Exactly 60 years ago, on October 14, 1962, photographs taken by an American spy plane are causing alarm in the White House.

“Despite Moscow’s denials that it has no plans to deploy nuclear-tipped missiles to Cuba, it is now clear that missile launchers are being built on the island that could strike most US communities,” Manolis wrote. Kumas at K in 2016, shedding light on the “missile crisis” that turns 60 today.

What happened then, in the early 1960s? Briefly: Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev secretly sent intermediate-range missiles with nuclear warheads to Cuba, in the US South, and US President John F. Kennedy responded with a naval blockade of Castro Island. “The President, Mr. J. Kennedy, imposed a strict naval blockade of Cuba overnight,” read the front page of the “K” dated October 23, 1962.

After a series of diplomatic maneuvers, the crisis ended with Khrushchev, on the one hand, withdrawing Soviet missiles from Cuba, and Kennedy, on the other, withdrawing American missiles from Turkey, promising not to invade Cuba.

Exactly 60 years later, Russian President Vladimir Putin provoked a new crisis by invading Ukraine, according to the American website Gzero. Putin even warned that Moscow could now use nuclear weapons if it felt its national security was in danger. US President Joe Biden, on the other hand, spoke of the lessons of the Cuban missile crisis that could help prevent another catastrophe today.

The 1962 nuclear standoff was in some ways more dangerous than the current crisis, the Gzero website claims in its analysis. Sixty years ago, if a nuclear superpower like the United States had been attacked by a nuclear weapon on its territory, it would have reacted immediately. Millions of Americans and Soviets would have been killed in minutes, write the editors of Gzero.

In addition, in 1962 the connection between Washington and Moscow was more complicated. Back then, it took hours for communications to pass safely from one side to the other, which increased the risk of miscalculations or fatal accidents while the leaders waited for answers.

However, then John F. Kennedy had to face another problem, because it was not clear who was pulling the strings in the Kremlin. Conflicting reports emanating from Moscow have led some in Washington to believe that Khrushchev has been ousted from power and that the US will have to face yet another unknown adversary in a potentially explosive situation.

For the reasons indicated above, the crisis of 1962 could be considered more dangerous than the present one.

However, there are other elements that make the current confrontation more dangerous.

The Cuban Missile Crisis came just 17 years after the end of World War II, with devastating consequences, experiences and images that were still “fresh” in the minds of leaders and citizens. Today, 77 years after the end of the last world war, the possibility of new disasters seems more abstract, which, however, can also breed complacency in the face of threat.

The Cuban crisis unfolded in peacetime. Today’s Russia, on the contrary, is waging a war in Ukraine, a war in which the United States is drawn on the side of Kyiv, creating complications that did not exist in 1962.

Today we know that Kennedy and Khrushchev had other open channels of communication behind the scenes. The secret negotiations then taking place between Robert Kennedy, the brother of the American president, and the Soviet ambassador, Anatoly Dobrynin, were crucial to averting disaster and reaching an agreement.

In 1962, the US and the USSR managed to defuse the crisis by demonstrating flexibility and creativity, elements that unfortunately do not exist today, notes Gzero in his analysis.