Extractos del libro The Fog of War, escrito por James G. Blight y Janet M. Lang, que provee el background necesario para entender al documental de Errol Morris:

Throughout most of the nuclear age, specialists in international security worried most about three scenarios under which a nuclear war between major nuclear powers might begin: (1) a nuclear nation achieves a huge advantage over its nuclear adversary, and its leaders decide to launch a preemptive nuclear strike to destroy all the weaker state’s nuclear arsenal, without fear of a catastrophic response; (2) the leader of a nuclear state becomes irrational and, in some sort of delusionary state, launches the nuclear weapons under his command; and (3) a series of accidents involving nuclear weapons (for example, faulty radar which mistakes geese for incoming missiles) results in a nuclear launch. During the Cold War, enormous efforts were made by both Moscow and Washington to lower the risk that any of thee scenarios would actually occur.

Toward that end they: (1) sought to achieve and maintain a rough parity in their nuclear capabilities; (2) built many safeguards into the launch procedures of the U.S. and USSR, in order to help prevent an irrational leader from initiating a nuclear holocaust in a fit of paranoia, rage or another irrational state of mind; and (3) the surveillance technology became highly sophisticated, with multiple, independent checking capabilities, in an effort to prevent accidental or mistaken assessments of one another’s actions. The underlying assumption all along was: rationality, augmented with sophisticated technology can, in fact, save us from nuclear catastrophe.

Robert McNamara learns from Fidel Castro at the January 1992 Havan conference that rationality will not save us, in circumstances such as occurred in the Cuban missile crisis. For in Castro, McNamara confronts a leader who, in October 1962, had no nuclear weapons at all under his control, and only a few dozen in his country, controlled by Soviet forces; who seemed as sober and rational as could be; and who did not fear the onset of a war with the Americans, a war in which, as he says, “we were going to disappear.”

McNamara (along with many others present) is deeply shocked by Castro’s recollection of his state of mind during the peak of the missile crisis. For McNamara knows that U.S. policies were, to a significant extent, responsible for the situation in which Castro had found himself in October 1962. And as a former U.S. Defense Secretary, he knows that the invasion which, in all likelihood, would have provoked a nuclear response from Soviet forces in Cuba, may have been only a day or two away. Thus, McNamara arrives at a frightening conclusion, which he would later state forcefully in “The Fog of War”: But for luck, “Rational individuals, [including himself and Castro] came… close to the total destructions of their societies.”

[A discussion between Robert McNamara and Fidel Castro, at a January 1992 conference of Cuban, U.S. and Soviet policymakers, and scholars of the Cuban missile crisis.]

Robert McNamara: Mr. President [addressing Fidel Castro] … I, as one of the participants in the crisis, want to congratulate you on the candor and thoughtfulness with which you [have] expressed your understanding of events as they evolved. It is with particular reference to one of those circumstances, which I was unaware of until this meeting, that I wish to put a question.

…[T]he Soviet Union anticipated the possibility of a large-scale U.S. invasion of the type that we were equipped for by October 27… something on the order of 1,190 air sorties the first day, five army divisions, three Marine divisions, 140,000 U.S. ground troops. The Soviet Union, as I understand it, to some degree anticipated that, and equipped their forces here –the 42,000 Soviet troops– with… tactical nuclear warheads.

…My question to you, sir, is this: Were you aware that the Soviet forces (a) were equipped with [short-range] Luna launchers and nuclear warheads; and (b) –something I never could have conceived of– that because the Soviets were concerned about the ability of the Soviet troops and the Cuban troops to repel the possible U.S. invasion using conventional arms, the Soviets authorized the field commanders in Cuba, without further consultation with the Soviet Union –which of course would have been very difficult because of communication problems– to utilize those nuclear launchers and nuclear warheads?; (a) Were you aware of it? (b) what was your interpretation or expectation of the possible effect on Cuba? [And (c)] How did you think the U.S. would respond, and what might the implications have been for your nation and the world?

Fidel Castro: Now, we started from the assumption that if there was an invasion of Cuba, nuclear war would erupt. We were certain of that. If the invasion took place in the situation that had been created, nuclear war would have been the result. Everybody here was simply resigned to the fate that we would be forced to pay the price, that we would disappear. We saw that danger –I’m saying it frankly– and the conclusion, Mr. McNamara, that we might derive is that if we are going to rely on fear, we would never be able to prevent a nuclear war. The danger of nuclear war has to be eliminated by other means; it cannot be prevented on the basis of fear of nuclear weapons, or that human beings are going to be deterred by the fear of nuclear weapons. We [Cubans] have lied through the very singular experience of becoming practically the first target of those nuclear weapons: no one lost their equanimity on their calm in the face of such a danger, despite the fact that the self-preservation instinct is supposed to have been more powerful…

You want me to give you my opinion in the event of an invasion with all the troops, with 1,190 sorties? Would I have agreed to the use of nuclear weapons? Yes, I would have agreed to the use of nuclear weapons. Because, in any case, we took it for granted that it would become a nuclear war anyway, and that we were going to disappear. Before having the country occupied –totally occupied– we were ready to die in defense of our country. I would have agreed, in the event of the invasion you are talking about, with the use of nuclear weapons…

I wish we had had the nuclear weapons. It would have been wonderful. We wouldn’t have rushed to use them, you can be sure of that. The closer to Cuba the decision of using a weapon effective against a landing, the better. Of course, after we had used ours, they would have replied with, say, 400 tactical [nuclear] weapons –we don’t know how many would have been fired at us. In any case, we were resigned to our fate. So, the idea of withdrawing the weapons simply didn’t cross our minds.

Robert McNamara and Fidel Castro find common ground in the principal lesson each draws from the Cuban missile crisis: that nuclear weapons should be eliminated as soon as is safely possible. But they draw the lesson for different reasons, reflecting their respective roles as representatives of a rich superpower and a small, relatively weak and poor country. Without nuclear weapons, as McNamara points out in “The Fog of War”, fallible human beings will be unable to destroy entire nations, perhaps even the human race itself, as it seems almost to have done in October 1962. This is his principal motive in advocating the elimination of nuclear weapons by any credible and verifiable means: to prevent nuclear powers from destroying themselves and human civilization as well.

Castro, on the other hand, responds to McNamara’s endorsement of a nonnuclear world by reminding him that “the use of nuclear weapons is a desperate act”. The implication is that the behavior of great powers like the U.S., Russia and others must change –must cease to create desperation in small countries like Cuba. Otherwise, a desperate, though fully rational leader of a small country (or perhaps a transnational terrorist organization), who may have access to nuclear weapons, might just come to the same conclusion that he (Castro) drew in October 1962: that the only viable option left is to die honorably, to undertake the ultimate suicide mission –what McNamara refers to in “The Fog of War” as the inclination to “pull the temple down on our heads.”