"You and we ought not to pull on two ends of a rope, on which is tied the knot of war. If we were to pull on that rope, it would grow so tight as to necessitate cutting, and it is not for me to explain to you what that would mean...War would not end until it had sown destruction in our villages and our towns and our cities. For such is the logic of war..."
Khruschev did not want mutually assured destruction. He wanted to be known as the savior of the Cuban people, as the man who looked the US in the eye and had the wisdom to say no. Castro on the other hand, in conversation with Robert McNamara decades later, said he was mentally prepared and agreeable to war, even though it would mean the assured annihilation of Cuba.
What is the lesson of this? Men who have empire and have had their fill will seek to avoid war. But men who are lords of a small pond will sometimes pursue immortality in memory by any means. Such is human nature. The more important point is that if Castro were in Khrushchev's position with Khrushchev's life experience, Castro may well have made a decision similar to Khrushchev. In the end, we are all slaves to our nature until we can get to our higher nature as habit. Some people have to forced to that, but the best of us are the ones who come to it of their own volition. Not because it will advance them, but because it is a worthy goal in and of itself.
