COLD WAR KIDS.

On February 27, 2022, having invaded Ukraine, Russian president Vladimir Putin put his nation's nuclear-weapons forces on "special combat readiness." The instincts dormant in me from my own cold war, the cold war of Kennedy and Khrushchev, asserted themselves once more. As I got older, I read more about the missile crisis, and I was struck by how hard President Kennedy worked to keep from cornering Khrushchev, resisting the admonitions of his own military. [Extracted from the article]