Fidel Castro & Nuclear Holocaust: He's called for it twice

Pressed the Soviet Union hard in 1962 and in early 1980s for nuclear war


Fidel Castro is back in the news warning of a nuclear holocaust. He called a special session of the Cuban National Assembly yesterday, which is interesting because he is no longer "president" but can still call a special session, to warn of a possible nuclear conflict between the United States and Iran. This is generating a lot of speculation in the media. The BBC is wrong when it states that Fidel Castro has found a "new mission in later life - to save the world from nuclear destruction."


Pay attention to what Fidel Castro has advocated behind close doors not what he's announced in public

This analysis does not fit when looking at Fidel Castro's life. Not once but twice he called on the Soviet Union to launch a nuclear first strike on the United States and plunge the world into a nuclear holocaust. The first time was during the October 1962 Missile Crisis in a letter to Nikita Khrushchev and the second time in the early 1980s were Fidel Castro pressed the Soviets hard for a nuclear strike against the United States. This revelation became public knowledge on September 21, 2009 and the newspaper of record The New York Times quotes the source:

Andrian A. Danilevich, a Soviet general staff officer from 1964 to ’90 and director of the staff officers who wrote the Soviet Union’s final reference guide on strategic and nuclear planning is quoted in the early 1980s, saying that Mr. Castro “pressed hard for a tougher Soviet line against the U.S. up to and including possible nuclear strikes.” The general staff, General Danilevich continued, “had to actively disabuse him of this view by spelling out the ecological consequences for Cuba of a Soviet strike against the U.S.”

Yoani Sanchez has written an insightful essay about the old tyrant's reappearance saying: he has come forward to announce the end of the world. The old autocrat over the past half century has demonstrated himself to be a heartless egomaniac. Policymakers should beware that as Fidel Castro approaches his last days and hours some of his more fanatical followers may finally carry out the old man's deepest wish: Armageddon. Norberto Fuentes, who knew the man well, describes him as "the great architect of destruction and the great provider of death." Don't let his rhetoric fool you a leopard doesn't change his spots, and Cuba's intelligence service was expertly trained by the East German Stasi. Underestimate him and them at your own peril. This may sound a bit alarmist but the consequences are enormous.