What Is The Origins Of The Cuban Missile Crisis

On October 28, 1962, the Cuban Missile Crisis brought the United States closer than it ever did before to a nuclear war. It was a pivotal moment in the Cold War. The Cuban Missile Crisis was a thirteen-day confrontation between the U.S. and Soviet Union lasting from October 15 to October 28 over missiles deployed in Cuba by the Soviet Union. This event taught the U.S. to face the horrible possibility that they and their world might cease to exist on the morrow. Back in 1959, Cuba’s revolutionary war made it a tiny communist country right near the U.S. shore. That same year, the U.S. made a deal with Turkey’s leaders to put U.S. nukes in Turkey to fire at Russia if needed. For many years, the U.S. government maintained it never planned to …show more content…
and the Soviet Union, and in the United State’s hostile policy toward the Cuban revolution. The tension between the two superpowers is what led to the Cuban Missile Crisis. Recently declassified information shows plans of an invasion, the assassination of Fidel Castro, and the installation of a favorable government in Havana since November of 1961. This validates Nikita Khrushchev’s, Soviet Premier, claim that the missiles were purely for Cuba’s defense. Defending Cuba was a paramount goal of the Soviet Union. If Cuba fell, the stature of the Soviet Union would be diminished not only in Latin America, but also in the rest of the world. Khrushchev asserted that the missiles were a deterrent to American intervention on the Caribbean and that he had no desire to start a war. Cuba accepted the missiles primarily to maintain the balance of forces between the United States and the USSR, and in the process, strengthen the Socialist bloc. The defense of Cuba was only secondary. U.S. and Soviet relations in the period preceding the missile crisis were characterized by recurring conflict. Many issues, such as the accelerating nuclear arms race, U.S. deployment of nuclear weapons along the Soviet margin, Soviet support for revolution in the Third World, and the unresolved status of Berlin, increased superpower tensions and sustained fears on both sides that the Cold War might escalate into some form of open military conflict. The 1957 launch of Sputnik raised concerns in Washington that the Soviet Union was developing a dangerous nuclear advantage. This prompted a series of crash Pentagon programs to increase the United States’ nuclear capability. A missile gap existed in favor of the United States rather than the Soviet Union and the Kennedy administration showed no hesitation in exploiting this advantage. America’s nuclear power was brought up in public speeches and in private meetings