Washington DC: War Capital of the World

Holy Moly!

Just imagine if Washington discovered Russia or China had placed 12 spy stations on the Texas border. The beltway pols already foaming at the mouth about the alleged hordes of Nigerians, Albanians, Chinamen and commie agents of Cuba and Daniel Ortega already bursting through America’s borders would be splitting a gut or even suffering serial cardiac arrest.

And that’s to say nothing of triggering a potential nuclear showdown of the type narrowly avoided when Khrushchev acquiesced to President Kennedy’s insistence in October 1962 that Soviet missiles be removed from Cuba. Mankind narrowly escaped incineration on that occasion, but at least a profound rule of engagement for the nuclear age was established by that narrow miss.

To wit, you don’t put threatening weapons and forces on the doorstep of your nuclear rival. It’s verboten by the raw requirements of human survival and common sense.

That’s why the often forgotten part of the Cuban Missile Crisis occurred, as well. As it transpired, JFK agreed to remove 15 Jupiter missiles fitted with nuclear warheads from Turkey in return for the dismantlement of the Soviet missiles in Cuba, albeit that part of the deal was never publicly acknowledged by Washington.

Moreover, since there was every reason to take the Soviet threat seriously in those times and the years which followed, there wasn’t much Washington-inspired or funded meddling in Czechoslovakia during what turned out to be the failed spring uprising of 1968. Even though the Soviets had invaded Prague with 500,000 Warsaw Pact troops and brutally massacred hundreds of protesters, LBJ had actually planned to proceed with a planned summit with Soviet leader Brezhnev—until he cancelled at the last minute on purely political perception grounds.

Even when the Solidarity Movement in Poland gained huge momentum a decade later, the CIA and other arms of the Warfare State held their fire. Most of the smidgen of aid for the Polish freedom movement came from the Pope and the AFL-CIO.