 Biden warns Russia any nuclear attack would be 'incredibly serious mistake' Washington (AFP) Oct 25, 2022 - US President Joe Biden warned Russia on Tuesday against using a nuclear weapon in the war with Ukraine, saying such an escalation would be a grave error. Asked by reporters whether he thinks Russia is preparing a "dirty bomb" attack that it would then blame on Ukraine, Biden said: "Russia would be making an incredibly serious mistake were it to use a tactical nuclear weapon." Russia has repeatedly warned that Ukraine could use a so-called dirty bomb on its own territory. This is a conventional bomb laced with radioactive, biological or chemical materials which get disseminated in an explosion. The US and its allies suspect Russia might itself use a dirty bomb in a "false flag" attack, possibly to justify use of conventional nuclear weapons by Moscow as it finds itself on the back foot in eastern and southern Ukraine. Biden said, "I'm not guaranteeing that it's a false flag operation yet. We don't know." The Pentagon said Tuesday that Russia would face repercussions for using such a device. "If Russia were to employ nuclear weapons or a dirty bomb, there would be consequences," spokesman Brigadier General Pat Ryder told journalists, without providing specifics.
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Oscar Larralde vividly remembers hearing the explosions that downed an American spy plane over Cuba in 1962; his island nation was in the eye of a nuclear standoff between the United States and Soviet Union.
The then-17-year-old bank employee-turned-enlisted soldier was convinced the moment spelled his country's doom.
"We were going to be incinerated," he recalled thinking at the time.
As nuclear threats swirl again around Russia's invasion of Ukraine, the retired colonel hails the diplomacy that staved off full-blown war 60 years ago, and hopes reason will prevail once again.
In 1962, Larralde was deployed to the eastern port city of Banes in communist Cuba's Holguin province.
On October 27, he was walking on a remote beach when he heard a roar unlike anything he had ever heard before, and felt two explosions high over his head, "very loud, very strong."
"I didn't know what it was," the former soldier recalled.
He later learned it was two Soviet surface-to-air missiles, one of which downed a US U-2 spy plane, killing pilot Major Rudolf Anderson -- at age 35, the only casualty of the so-called Cuban missile crisis.
"An officer told us that a Soviet-operated anti-aircraft group had shot down a Yankee plane," Larralde told AFP.
"The reaction of the fighters in that first line of defense -- because we were the first ones who would clash with the Yankees -- was of enthusiasm, of joy," he recalled.
"We had made our sovereignty prevail. They were intruding planes violating" Cuban airspace, added Larralde.
But celebration soon turned to fear of the fallout "when the Yankees found out."
- 'A difficult time' -
Two weeks before Anderson's death, US reconnaissance aircraft had taken photographs of Soviet work on missile launch sites on Cuba -- within range of American shores.
Then-president John F. Kennedy warned Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev the United States would attack unless the missiles were withdrawn.
Kennedy ordered a naval blockade of Cuba and mobilized 140,000 troops, while Fidel Castro put 400,000 of his own people on alert, anticipating a military invasion.
Then Anderson was shot down.
Even as some in the Pentagon urged Kennedy to strike, diplomacy won the day, and on October 28 -- the day after the downing of the plane -- Khrushchev agreed to remove the missiles in exchange for a US pledge not to invade Cuba.
"At a very difficult time, the USSR and United States managed to negotiate and find a solution to the conflict," Larralde told AFP at a rusty launch platform bearing a spent Soviet missile converted into a monument at La Anita, near Banes.
Six decades later, Russian President Vladimir Putin's threats against the West in his war on ex-Soviet neighbor Ukraine has brought back fearful memories of the last time the world teetered on the brink of nuclear war.
"I don't think it will come to that, but I do think we are in more danger than at any time, in many ways even more than in 1962," said Hal Klepak, a strategy expert at the Royal Military College of Canada.
For Cuban ex-diplomat Carlos Alzugaray, the big fear today, like 60 years ago, is that things can "escalate by mistake. That someone makes the mistake of hitting a nuclear site... and then it escalates from there."
But Larralde is hopeful that this time, like the last, peace will prevail.
"It is important to negotiate to ensure world peace, or humanity will continue to be caught up in the possibility of a new nuclear conflict," he reflected.
Related Links
Learn about nuclear weapons doctrine and defense at SpaceWar.com
Learn about missile defense at SpaceWar.com
All about missiles at SpaceWar.com
Learn about the Superpowers of the 21st Century at SpaceWar.com
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