Journal articles on the topic 'Cuban Missle Crisis, 1962'

Though virtually ignored in the historiography, Brazil played an intriguing role in the politics and diplomacy of the Cuban missile crisis and in U.S. Cuban relations during the Kennedy administration. In the years after Fidel Castro took power, successive Brazilian governments tried secretly to mediate between the United States and Cuba as the two countries' mutual confrontation intensified. Newly available U.S., Brazilian, Cuban, and other sources reveal that this role climaxed during the missile crisis, as John F. Kennedy clandestinely sought to employ Brazil to transmit a message to Castro. In turn, Brazil, which was also promoting a Latin American denuclearization scheme at the United Nations as a possible method to resolve the crisis, sought to broker a formula for U.S. Cuban reconciliation that would heighten the prestige of its own “independent” policy in the Cold War. Ultimately, these efforts failed, but they shed light on previously hidden aspects of both the missile crisis and the triangular U.S. Cuban—Brazilian relationship. Thefirst part of this two—part article sets the scene for an in—depth look at the Cuban missile crisis, which will be covered in Part 2 of the article in the next issue of the journal.

On 16 October 1962, President John F. Kennedy learned that the Soviet Union was building bases in Cuba for ballistic missiles that could destroy major US cities. In the days that followed, US officials focused nearly all their attention on strategies for removing the Soviet missiles, on Soviet motives, and on the Soviet Union's reaction to the naval quarantine. Cuba was the locus of this most dramatic superpower confrontation, but Cuban perceptions, motives, and reactions were largely ignored.

Though virtually ignored in the historiography, Brazil played an intriguing role in the politics and diplomacy of the Cuban missile crisis and in U.S. Cuban relations during the Kennedy administration. In the years after Fidel Castro took power, successive Brazilian governments tried secretly to mediate between Washington and Havana as their mutual confrontation intensified. Newly available U.S., Brazilian, Cuban, and other sources reveal that this role climaxed during the missile crisis, as John F. Kennedy clandestinely sought to employ Brazil to transmit a message to Castro. In turn, Brazil, which was also promoting a Latin American denuclearization scheme at the United Nations as a possible means of resolving the crisis, sought to broker a formula for U.S. Cuban reconciliation that would heighten the prestige of its own “independent”policy in the Cold War. Ultimately, these efforts failed, but they shed light on previously hidden aspects of both the missile crisis and the triangular U.S. Cuban-Brazilian relationship. This is the concluding part of a two-part article.

During the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, the argument that U.S. air strikes against Soviet missile sites in Cuba would be morally analogous to the Japanese surprise attack on Pearl Harbor in 1941 had a major impact on policymaking. The invocation of this analogy contributed to President John F. Kennedy's decision to forgo an immediate attack on the missiles and to start instead with a naval blockade of the island. The “Pearl Harbor in reverse” argument is an example of an important phenomenon that has received little attention in foreign policy analysis—the moral analogy. Fusing together elements of moral and analogical thinking, the moral analogy can be a powerful force in shaping policy preferences, as it was in October 1962.

Drawing on documents and memoirs in Russian and Arabic, this article tells the unknown story of Soviet-Egyptian cooperation in the early phases of the Yemeni Civil War, a war that broke out while much of the world's attention was focused on the Cuban missile crisis and the war between India and Pakistan. Egypt's fateful decision to intervene in the conflict was dependent on substantial Soviet backing, which strengthened the relationship between the USSR and Gamal Abdel Nasser's government in Egypt. In response to a plea from Nasser, Nikita Khrushchev authorized the military transport branch of the Soviet Air Force to embark on a clandestine airlift operation ferrying Egyptian troops into Yemen to shore up the new government there.

Using materials from the Russian Foreign Ministry archive in Moscow (combined with previously obtained Brazilian and U.S. sources), this research note presents fresh evidence about Soviet-Brazilian relations and the October 1962 Cuban missile crisis, supplementing a detailed, two-part article published in the Journal of Cold War Studies in 2004 exploring Brazil's secret mediation between John F. Kennedy and Fidel Castro at the height of the crisis. The new evidence illuminates a previously hidden “double game” that Brazil's president, João Goulart, played during the crisis as he alternated between meetings with the U.S. ambassador and Nikita Khrushchev's recently arrived envoy (Brazil and the Soviet Union had just restored diplomatic relations after a fifteen-year break). The new evidence from Moscow suggests that Goulart, who vowed solidarity with Washington and even toasted Kennedy's “victory” when talking to the U.S. ambassador, took a completely different approach when speaking to Soviet officials, expressing strong sympathy and even support for Khrushchev.

This article examines how the Kennedy administration assessed the risk posed by Soviet short-range missiles in Cuba and the associated combat troops, particularly in the months after the peak of the Cuban missile crisis. The issue had a strong domestic political subtext that played out for months. Missiles in Cuba had been a topic of discussion well before the dramatic events of October 1962, and the dispute about them dragged on well past the famous “thirteen days.” Many studies assume a final resolution to the crisis that did not actually exist. The evidence from this period indicates that domestic political considerations were a fundamental factor in Kennedy's decision-making and apparently induced him to take a slightly harder line in the post-crisis negotiations with the Soviet Union than he otherwise might have. But the evidence also suggests that Kennedy was more willing than some of his advisers and many Congressional critics to accept a degree of permanent military risk in Cuba.

Although studies of the Cuban missile crisis abound, the story “from below” of those fateful days of October 1962 remains largely to be written. This is particularly true for the Soviet side. Little is known about the way the Soviet population, and particularly youth, the prime category for propaganda, perceived what is widely regarded as the most dangerous crisis of the Cold War. Youth were indeed the target of a massive mobilization campaign, but one that was ridden with many shortcomings, or, using the musical metaphor, dissonances. The propaganda machine (mainly the press but also radio and film) had been cultivating anti-Americanism and solidarity with the Cuban people for quite some time, but when the crisis suddenly arose, many “choir members” were unable to modulate their voice to the right key, if there ever was one. Secrecy and improvisation in the Communist Party’s highest organs, coupled with the trauma of World War II, bore the fruits of inertia, formalism, pacifism, and above all, embarrassed silence, eventually contributing to an extreme and often ambivalent palette of reactions.

The immense secondary literature on the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962 tends to overlook the U.S. government's promotion of a case in international law to legitimize and generate support for the naval blockade of Cuba. This article explores the development and presentation of the legal case and then gauges its success by looking at the response of various non-Communist governments. Those governments endorsed U.S. policy despite, not because of, the U.S. legal case, which they found highly questionable. The analysis here draws extensively on archival sources as well as on the latest published research and presents a fresh contribution to the historiography about the most dangerous confrontation of the Cold War.

The fragile détente that dawned after the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962 was a necessary but not sufficient condition to ensure the conclusion of the Limited Test Ban Treaty eight months later. Nikita Khrushchev's political weakness after his Cuban fiasco was the main obstacle. New evidence from the Soviet side shows that by April 1963—three months before John F. Kennedy's conciliatory speech at American University that is usually regarded as the turning point—the Soviet leader became committed to the treaty in principle. Discord within the Communist world inhibited him from pursuing it actively until efforts to mend the rift with China collapsed, underscoring the value of a successful agreement with the West. Once the treaty was signed, however, the two sides failed to build on their common accomplishment and got bogged down by political issues that divided them. The opportunity for a deeper détente and a comprehensive test ban were lost.

Newly declassified archival sources allow a reassessment of U.S.-Canadian diplomacy during the final months of John Diefenbaker's government concerning Canada's prospective acquisition of nuclear weapons in the wake of the October 1962 Cuban missile crisis. Scholars have traditionally argued that Canadian proposals for U.S. nuclear warheads to be supplied to Canada after the outbreak of an international emergency were unworkable. Diefenbaker has been deemed primarily responsible for his government's collapse after personally fumbling the bilateral nuclear weapons talks. Drawing on previously unavailable primary documents, this article shows that the U.S. decision to reject Ottawa's proposals was rooted in political, not military, imperatives. The article also demonstrates that U.S. officials waged a concerted campaign to undermine the Canadian government, most notably through the State Department's unprecedented public rebuke of Diefenbaker's nuclear weapons policy in late-January 1963.

During the Cold War, the nature, intent, and scale of Soviet civil defense were the subject of heated debate in the West. Some analysts claimed that the USSR possessed a massive civil defense program capable of seriously destabilizing the strategic nuclear balance. This article draws on previously unexamined archival sources to investigate Soviet shelter construction from 1953, when the USSR's civil defense forces began planning for nuclear war, until the Cuban missile crisis in October 1962. These documents indicate that shelter construction consumed the majority of Soviet civil defense funding and was conducted by order of the Council of Ministers. Although the shelters were inadequate both technologically and quantitatively to protect the Soviet population from an all-out U.S. thermonuclear attack, they existed in significant numbers and represented a considerable expenditure of limited Soviet resources. These new revelations provide important insights into Soviet thinking about nuclear war during the Khrushchev era.

At the end of Stanley Kubrick's masterpiece Dr Strangelove: Or How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb, Major 'King' Kong rides the nuclear bomb to oblivion. The chosen few deep underground in the American War Room have ascertained that the Soviet's “Doomsday Machine” will automatically retaliate and enshroud the earth in a cloud of radioactive material for 100 years. The pristine logic of the Cold War that culminated in Kong riding the bomb in the film, and brought the world to the edge of oblivion with the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962, is based on game theory. Strangelove is the first popular film or fiction to deal with game theory, and does so with great attention to detail. Thus, it is an excellent starting point for historical insight into the beginnings of what has recently been described in The New Palgrave: A Dictionary of Economics as a ...

This article studies the development of Soviet-Cypriot trade relations in 1960-63, based on research at the Archives of Foreign Policy of the Russian Federation (AVP RF). Concurrently, a historical analysis follows the events after the creation of the new Cypriot state and the two major Cold War crises (the building of the Berlin wall and the Cuban missile crisis). The efforts made by both governments to develop bilateral trade, the aftermath of the two major international crises and the results of the two governments’ policies have been identified and analyzed.

In the 1940s and 1950s, irrespective of the government in power, Irish foreign policy faced strong domestic pressure to remain within parameters defined by religious sentiment, anti-communism and anti-colonialism. Yet two contrasting attitudes, corresponding to party allegiances, were nonetheless discernible: that of Fine Gael, which held constantly to a pro-Western line, and that of Fianna Fáil, which was capable of occasionally departing from it. By the 1960s the two approaches had converged, as Fianna Fáil under Seán Lemass repositioned itself more clearly in the American-led camp, a change most strikingly exemplified by Ireland’s response to the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. Yet before the end of the decade an issue was to arise in which Dublin’s Department of External Affairs was to find itself steering a course independent of forces both within the country and outside it.The war which erupted in Nigeria in the summer of 1967, when its Eastern Region seceded, was to reverberate across the world, causing a response in Ireland unequalled by the reaction to any foreign civil conflict between that of Spain in the 1930s and that of Yugoslavia in the 1990s. It was to bring about the greatest emotional involvement with an African problem since Ireland’s participation in the Congo conflict, leading directly to the foundation of the Africa Concern and Gorta organisations and marking a turning-point in the nature of Irish overseas aid.

The article is an attempt to analyze the peculiarities of the US Policy towards Cuba under conditions of break off diplomatic relations in the 1960s. The article focuses on factors which influenced on the formation of the US policy towards Cuba and determined the nature of its qualitative changes in the given period. The author analyzed definite political and economic steps made by President John F. Kennedy and Lyndon Johnson against Fidel Castro’s regime. There is also described the work of the Special Group Augmented that prepared for the new phase of the «Cuban project» – Operation «Mongoose». As a result of the research the author comes to the conclusion, that peculiarities of the US Policy towards Cuba under conditions of break off diplomatic relations in the 1960’s had changed. President Kennedy’s policies were characterized by different methods and approaches. It included both covert operations and sabotage against F. Castro’s regime, as well as political and economic pressure on Cuba. However, such US policy had the opposite effect. Cuba had established relations with the Soviet Union. The confrontation between the United States, the Soviet Union and Cuba led to The Cuban missile crisis. After the crisis was resolved the USA was forced to suspend operation «Mongoose». In addition, John F. Kennedy had attempted to establish a secret back channel of communication with F. Castro. After his death, preliminary for negotiations between Washington and Havana were discontinued. The new President Lyndon Johnson did not allow the normalization of relations with Cuba on Castro’s terms and while he was in power. He made an effort to destabilize the Castro’s regime by making an engaging immigration policy for Cubans who lived in the United States or desired come to the country and got a permanent residence. At the end of Johnson’s presidency, the United States took part in the Vietnam war, but the problem of U.S.-Cuban relations remained unresolved.

This paper presents N-Site, a distributed consensus building and negotiation support system, which is used to provide geographically dispersed teams with agile access to a Web-based group decision support system. Four teams located in France, Mexico, the Ukraine, and the United States participated in the N-Site project. Each team was required to research the problem using the World Wide Web (WWW). With this background, each team identified opportunities, threats and alternatives as a basis for developing a response to the Cuban Missile Crisis that confronted President Kennedy in October 1962. The strategic assessment model (SAM) (M. Tavana, J. Multi-Criteria Decision Anal.11 (2002) 75–96; M. Tavana and S. Banerjee, Decision Sci.26 (1995) 119–143.) was used by each team to choose a strategy that best fit the team's perspective. SAM and WWW enabled the teams to evaluate strategic alternatives and build consensus based on a series of intuitive and analytical methods including environmental scanning, the analytic hierarchy process (AHP) and subjective probabilities. The WWW was used to achieve interaction among the international teams as they attempted to negotiate a decision framework and select a diplomatic response. The project was assessed with a Web-distributed survey instrument. This use of the WWW has implications for international diplomacy as well as global business.

Relevance of this review is caused by the fact that in October, 2017 it is performed 55 years of the Caribbean crisis which delivered mankind on a survival side which was solved only thanks to diplomatic efforts of the USSR and the USA. The reviewed book “White Spots Caribbean krizisa.1961-1964" is devoted to this problem.

Este artículo tiene por objeto analizar la recepción en la España franquista de la llamada Crisis de los Misiles, episodio clave de la Guerra Fría que tuvo por protagonistas a las dos superpotencias del momento —Estados Unidos y la Unión Soviética— y a Cuba a finales de octubre y noviembre de 1962 y que no ha sido tratada previamente por ningún estudio específico. Así, este trabajo examinará la reacción de algunos de los principales diarios españoles ante las diferentes fases del acontecimiento, complementando esta fuente principal con la consulta de archivos españoles y norteamericanos. La posición de la prensa española ante la Crisis de los Misiles reflejó las paradojas del régimen franquista, el cual controlaba estos órganos de opinión directa o indirectamente. En todo caso, los diarios, mostraron una indudable inquietud al principio de la Crisis y no ocultaron su satisfacción ante el final de esta y la retirada de los misiles de Cuba. Sin embargo, su visión de la Crisis estuvo definida, esencialmente, por el anticomunismo primario del régimen y por su deseo de situarse en el mundo occidental como un adalid privilegiado de los Estados Unidos. De esta manera la mayoría de la prensa lamentó el desenlace que tuvo la Crisis, vista por ellos como una oportunidad perdida para derrocar al castrismo.

This article explains how Latin American governments responded to the Cuban revolution and how the “Cuban question” played out in the inter-American system in the first five years of Fidel Castro's regime, from 1959 to 1964, when the Organization of American States imposed sanctions against the island. Drawing on recently declassified sources from Argentina, Chile, Mexico, Uruguay, and the United States, the article complicates U.S.-centric accounts of the inter-American system. It also adds to our understanding of how the Cold War was perceived within the region. The article makes clear that U.S. policymakers were not the only ones who feared Castro's triumph, the prospect of greater Soviet intervention, and the Cuban missile crisis. By seeking to understand why local states opposed Castro's ascendance and what they wanted to do to counter his regime, the account here offers new insight into the Cuban revolution's international impact and allows us to evaluate U.S. influence in the region during key years of the Cold War.

El décimo viaje apostólico del papa Francisco tenía como itinerario la visita a la República Cubana, los Estados Unidos de América y la visita a la sede de la Organización de las Naciones Unidas, con motivo de su participación en el VIII Encuentro Mundial de las Familias, en Filadelfia, del 18 al 28 de septiembre de 2015. Un viaje muy esperado tras el giro en la políticanorteamericana respecto a Cuba y el discutido embargo, consecuencia de la crisis de los misiles y último rescoldo de la guerra fría en octubre de 1962. Éxito sin precedentes de la estrategia de la Santa Sede. Un itinerario difícil y complicado ante la apuesta de aquella por ayudar a normalizar las relaciones diplomáticas entre ambos países. Además de la enérgica oposición de grupos conservadores a dicho viaje papal. El futuro deparará los frutos obtenidos que pueden otearse en el horizonte.

In the late 1950s and early 1960s, the Soviet Union and its East European allies sought to prevent the installation of U.S. nuclear missiles in Western Europe by embarking on a diplomatic “peace offensive” that included proposals for the creation of denuclearized zones in various geographical areas of Europe. This article considers how the NATO countries responded to these proposals. In the end, the Western allies rejected proposals for the denuclearization of the Balkans and other areas in Europe, but discussions within NATO's councils often proved complicated, especially regarding southern Europe. In the case of the 1957 Stoica proposal for the denuclearization of the Balkans, the leading NATO countries stepped back and let Turkey and Greece reject the proposal, but by 1963, in the aftermath of the Cuban missile crisis, the United States and other key allied countries as well as the NATO bureaucracy assumed a more active role in evaluating and ultimately rejecting the notion of denuclearization in the Mediterranean.

RESUMEN Este trabajo examina el desarrollo del Partido Comunista Uruguayo (PCU) durante los años sesenta del siglo pasado como un partido pro-soviético ligeramente heterodoxo. En el período más álgido de la Guerra Fría en América Latina, desde la crisis de los misiles de 1962 hasta la deposición del presidente Salvador Allende en 1973, el PCU jugó un papel internacional relativamente importante, considerando su pequeño tamaño. En un tiempo de difíciles relaciones entre cubanos y soviéticos, Rodney Arismendi, su líder principal entre 1955 y 1989, operó como un hombre fiable para ambos lados. Probablemente fue por eso que pudo actuar ocasionalmente como intermediario entre La Habana y Moscú. Al nivel nacional el PCU fue uno de los defensores más vehementes de la revolución cubana y el más enfático crítico de la aplicación mecánica de su estrategia en Uruguay. En esos momentos, no era fácil combinar la preferencia soviética por el camino pacífico hacia el socialismo con la incendiaria retórica revolucionaria cubana. Este artículo analiza los fundamentos y la forma en que los comunistas uruguayos sostuvieron esta ambigua posición, centrándose en la manera en la que trataron de combinar democracia y revolución.

AbstractThe test ban treaty negotiations had their origins in a larger-than-expected U.S. thermonuclear explosion in the Pacific in 1954. Nearly a decade later, in 1963, Great Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States concluded a treaty that permitted underground explosions but banned them in other environments. It was the first treaty of the Cold War to place limits on nuclear operations, but it was not what the negotiators had originally sought – a complete ban on tests. A substantial amount of pre-negotiations on the limited test ban treaty occurred during the Eisenhower administration. The idea itself first surfaced very early in these pre-negotiations. The willingness of two U.S. presidents and a British prime minister to persevere in the face of domestic opposition and foreign difficulties shows the importance of individuals in the negotiating process. The effect on negotiations of world events not directly related to the talks is demonstrated by the impact of the Sino-Soviet split, the unsettled status of Berlin and Germany, and the Cuban Missile Crisis. Single-issue lobbyists, representing the interests of weapons laboratories and the views of those opposed to U.S.-Soviet cooperation, caused major difficulties during the years of negotiations, as reflected in the interagency bargaining that preceded policy decisions. This included the use of scientific information both to advance and to block the negotiations. As a leading member of the advisory and negotiating teams during much of the period discussed in this article, the author pays tribute to professionals in the Eisenhower and Kennedy administrations whose dedication and ingenuity kept the negotiations alive until circumstances finally crowned the effort with success.

AbstractContemporaries and historians often blame the errors and tragedies of US policy during the Cold War on a dominant narrative of national security: the “Cold War consensus.” Its usual periodization, according to which it came together in the late 1940s and persisted until the late 1960s when it unraveled amidst the trauma of the Vietnam War, fits well with a common theory of change in ideas and discourse. That theory expects stasis until a substantial unexpected failure (in this domain, military defeat) discredits dominant ideas and unsettles dominant coalitions. However, systematic data reveal the standard history of this important case to be wrong. Based on a large-scale content analysis of newspaper editorials on foreign affairs, this article shows that the Cold War narrative was narrower than conventional accounts suggest, that it did not coalesce until well into the 1950s, and that it began to erode even before the Vietnam War's Americanization in 1965. To make sense of this puzzle, I develop an alternative theory of the rise and fall of the narratives that underpin and structure debate over national security. Rooted in the dynamics of public narrative and the domestic politics of the battlefield, the theory argues that military failure impedes change in the narrative in whose terms government officials had legitimated the mission, whereas victory creates the opportunity for departures from the dominant narrative. Process-tracing reveals causal dynamics consistent with the theory: failure in the Korean War, which might have undermined Cold War globalism, instead facilitated the Cold War narrative's rise to dominance (or consensus); and the triumph of the Cuban Missile Crisis made possible that dominant narrative's breakdown before the upheaval of Vietnam. This hard and important case suggests the need to rethink the relationship between success, failure, and change in dominant narratives of national security—and perhaps in other policy domains as well.

Constant demand for new naval and commercial vessels has created special conditions for the Government-owned Soviet shipbuilding industry, which practically has not been affected by the world shipbuilding crisis. On the other hand, such chronic diseases of the centralized economy as lack of incentive, material shortage and poor workmanship cause specific problems for ship construction. Being technically and financially unable to rapidly improve the overall technology level and performance of the entire industry, the Soviets concentrate their efforts on certain important areas and have achieved significant results, especially in welding and cutting titanium and aluminum alloys, modular production methods, standardization, etc. All productivity improvement efforts are supported by an army of highly educated engineers and scientists at shipyards, in multiple scientific, research and design institutions. Discussion Edwin J. Petersen, Todd Pacific Shipyards Three years ago I addressed the Ship Production Symposium as chairman of the Ship Production Committee and outlined some major factors which had contributed to the U.S. shipbuilding industry's remarkable achievements in building and maintaining the world's largest naval and merchant fleets during the five-year period starting just before World War II. The factors were as follows:There was a national commitment to get the job done. The shipbuilding industry was recognized as a needed national resource. There was a dependable workload. Standardization was extensively and effectively utilized. Shipbuilding work was effectively organized. Although these lessons appear to have been lost by our Government since World War II, the paper indicates that the Soviet Union has picked up these principles and has applied them very well to its current shipbuilding program. The paper also gives testimony to the observation that the Soviet Government recognizes the strategic and economic importance of a strong merchant fleet as well as a powerful naval fleet. In reviewing the paper, I found great similarity between the Soviet shipbuilding productivity improvement efforts and our own efforts or goals under the National Shipbuilding Research Program in the following areas:welding technology, flexible automation (robotics), application of group technology, standardization, facilities development, and education and training. In some areas, the Soviet Union appears to be well ahead of the United States in improving the shipbuilding process. Most noteworthy among these is the stable long-and medium-range planning that is possible by virtue of the use and adherence to the "Table of Vessel Classes." It will be obvious to most who hear and read these comments what a vast and significant improvement in shipbuilding costs and schedules could be achieved with a relatively dependable 15year master ship procurement plan for the U.S. naval and merchant fleets. Another area where the Soviet Union appears to lead the United States is in the integration of ship component suppliers into the shipbuilding process. This has been recognized as a vital step by the National Shipbuilding Research Program, but so far we have not made significant progress. A necessary prerequisite for this "supplier integration" is extensive standardization of ship components, yet another area in which the Soviets have achieved significantly greater progress than we have. Additional areas of Soviet advantage are the presence of a multilevel research and development infrastructure well supported by highly educated scientists, engineering and technical personnel; and better integration of formally educated engineering and technical personnel into the ship production process. In his conclusion, the author lists a number of problems facing the Soviet economy that adversely affect shipbuilding productivity. Perhaps behind this listing we can delve out some potential U.S. shipbuilding advantages. First, production systems in U.S. shipyards (with the possible exception of naval shipyards) are probably more flexible and adjustable to meet new circumstances as a consequence of not being constrained by a burdensome centralized bureaucracy, as is the case with Soviet shipyards. Next, such initiatives as the Ship Production Committee's "Human Resources Innovation" projects stand a better chance of achieving product-oriented "production team" relationship among labor, management, and technical personnel than the more rigid Soviet system, especially in view of the ability of U.S. shipyard management to offer meaningful financial incentives without the kind of bureaucratic constraints imposed in the Soviet system. Finally, the current U.S. Navy/shipbuilding industry cooperative effort to develop a common engineering database should lead to a highly integrated and disciplined ship design, construction, operation, and maintenance system for naval ships (and subsequently for commercial ships) that will ultimately restore the U.S. shipbuilding process to a leadership position in the world marketplace (additional references [16] and [17]).On that tentatively positive note, it seems fitting to close this discussion with a question: Is the author aware of any similar Soviet effort to develop an integrated computer-aided design, production and logistics support system? The author is to be congratulated on an excellent, comprehensive insight into the Soviet shipbuilding process and productivity improvement efforts that should give us all adequate cause not to be complacent in our own efforts. Peter M. Palermo, Naval Sea Systems Command The author presents an interesting paper that unfortunately leaves this reader with a number of unanswered questions. The paper is a paradox. It depicts a system consisting of a highly educated work force, advanced fabrication processes including the use of standardized hull modules, sophisticated materials and welding processes, and yet in the author's words they suffer from "low productivity, poor product quality, . . . and the rigid production systems which resists the introduction of new ideas." Is it possible that incentive, motivation, and morale play an equally significant role in achieving quality and producibility advances? Can the author discuss underlying reasons for quality problems in particular—or can we assume that the learning curves of Figs. 5 and Fig. 6 are representative of quality improvement curves? It has been my general impression that quality will improve with application of high-tech fabrication procedures, enclosed fabrication ways, availability of highly educated welding engineers on the building ways, and that productivity would improve with the implementation of modular or zone outfitting techniques coupled with the quality improvements. Can the author give his impressions of the impact of these innovations in the U.S. shipbuilding industry vis-a-vis the Soviet industry? Many of the welding processes cited in the paper are also familiar to the free world, with certain notable exceptions concerning application in Navy shipbuilding. For example, (1) electroslag welding is generally confined to single-pass welding of heavy plates; application to thinner plates—l1/4 in. and less when certified—would permit its use in more applications than heretofore. (2) Electron beam welding is generally restricted to high-technology machinery parts; vacuum chamber size restricts its use for larger components (thus it must be assumed that the Soviets have solved the vacuum chamber problem or have much larger chambers). (3) Likewise, laser welding has had limited use in U.S. shipbuilding. An interesting theme that runs throughout the paper, but is not explicitly addressed, is the quality of Soviet ship fitting. The use of high-tech welding processes and the mention of "remote controlled tooling for welding and X-ray testing the butt, and for following painting" imply significant ship fitting capabilities for fitting and positioning. This is particularly true if modules are built in one facility, outfitted and assembled elsewhere depending on the type of ship required. Any comments concerning Soviet ship fitting capabilities would be appreciated. The discussion on modular construction seems to indicate that the Soviets have a "standard hull module" that is used for different types of vessels, and if the use of these hull modules permit increasing hull length without changes to the fore and aft ends, it can be assumed that they are based on a standard structural design. That being the case, the midship structure will be overdesigned for many applications and optimally designed for very few. Recognizing that the initial additional cost for such a piece of hull structure is relatively minimal, it cannot be forgotten that the lifecycle costs for transporting unnecessary hull weight around can have significant fuel cost impacts. If I perceived the modular construction approach correctly, then I am truly intrigued concerning the methods for handling the distributive systems. In particular, during conversion when the ship is lengthened, how are the electrical, fluid, communications, and other distributive systems broken down, reassembled and tested? "Quick connect couplings" for these type systems at the module breaks is one particular area where economies can be achieved when zone construction methods become the order of the day in U.S. Navy ships. The author's comments in this regard would be most welcome. The design process as presented is somewhat different than U.S. Navy practice. In U.S. practice, Preliminary and Contract design are developed by the Navy. Detail design, the development of the working drawings, is conducted by the lead shipbuilder. While the detail design drawings can be used by follow shipbuilders, flexibility is permitted to facilitate unique shipbuilding or outfitting procedures. Even the contract drawings supplied by the Navy can be modified— upon Navy approval—to permit application of unique shipbuilder capabilities. The large number of college-trained personnel entering the Soviet shipbuilding and allied fields annually is mind-boggling. According to the author's estimation, a minimum of about 6500 college graduates—5000 of which have M.S. degrees—enter these fields each year. It would be most interesting to see a breakdown of these figures—in particular, how many naval architects and welding engineers are included in these figures? These are disciplines with relatively few personnel entering the Navy design and shipbuilding field today. For example, in 1985 in all U.S. colleges and universities, there were only 928 graduates (B.S., M.S. and Ph.D.) in marine, naval architecture and ocean engineering and only 1872 graduates in materials and metallurgy. The number of these graduates that entered the U.S. shipbuilding field is unknown. Again, the author is to be congratulated for providing a very thought-provoking paper. Frank J. Long, Win/Win Strategies This paper serves not only as a chronicle of some of the productivity improvement efforts in Soviet shipbuilding but also as an important reminder of the fruits of those efforts. While most Americans have an appreciation of the strengths of the Russian Navy, this paper serves to bring into clearer focus the Russians' entire maritime might in its naval, commercial, and fishing fleets. Indeed, no other nation on earth has a greater maritime capability. It is generally acknowledged that the Soviet Navy is the largest in the world. When considering the fact that the commercial and fishing fleets are, in many military respects, arms of the naval fleet, we can more fully appreciate how awesome Soviet maritime power truly is. The expansion of its maritime capabilities is simply another but highly significant aspect of Soviet worldwide ambitions. The development and updating of "Setka Typov Su dov" (Table of Vessel Classes), which the author describes is a classic example of the Soviet planning process. As the author states, "A mighty fishing and commercial fleet was built in accordance with a 'Setka' which was originally developed in the 1960's. And an even more impressive example is the rapid expansion of the Soviet Navy." In my opinion it is not mere coincidence that the Russians embarked on this course in the 1960's. That was the beginning of the coldest of cold war periods—Francis Gary Power's U-2 plane was downed by the Russians on May 1, 1960; the mid-May 1960 Four Power Geneva Summit was a bust; the Berlin Wall was erected in 1961 and, in 1962, we had the Cuban Missile Crisis. The United States maritime embargo capability in that crisis undoubtedly influenced the Soviet's planning process. It is a natural and normal function of a state-controlled economy with its state-controlled industries to act to bring about the controlled productivity improvement developments in exactly the key areas discussed in the author's paper. As the author states, "All innovations at Soviet shipyards have originated at two main sources:domestic development andadaptation of new ideas introduced by leading foreign yards, or most likely a combination of both. Soviet shipbuilders are very fast learners; moreover, their own experience is quite substantial." The Ship Production Committee of SNAME has organized its panels to conduct research in many of these same areas for productivity improvement purposes. For example, addressing the areas of technology and equipment are Panels SP-1 and 3, Shipbuilding Facilities and Environmental Effects, and Panel SP-7, Shipbuilding Welding. Shipbuilding methods are the province of SP-2; outfitting and production aids and engineering and scientific support are the province of SP-4, Design Production Integration. As I read through the descriptions of the processes that led to the productivity improvements, I was hoping to learn more about the organizational structure of Soviet shipyards, the managerial hierarchy and how work is organized by function or by craft in the shipyard. (I would assume that for all intents and purposes, all Russian yards are organized in the same way.) American shipyard management is wedded to the notion that American shipbuilding suffers immeasurably from a productivity standpoint because of limitations on management's ability to assign workers across craft lines. It is unlikely that this limitation exists in Soviet shipyards. If it does not, how is the unfettered right of assignment optimized? What are the tangible, measurable results? I believe it would have been helpful, also, for the author to have dedicated some of the paper to one of the most important factors in improvement in the labor-intensive shipbuilding industry—the shipyard worker. There are several references to worker problems—absenteeism, labor shortage, poor workmanship, and labor discipline. The reader is left with the impression that the Russians believe that either those are unsolvable problems or have a priority ranking significantly inferior to the organizational, technical, and design efforts discussed. As a case in point, the author devotes a complete section to engineering education and professional training but makes no mention of education or training programs for blue-collar workers. It would seem that a paper on productivity improvement efforts in Soviet shipbuilding would address this most important element. My guess is that the Russians have considerable such efforts underway and it would be beneficial for us to learn of them.

Tras la Crisis de los Misiles, en 1962, la región latinoamericana y caribeña vivió un proceso integrador impulsado por la amenaza a la seguridad del continente, producto de la instalación de los misiles soviéticos en Cuba. Como consecuencia de ello, se creó el Organismo para la Proscripción de las Armas Nucleares en la América Latina y el Caribe (Opanal) en 1969, marcando un hito no solo en la seguridad regional sino en el esfuerzo para lograr el desarme nuclear mundial. No obstante, casi 50 años más tarde, el Opanal se ha convertido en un instrumento dedicado exclusivamente a velar por el cumplimiento de lo acordado en la Declaración de Tlatelolco, que requiere de una reinvención en función del nuevo orden mundial y de las nuevas amenazas, como el terrorismo nuclear o riesgos generados producto del desarrollo nuclear militar y pacífico de países como Japón y Rusia.