After seizing power in the Caribbean island country of Cuba in 1959, innovative leftist leader Fidel Castro (1926) aligned himself with the Soviet Union. Under Castro, Cuba increased its dependence on the Soviets for economic and military aid. During this particular time, the Soviets and the US (along with their respective allies) became embroiled in the Cold War (1945-1991), an ongoing series of economic and political confrontations.
The two superpowers were plunged into one of the biggest confrontations of the Cold War after the pilot of an American U 2 spy plane flying high over Cuba on October 14, 1962, photographed a Soviet SS medium-range ballistic missile. 4 preparing for installation.
President Kennedy was briefed on the situation on October 16, and quickly assembled a group of advisers and officials called the executive committee, or ExCom. For nearly the next two weeks, the president and his staff wrestled with diplomatic issues of epic proportions, as did their counterparts in the Soviet Union.
For any US official, the urgency of the scenario stemmed from the fact that the nuclear-armed Cuban missiles were installed so close to the mainland US just ninety miles south of Florida. From that launch stage, they were able to rapidly hit targets in the eastern US. If allowed to be functional, the missiles would essentially change the skin tone of the nuclear rivalry between the Union and the US of Socialist Republics. Soviets (USSR), which as much as that time was dominated by the Americans.
Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev had gambled on delivering the missiles to Cuba with the particular aim of boosting his nation’s nuclear strike capability. The Soviets had been made uneasy by the number of nuclear weapons being aimed at them from sites in western Turkey, and saw the missile deployment in Cuba as a way to level the playing field. Another crucial element in the Soviet missile pattern was the hostile connection between Cuba and the United States. In fact, the Kennedy administration had launched only one attack on the island in the 1961 Bay of Pigs intrusion and Khrushchev and Castro saw the missiles as a way to deter further US aggression.
From the beginning of the crisis, the ExCom and Kennedy found that the presence of Soviet missiles in Cuba was undesirable. The task before them was to orchestrate their removal without starting a broader conflict and perhaps nuclear war. In deliberations that lasted for almost a week, they proposed a variety of options, including a bombing episode at the missile sites along with a full-scale invasion of Cuba. But Kennedy ultimately chooses a calculated approach. For starters, he would use the US Navy to build a blockade and quarantine of the island to prevent the Soviets from delivering additional military equipment and missiles. Next, he will issue an ultimatum for the current missiles to be removed.
In a television broadcast on October 22, 1962, the President notified the Americans of the existence of the missiles, revealed his decision to enact the blockade, and also made it clear that the United States was ready to work with military force as appropriate. to negate the perceived risk to national security. Adhering to this public statement, people all over the world eagerly awaited the Soviet effect. Some Americans, fearing their nation was on the brink of nuclear war, hoarded gasoline and food.
A second pivotal moment in the development of the problems came on October 24, when Soviet ships bound for Cuba approached the line of American ships enforcing the blockade. An effort by the Soviets to break the blockade would likely have sparked a military conflict that could have quickly escalated to a nuclear exchange. However, the Soviet ships stopped before the blockade.
Although the events at sea offered a good sign that war could be avoided, they did absolutely nothing to address the issue of missiles now in Cuba. The tense confrontation between the superpowers continued throughout the week, and also on October 27, a US reconnaissance plane was shot down over Cuba, and a US invasion force was prepared in Florida.
Regardless of the enormous tension, the American and Soviet leaders found a way out of the impasse. During the troubles, the Soviets and the Americans had exchanged letters along with other communications, and on October 26, Khrushchev sent a message to Kennedy that he was preparing to get rid of the Cuban missiles in exchange for the promise of American executives to not invade Cuba. The next day, the Soviet leader delivered a letter in which he proposed that the USSR would dismantle the missiles in Cuba if the Americans removed their missile facilities in Turkey.
Formally, the Kennedy administration made the decision to recognize the conditions of the first letter and to discard Khrushchev’s next letter altogether. Privately, however, US officials have also agreed to remove their nation’s missiles from Turkey. US Attorney General Robert Kennedy personally delivered the information to the Soviet ambassador in Washington, moreover, on October twenty-eighth, the troubles came to an end.
Both the Soviets and the Americans were serious about the Cuban Missile Crisis. The following year, an immediate “hotline” correspondence link was set up between Moscow and Washington to help defuse similar situations, and also the superpowers signed 2 nuclear weapons treaties. However, the Cold War was far from over. In fact, an additional story of the crisis was that the Soviets were convinced by it to increase their investment in an arsenal of ICBMs effective in reaching the US from Soviet territory.
