The Cuban Missile Crisis as an Experiment in Political Reason

This article provides a thorough analysis of the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, treating it as a thought experiment on the limits of political rationality. The author invokes Graham Allison's classic models—from the rational actor, through organizational processes, to bureaucratic politics—to demonstrate how complex state mechanisms influence decisions of existential significance. The text illuminates the strategic imbalance between powers and the role of standard operating procedures, which, in the face of a nuclear threat, can lead to unforeseen escalation. This case study demonstrates that the survival of the species in the nuclear age depends not only on the will of leaders but also on the systemic constraints within which modern states and their decision-making structures operate.