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Cuban crisis marked world turning point

By LESLIE MORRIS

sere are days when things

_ occur that are so massive that they cannot be seen clearly at close quarters but only at adis- tance, like Everest.

Such a day was Sunday, October 22, 1962. Now the events of that day can be seen more distinctly, but it will take. some time before they can be fully fitted into the pat- tern of modern history.

It was the day in the Cuban

crisis when world-wide thermo-.

nuclear war was averted and world peace saved; when the governments of the USSR and the USA agreed to a last-minute compromise whose most impor- tant parts were the agreement of the USA to call off the invasion forces poised for a lightning strike at Cuba, and the agree- ment of the USSR to withdraw the missiles it had set upin Cuba to meet the threat of that inva- sion.

Everything else, such as the understandable refusal of Cuba to permit on-the-spot inspection by the USA, is secondary to the fact that world was was prevent- ed by the compromise between Washington and Moscow. Had it not been made, the issue of Cuba, while it was the starting point for the crisis, would have disap- peared in the ensuing holocaust which would have atomized hun- dreds of millions of people throughout the world.

Not only Cuba but world war or peace hung in awful balance on that Sunday morning.

The crisis was brought on by the stubborn insistence of the U.S. government on the annihila- tion of the Cuban revolutionary government by forceor arms, the Bay of Pigs invasion of April, 1961 having been a fiasco, The tendency, continuously sprouting im the Pentagon, to crush by force of arms any regime which is not to the liking of the USA, prevailed over counter-tenden- cies to go slowly, and so the invasion force was prepared, this

time in full force. :

It was a conventional arms in- vasion force, as far as we know, put it would have been sufficient to crush the revolutionary army and the people’s militia of Cuba, to have ravaged the country and literally destroyed it. Who would come to Cuba’s aid?

In the preceding summer of’ 1962 the Cuban government: had asked the USSR for help to meet this threat. The difficulties in the way of giving conventional arms support sufficient to meet the U.S. invasion force, not to speak of manpower, or the necessity of shipping arms, food and oil thousands of miles, were in- superable. A ‘‘conventional’’ war fought by the USA ‘‘next door’’, could have brought the destuc- tion of Cuba. The USA was in possession also of nuclear might which it could have used at some stage, as it was prepared to do in Korea at the end of 1952.

Only the help of the Soviet_ Union could save Cuba,

Solidarity with Cuba required- that the USSR supply Cuba with modern means of defense—inter- mediate missiles, the only mili- tary way to help Cuba under the circumstances. When this was done U.S. policy was plunged in crisis, just as it was over Korea when the threat to use the atomic bomb as well as napalm collided with the fact that the USSR also possed this weapon of socialist defense and Britain threatened to break unity with the USA if the bomb was used.

The ‘confrontation’? and its possible result—world thermo- nuclear war—produced the com- promise which averted war, stop- ped the massive invasion of Cuba, and so permitted the normal de- velopment of the Cuban economy towards socialism.

These are the salient facts about the Cuba crisis of Octo- ber, 1962. May we repeat: all else is secondary.

The cause of world peace has gathered speed since that fateful day.

Millions of people, particularly in the USA and Canada, learned a lesson they will not easily for- get, because for the first time the ordeals that European, Asian and

raids.

raids.

and disease.

$27,500 house

The Incredible Cost

— DESTRUCTION —

| Over 21 million young men killed on the battlefield. 15-20 million women, children and old people killed in air

2914 million wounded, mutilated or incapacitated for work. | 21,245,000 people lost their. homes and belongings through air | |

45 million people were evacuated, deported, interned or other- wise removed far from home.

30 million homes were reduced to ashes.

150 million people were left without shelter, prey to famine

— COST —

Up to 1945,.the Second World War cost three times 2s much as the first. This money could have provided:

$10,000 worth of furniture $50,000 cash present to every family in the U.S., Canada, Australia, Britain, Ireland, France, Germany, Russia and Belgium. In addition, each town of over 200,000 people could have been given a cash donation of $62,500,000 for libraries $62,500,000 for schools $62,500,000 for hospitals

(Figures from International Review of Diplomatic and Political Science: Geneva)

African people have experienced and are experiencing, came very close to them. They learned that the thermonuclear weapon is no respecter of persons, skincolor, nationality or continent.

The Cuban crisis and its out- come may well have marked a watershed in world affairs. It was a victory of the policy of peaceful coexistence, which is not a polite andorderlyteaparty, but a long series of struggles between the forces of war and peace in which the superior power rests, in the end, with the latter.

Some people fail to understand the size of the victory that was achieved others became compla- cent because they fail to see that the outcome ot the Cuba crisis, as now—with the partial test ban, far from giving any sort of automatic guarantee for peace,

actually provides new opportuni-,

ties for pushing on with the bat- tle for new victories, such as the outlawing of the nuclear weapon altogether, general and complete disarmament and the stoppage of American interference in Cuban affairs.

“The people who fail to under- stand what was achieved in Cuba a year ago and go as far as to call the action of the Soviet Union ‘‘adventurism”’ or hint at a new ‘*Munich’’, actually fail to grasp the fact that the USA was, and still is, bent on the destruc- tion of the Cuban revolution by force, if it can. Had the Soviet Union not acted as it did, it is doubtful of the Cuban revolu- tionary government would now exist.

Those who are complacent make the same mistake; they fail to heed the repeated warnings of Fidel Castro about the continu- ous provocations and attacks — armed, economic, and diplomatic — upon the Cuban revolution by the U.S. government.

As we started by saying, the event becomes bigger as it re- cedes into history. October, 1962, was a famous victory inthe cause of peace and the national inde- pendence of peoples. It was ade- feat for the USA. A new breath- ing space was given the people of Cuba. Their battle to stop U.S. interference altogether must re- ceive the support of democratic people everywhere.

One of the best ways to do that right now is to demand that the Canadian government give Cuba gifts of food, medicines and ma- chinery caused by hurricane Flora.

Fidel Castro has put the mean- ing of October 22, 1962, into the following memorable words:

**It will always be agreat coun- try, which for the sake of the defense of a small people living thousands of miles away, risked the well-being achieved in 45 years of creative work, and at the price of tremendous sacrifices, in thermonuclear war. TheSoviet Union, which lost more lives in the Great Patriotic War against the fascists than the entire popu- lation of Cuba, so as to defendits right to existence and to develop its tremendous resources, did not hesitate to take the risk of a big war in defense of a small coun- try. History has never known such an example of solidarity. This is true internationalism! This is communism!’’

STAND TOGETHER. The ubreakable bond of fraternal solidarity

between Cuba and the Soviet Union is typified in this picture of respective heads of the two governments.

of Newsweek magazine.

to destruction.”

ing pads...”

Cuba.

pericd October, 1962.

Nightmare at the Pentagon

The U.S. had 90 bombers loaded with atom bombs constantly criss-crossing the Atlantic and eight Polaris submarines with 128 missiles trained on Russia during last year’s Cuban crisis, according to the recent issue.

In what it termed the first detailed accounts ever published on U.S. military activity during the crisis, Newsweek said: “The U.S. and the U.S.S.R. stocd frighteningly close to war, the world frighteningly close

More than 1,400 other bombers were standing by on the ground, and “across the U.S., 102 Atlas, 54, Titan and 12 Minuteman ICBM’s sat on their launch-

Newswezek said the army had put together the biggest invasion fc.rce since the Second World War, using about 100,000 men to the south-east, particularly. Florida, where they could be ferried the 90 miles to.

At the Pentagon war room, “one officer and one sergeant carried holstered .38 calibre pistcls, bone- handled, snub-nosed weapons intended only to shoot any member of the team who might crumple under pressure and threaten to set off war on his own panicky impulse, says the Newsweek account of that fateful _

“World Marxist Review’ airs ideological debate |

Nationalism, petty-bourgeois intolerance and an effort todom- inate the world community of equal Communist parties are cited as r€asons for the Chinese Communist leaders revision of Marxist theory.

_ An article by Lawrence Shar- key, general secretary of the Communist Party of Australia in the October World Marxist Review charges that the views of the CPC leaders on allimportant questions merge with Trotsky- ism,

‘Jean Blum of the BelgiunCom- November 1, 1963—PACIFIC TRIBUNE—Pa

munist Party writes on «world Socialism and the Working Clas Movement.’’

A significant special feature iS the exchange, ‘‘The Present Stag® of the National-Liberation Move" ment of the Arab Peoples. Marxist theoreticians from Al- geria, Iraq, Jordan, Lebanon, S¥- dan and Syria disctiss. soci0- economic problems, Arab unity and ‘Arab socialism’’. Lg

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