The story broke Monday this week when the Russian newspaper Izvestia, citing what it described as "a high placed source" in the Russian government, said if the United States went ahead with its plans to deploy Ground-based Mid-course Interceptors in Poland or Lithuania, the Kremlin could retaliate by basing its Tupolev Tu-160 White Swan supersonic nuclear bombers -- NATO codename Blackjack -- in Cuba.

The U.S. government took the threat seriously and lost no time in responding to it. On Tuesday, Gen. Norton A. Schwartz, head of USAF Transport Command who has been nominated to succeed Gen. T. Michael Moseley as chief of staff of the U.S. Air Force, told his confirmation hearing in the Senate Armed Services Committee that Russia would cross "a red line" if it made such a move.

"I certainly would offer best military advice that we should engage the Russians not to pursue that approach," he said. "And if they did, I think we should stand strong and indicate that that is something that crosses a threshold, crosses a red line for the United States of America."

It should be noted the Russian government has carefully sought to avoid making any open threat or incendiary comments about the potential threat and it has carefully avoided being drawn out on the issue. The Defense Ministry in Moscow issued a statement saying the Izvestia story was palpably false and that it was even written under a pseudonym and quoted a non-existent organization among its sources.

Nevertheless, the very possibility that Russia would deploy first-line strategic weapons systems capable of delivering nuclear weapons to the U.S. homeland from bases in Cuba, only 90 miles from the coast of Florida, would throw the entire strategic calculus of successive U.S. governments -- Republican and Democrat alike -- into complete disarray.

Such a possibility has never been seriously threatened in the 46 years since the world came closer than ever before or since in its history to all-out thermonuclear war in the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis.

Then U.S. President John F. Kennedy and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev reached a deal whereby the successive U.S. administrations left communist Cuba alone and in return the Soviets refrained from basing any offensive nuclear weapons systems or offensive weapons capable of delivering nuclear warheads to the U.S. mainland on the island.

But all of a sudden this cornerstone agreement of Cold War and post-Cold War stability and security looks as if it might disappear overnight.

The Tu-160 Blackjack is arguably the most formidable heavy nuclear bomber in the world. It carries a far larger payload and can fly far faster than its nearest U.S. counterpart, the B-1 Lancer. It does not have the stealth capabilities of the gigantic B-1, but it is far faster and more maneuverable. It can carry 99,000 pounds of munitions -- far more than the B-1 -- and its weapons payload options include stand-off supersonic, ground-hugging cruise missiles.

The Tu-160 is unarmed, but it can fly at 1,380 miles per hour -- well over twice the speed of the U.S. Air Force's venerable old lumbering Boeing B-52 Stratofortresses.

The Tu-160 is still in production, and it is believed that about five new ones per year are currently being delivered to the Russian air force. The total number of such aircraft currently deployed is believed to be quite high -- between 50 and 60 in all, assuming the older ones have been well maintained.

It may be that the Izvestia report was just unfounded speculation, but Schwartz did not act in his testimony as if it was.

The world may have just entered a dangerous new era of escalating bluff, threat and counter-threat between the two main thermonuclear powers. The world of our fathers' nightmares may be coming back.

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