During the Cuban Missile Crisis the US dropped depth charges in the vicinity of the Soviet submarine B-59. This was meant as a sign to surface, but it was interpreted by the sub as an attack suggesting war had already broken out. The Soviet rules of engagement allowed for the launch of nuclear weapons in this situation if all three of the sub's highest ranking officers agreed. Two of them were in agreement, but Vasily Arkhipov disagreed. His decision that day single-handedly stopped nuclear war.
So yes, I think we were closer to "full scale nuclear war" during the Cuban Missile Crisis than we are today. There isn't much point in continuing the conversation if you can't agree with that.
That is kinda my point though - you don't seem able to predict that sort of thing with foresight. Before the Cuban missile crisis you wouldn't have seen a path to nuclear war. During the crisis you probably wouldn't have seen a path. For 40 years [0] after the crisis you wouldn't have believed there was a path.
Then, 40 years later, someone ion the Russian military would explain to you that a person attempted to fire the nukes and it was narrowly prevented by a coincidence. At that point you would see a path to nuclear war. And based on my read of this conversation you probably wouldn't make the connection with the escalatory policy in Turkey as a threat to the Soviets without decades in hindsight either. That was less threatening than the NATO work the US has been orchestrating in Europe.
The publicly available information we have on the Ukraine war suggests a tenser situation than the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. Russia's mainland nuclear defence infrastructure has literally been targeted. That is pretty dicey compared to harassing a presumed-harmless submarine near Cuba.
[0] In case you haven't read up on it, the incident you are referring too wasn't publicly discussed until 2002. A lot of other details also weren't available without hindsight.
> Before the Cuban missile crisis you wouldn't have seen a path to nuclear war. During the crisis you probably wouldn't have seen a path.
Come on, people couldn't see a path to nuclear war during the Cuban Missile Crisis? The whole reason it was labeled a "crisis" was because it made the path to war incredibly short. I know it is hard to say "I was wrong", but it is better than tying yourself into knots until you are spouting nonsense like this.
The reality of the situation, whether it was known in real time or not, is that one person prevented the use of nuclear weapons in 1962. How do you get closer to the use of nuclear weapons than it being prevented by one person? Half a person preventing it?
> The whole reason it was labeled a "crisis" was because it made the path to war incredibly short.
Yes, but the reason the Ukraine war isn't called the "Ukraine crisis" is because the crisis point came, went and then a war began. That is why tensions are higher - we're further up the escalation ladder. The Russian army has partly mobilised and people are shooting at them. The situation is a lot more fraught than a relatively civil argument over where missile emplacements were going to be put and nobody had any actual intentions of killing any Russians.
I put my challenge to you again - what warnings are you expecting to see months before a nuclear war starts? Your last answer was that you'd discover those signs 40 years post-hoc when the Russians told you and I don't think you can defend that as a rational position. If you want an explicit reason, 40 years hindsight is not a warning sign. Warning signs come before the event.
So yes, I think we were closer to "full scale nuclear war" during the Cuban Missile Crisis than we are today. There isn't much point in continuing the conversation if you can't agree with that.