Robert McNamara’s Words on the Cold War is Something we Should Never Forget
“Rationality will not save us”
Robert McNamara was John F Kennedy’s Secretary of Defense. In 2003, he participated in a documentary film.
In the documentary, The Fog of War, there are 11 lessons that Robert McNamara goes over. The second lesson is a spine-chilling one:
“Rationality will not save us”
“I want to say, and this is very important, at the end — we lucked out. It was luck that prevented nuclear war.” — Robert McNamara, United States Secretary of Defense
The Cuban Missile Crisis was a 13-day confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union, initiated when the United States discovered that the Soviet Union was placing ballistic missiles on Cuba. This was in 1962.
In 1992, Robert McNamara, in a meeting with Fidel Castro, learned that Castro recommended Nikita Krushchev to use all the warheads against the United States.
When McNamara asked Castro what would have happened to Cuba if those warheads were deployed, Castro answered: “[Cuba] would have been totally destroyed.”
