Serhii Plokhy

This weekend the leaders of the G7 countries meet in Hiroshima to discuss the most urgent issues facing the world today. The Russian aggression against Ukraine and the ban on the use of the nuclear weapons are among the key items on the summit’s agenda. When I visited Hiroshima last month the war in Ukraine and the nuclear issues were also at the top of my personal list of concerns. At the site of the Hiroshima Peace Memorial, also known as the Atomic Dome, a visitor can hardly avoid being taken aback or evenshocked by the contrast between the stark skeleton of a magnificent building destroyed by the nuclear explosion of 1945 and the beauty of its surroundings.

It has long been widely accepted as orthodoxy that the world was saved from nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis because of the wisdom of John F. Kennedy and the diplomatic backchannel his aides had with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev. But this is only half true. The Soviet sources that have emerged since the end of the Cold War as well as recently declassified KGB archives suggest that, more than anything, we were saved from nuclear annihilation by sheer luck. In the late hours of 27 October 1962, the crucial day of the crisis, American ships targeted a Soviet nuclear-armed submarine with practice depth charges, forcing it to surface. A negotiation by means of searchlight signals began.