Cuban Missile Crisis - the cold war?

Question

Does anyone know anything about the cuban missile crisis, and how it is in/related to the cold war? I will be turning this into a paragraph, thanks so much for everyone who is willing to help!


also: what are nukes?

Answer 1

The Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 was perhaps the ultimate manifestation of the Cold War. Here, for the first time, the USSR was not only trying to beat the USA in the arms race, to build better and more missiles and atomic weapons, but they were attempting to put missiles in Cuba, missiles that could have easily reached all of the East Coast of the United States. Khrushchev took this step as a challenge to JF Kennedy, sensing that Kennedy lacked the resolve and courage to stop him or to stop the building of the missiles. This is was a good example of 'brinkmanship - that is, taking the world and the two adversaries in the Cold War, right to the brink of war, but then pulling back just in time, before any fighting began. Kennedy did step up to the challenge, blockaded Cuba and was willing to search every ship entering Cuban waters or bound for Cuba, and Khrushchev backed down.

Answer 2

The Cuban Missile Crisis occurred when USSR Premier Nikita Khrushchev planted missiles in Cuba pointed at the eastern coast of the United States as a retaliation for the CIA Bay of Pigs operation (where Cuban exiles were sent back in as an attempt to overthrow communist leader Fidel Castro-- this angered communist authorities in the USSR). John F. Kennedy, president at the time, found out about these missiles from photography from a U-2 reconnaissance spy plane and warned Khrushchev that if the missiles were not removed from Cuba within two weeks, it would be considered an official act of war that would lead to, as the Cold War was not truly a war but an arms-race and a battle for technological (etc...) supremacy, and actual war. The crisis ended when Khrushchev metaphorically blinked in the staring contest and removed the nuclear tipped missile heads.

This has to do with the Cold War differently than any of the proxy-wars (Korea, Viet'nam) because there was actual threat of direct war with the USSR. After the Crisis, Kennedy and Khrushchev installed a hot-line between the Kremlin and the White House, in case of further missile emergencies.


Hooray, AP US History review!

Answer 3

The Cuban missile crisis marked the climax of an acutely antagonistic period in U.S.-Soviet relations. The crisis also marked the closest point that the world had ever come to global nuclear war. It is generally believed that the Soviets' humiliation in Cuba played an important part in Khrushchev's fall from power in October 1964 and in the Soviet Union's determination to achieve, at the least, a nuclear parity with the United States.