By Patrick J. Buchanan – March 12, 2002

Stepping back from the abyss of the Cuban missile crisis of 1962, Americans and Russians took away separate lessons.

To JFK’s inner circle, the lesson was: Never again can we tread so close to the brink of Armageddon. To the Soviets, the lesson was: Never again will we leave ourselves in a position where we have to back down before U.S. superiority in a nuclear face-off. After 1962, Moscow began a 20-year buildup of nuclear weapons that gave the Soviet Union an arsenal as awesome as that of the United States.