Historical Analogies, Nuclear Mythmaking, and Coercive Diplomacy in Putin’s Russia: Conjuring a “Sobering” Crisis Available to Purchase

Immediately before and during Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine, Russian foreign policy experts and high-ranking officials have often employed a historical analogy with the Cuban missile crisis to argue that a “sobering” crisis would allow Russia to renegotiate its relationship with the “West.” As Russia’s war against Ukraine became prolonged, recurrent references to 1962 in Russian public forums have become interwoven into the unusually visible Russian public debate on nuclear coercion. By using the analogy with the Cuban missile crisis, Russian experts and officials have reframed Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine as a conflict between Russia and the USA, while reducing the meaning of Ukraine to the territory of Russia’s red lines (similarly to their meanings attached to Cuba in the 1962 events). Yet, the salience of the Cuban missile crisis analogies in Russia’s public forums underscores their wider significance for nuclear mythmaking in Russia’s strategic culture, particularly for Russia’s evolving approaches to nuclear coercion. This article examines how recurrent historical analogies with the Cuban missile crisis in Russia’s public debate have contributed to reinterpreting the meanings of Russia’s nuclear identity and nuclear coercion, to promoting greater tolerance for nuclear risk-taking by Russian domestic audiences and to blurring the limits of the thinkable in Russia’s approach to nuclear escalation in the eyes of foreign audiences. To answer these questions, the article undertakes narrative analysis of publicly available texts produced by members of Russia’s strategic community in the run-up to and during the invasion.