cold War, an American spy plane detected Soviet medium-range ballistic missile installations on the territory of Soviet ally Cuba just miles off the Florida coast. The Soviet move followed the deployment of American ballistic missiles in Italy and Turkey
On the brink
The US president John F Kennedy responded with a military blockade of Cuba and placed US strategic forces on maximum alert dubbed DEFCON 2, the level preceding full-out nuclear war. Eventually, Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev agreed to dismantle all missiles based in Cuba and ship them back to the USSR
‘Pak can’t survive N-war’
Four decades later India and Pakistan came to the brink of nuclear war after a terror attack on the Indian Parliament. Nearly a million soldiers massed on either side of the territory’s disputed border
After Pakistan’s President Pervez Musharraf said he was prepared to resort to nuclear weapons against India, India’s Defence Minister George Fernandes said “he should realise that India can survive a nuclear attack, but Pakistan cannot.” They reached a ceasefire in November 2003