- For the first time the United States found itself in a position of ‘equal danger’ with USSR in what made the American ruling elite conclude that their country’s enormous nuclear potential, that guaranteed defeat of any hostile country, cannot protect US citizens. American experts predicted that 80 million Americans would die in a U.S. nuclear exchange with Russia. Having assessed such damage as unacceptable, the U.S. leadership had to make a compromise in resolution of the crisis. A parity of fear took shape, in which neither the United States nor the Soviet Union could consider themselves entitled to a victory in nuclear war. And that became one of the main tenets on which the strategy of nuclear deterrence is based. Washington and Moscow continue to follow that strategy even though the military-political situation has changed dramatically, and the United States and Russia, as it has often declared by their leaders, are no longer enemies.”
Lesson: Mutual nuclear deterrence – that took shape during the Cuban missile crisis – turned out to be a very stable concept that transcended even the Cold War itself.