The Cold War And The Cuban Missile Crisis

Whether they were formally declared by the President or not, American has been involved in multiple wars over the course of its history. One war stands out as an outlier and unlike any war, the Cold War. This war was fought between two physical nations at odds but also two opposing ideologies. Very soon after World War II had ended in 1945, the Soviet Union showed no indication of allowing democracy to flourish in neighboring countries, specifically Poland and other Eastern European counties. This hindrance to democracy obviously did not line up with America’s values, considering it is a model of a democracy for other countries. This sparked policy changes in America. The two main changes were nuclear deterrence and containment. These two new doctrines were very important at this time. Nuclear deterrence is the prevention of attacks because of fear of retaliation. If there was a possibility of an attack, especially a nuclear attack it had to be stopped before it began. Deterrence at this level could only be achieved by a country with a powerful military, strong political and ideological beliefs, and most …show more content…
One major reason for this success was that we thought outside the normal way of thinking and created a team of highly intelligent officials to aid President John F. Kennedy in navigating through this crisis. This group was called ExCom. The Soviet Union decided to install their nuclear missiles on the shores of Cuba, which is roughly 90 miles off U.S shores. President Kennedy’s first move, after much deliberation, was to issue a blockade against the island. ExCom along with the President had to carefully get the Soviets to remove their missiles from Cuba and avoid a possible nuclear war. Finally, after a little over two weeks the Soviet Union removed their missiles from Cuba in exchange for the U.S word to not invade