How did we avoid a Cuban Missile ‘Armageddon’? Strategic empathy.
The ability of both Kennedy and Khrushchev to understand each other in October 1962 is a lesson for the US and Russia in 2022.
Katrina vanden Heuvel is editorial director and publisher of The Nation. She served as editor of the magazine from 1995 to 2019. She writes a weekly column for The Washington Post and is Vice-President of the American Committee for U.S.-Russia Accord. A frequent commentator on U.S. and international politics for ABC, MSNBC, CNN, and PBS, her articles have appeared in The New York Times, The Los Angeles Times and The Boston Globe. Vanden Heuvel is also the author of several books, including The Change I Believe In: Fighting for Progress in The Age of Obama, and co-author (with Stephen F. Cohen) of Voices of Glasnost: Interviews with Gorbachev’s Reformers.
The ability of both Kennedy and Khrushchev to understand each other in October 1962 is a lesson for the US and Russia in 2022.
The US approach to Russia hasn’t been working for years, mostly because it’s been spearheaded by alarmists in the blob.
The late professor launched the first incarnation in 1974. A year after his death, his wife and colleagues are pressing forward under new name.