Cuban Missile Crises

Cuban Missile Crises






The Cuban Missile Crises
HIST-412
Professor
Feb 23, 2014

The Cuban Missile Crises
The Cuban Missile Crisis was the one event in our countries history that a thermonuclear conflict could have happened. The crisis lasted for about thirteen days in October of 1962. The Cuban Missile Crisis was considered a pivotal point in the Cold War and it had its share of controversy. The president’s staff and key leadership in the military and intelligence agencies were all challenged on how to handle this situation. Throughout the year of 1962 reports from the CIA were coming in saying that the Soviet Union was not a threat to America. The Soviet military was seen as a military aide to Fidel Castro and military weapons were being shipped in to support this aide. Later in the year reports of possible missile launch platforms were reported at several construction sites, this added to the list of problems in Cuba. The United States used the U-2 spy plane program to verify exactly what these launch pads could be used for. The president now had photographic evidence on October 15th that missiles had been moved to Cuba and launch pads were being built. President Kennedy felt that the best course of action would be to inform the American people of the activity in Cuba. On October 22nd he announced that a quarantine of Cuba would be required to be put in place to stop the military buildup of Soviet nuclear weapons in Cuba. The quarantine would start on the 24th of October at 10 AM Eastern time and a quarantine line around Cuba would be established. The events during this time period challenged our intelligence capabilities and altered the way we operated around the world during the Cold War. New technologies and new intelligence tactics were developed to insure an incident like this would never happen again.
During the summer of 1962 the leader of the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev amplified his support to Fidel Castro’s Cuban rule. The Soviet...

Similar Essays