Noam Chomsky - Turning the Tide U.S. intervention in

The Race to Destruction
Classics in Politics: Turning the Tide Noam Chomsky
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issued (but not yet implemented) because they were being replaced by
Polaris submarines. “The best and the brightest” decided to face what
they took to be a high probability of global destruction to establish the
principle that the US alone has the right to keep nuclear weapons on the
borders of an enemy, even missiles that it has already replaced with
more advanced weapons.
One analyst of the crisis aptly remarks:
Never before had there been such a high probability that so many
lives would end suddenly. Had war come, it could have meant the
death of 100 million Americans, more than 100 million Russians,
as well as millions of Europeans. Beside it, the natural calamities
and inhumanities of earlier history would have faded into
insignificance. Given the odds on disaster—which President
Kennedy estimated as “between one out of three and even“—our
escape seems awesome. This event symbolizes a central, if only
partially “thinkable,” fact about our existence.
This surely must be one of the low points of human history. It is a
fact of some significance for the future that it is generally regarded here
as a glorious moment, “one of the finest examples of diplomatic
prudence, and perhaps the finest hour of John F. Kennedy’s
Presidency,” in the words of the same respected scholar. 5
Turkey remains a major US nuclear outpost, aimed in part at the
Middle East and in part at the USSR, with a US nuclear combat base
and nuclear warheads also stored for the use of the Turkish air force.
Turkey is the third-ranking recipient of US military aid, after Israel and
Egypt. The priorities indicate the significance for US planners of control
of the incomparable energy resources of the Middle East. The major