Essay On The Cuban Missile Crisis

The Cuban missile crisis; the closest Americas ever been to nuclear war. The Cuban missile crisis was a part of the cold war, which was a standoff between the two superpowers of the world at the time: the U.S. and the Soviet Union. The U.S. wanted to contain communism while the Soviet Union wanted to spread it, causing conflict. The cold war lasted from “Roughly from the end of World War II in 1945 to 1991” (Cubanmisslecrisis.org). The Cuban missile crisis began when Fidel Castro began a revolution to overthrow the Cuban government. Eventually he was successful and now he had a choice; he could side with America or the Soviet Union. Castro began nationalizing U.S. owned businesses such as oil refineries, factories, and casinos. “This …show more content…
“[A] pilot of an American U-2 spy plane making a high-altitude pass over Cuba on October 14, 1962, photographed a Soviet SS-4 medium-range ballistic missile being assembled for installation” (History.com Staff). A U-2 plane was a plane that flew at very high altitudes to avoid being detected. Discovering the missiles was a huge threat to the United States because Cuba was only 90 miles away, from that distance the Soviet Union could easily launch a nuclear attack on the U.S. Also, “the missiles would fundamentally alter the complexion of the nuclear rivalry between the U.S. and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), which up to that point had been dominated by the Americans” (History.com Staff). This means that instead of the U.S. being able to intimidate the Soviet Union, the Soviet Union could now easily launch a nuclear attack on the U.S. Instead of the U.S. dominating, the United States and Soviet Union were evened out. This began the Cuban missile crisis. President Kennedy made a group called ExCom. ExCom was simply members within the white house who Kennedy went to for advice. It was now up to them to deal with the