Tactical Nuclear Weapons and NATO.pdf - Program on Strategic ...

given release authority by the Soviet General Staff, 58
but it is unknowable whether they or he would have
ordered the launch of TNWs had he faced being overrun
by the Americans, given the still-enormous Soviet
inferiority in overall nuclear capability. Yet keeping
these TNWs secret, presumably because of the highly
cl<strong>and</strong>estine nature of the whole deployment, also deprived
the Soviets of any stabilizing deterrent effect
in territorial protection. The TNWs remained in Cuba
until early December despite Khrushchev’s assurance
that all nuclear weapons had been removed from
Cuba in November. “Had U.S. intelligence uncovered
this fresh deception, the crisis might have restarted
amid irresistible pressure for an invasion.” 59
This incident also emphasizes the sheer difficulty
of detecting (<strong>and</strong> therefore verifying) TNWs, even
during the most intense local surveillance. Russia has
since frequently emphasized its opposition to the deployment
of any country’s nuclear weapons on the territory
of other countries. Potentially the most serious
failure of crisis management during the Cuban affair
was the unauthorized U.S. depth-charging of Soviet
submarines near the U.S. quarantine line. The Americans
did not know that those submarines had nucleartipped
torpedoes aboard <strong>and</strong> conditional authorization
to use them. It was only much later revealed that,
but for the intense personal intercession of 2nd Captain
Vasily Arkhipov, the comm<strong>and</strong>er of B59 might
have used a nuclear torpedo against an American
destroyer. 60 At the height of the Cuban crisis, on October
27, 1962, a U.S. U-2 reconnaissance aircraft from
Alaska accidentally strayed into Soviet airspace over
the Chukotski Peninsula <strong>and</strong> radioed for assistance. A
USAF F-102, armed with a nuclear air-to-air missile, 61
was scrambled from Alaska <strong>and</strong> headed towards the
37