Speakers: James G. Blight and Janet M. Lang, Balsillie School of International Affairs, University of Waterloo
Moderator: Jorge I. Domínguez, Department of Government, Harvard University
Abstract:
The Armageddon Letters is a genre-busting work of history that takes readers behind the scenes during the October 1962 Cuban missile crisis, the most dangerous crisis in recorded history. Historically accurate, painstakingly researched over a quarter century, augmented with an interactive trans-media program, it is a virtual time machine.
In this seminar, Professors Jim Blight and janet Lang will focus on Fidel Castro’s Armageddon letter to Nikita Khrushchev at the height of the Cuban missile crisis. They will portray the situation in Cuba that led to Castro’s writing this letter. The letter was encoded and cabled from Havana to Moscow at 7:00 AM EDT, October 27, 1962. In the letter, Castro requests that, if the U.S. invades Cuba, Khrushchev should order Soviet nuclear forces to totally destroy the United States, even though Cuba will also be destroyed.
For more information, see: http://www.armageddonletters.com/
Bios:
James Blight is CIGI Chair in Foreign Policy Development and Professor at the Balsillie School of International Affairs at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. His research focuses on critical oral history to investigate the U.S. war in Vietnam, the collapse of U.S.-Soviet relations in the late 1970s, and several other seminal episodes in U.S. foreign policy.
janet Lang is Research Professor at the Balsillie School of International Affairs at the University of Waterloo in Ontario, Canada. Her research focuses on international security and conflict prevention.