The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 is set against the background of the Cold War. The Cold War, 1947-1991, is the name given to the long period of tension between the democracies of the Western World led by the United States and the Soviet Union with its satellite countries of Eastern Europe. The Cold War was the long shadow cast by World War 2 where two mutually hostile ideologies met in the middle of Europe after combining together to destroy an even more evil ideology, that of Nazism.
It was termed ‘Cold’ because the Americans and Soviets never fought against each other directly since each side possessed enough atomic weapons to eradicate life on this planet. However, in October 1962 the world found itself on the brink of nuclear war, a war from which technology ensured that there would be no winners. This is the famous Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.
The missile crisis was a consequence of the Soviet’s intent to deploy nuclear weapons on the island of Cuba, a mere 90 miles from the US coast of Florida. The Americans were determined to stop this.
In 1961 after the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion by American-backed Cuban exiles, President Fidel Castro who was the leader of Cuba sought Soviet help to support his regime. The Soviet leader, Nikita Khrushchev, was keen to install Soviet nuclear missiles on the island as a deterrent to any US attack on the Soviet Union. Castro agreed seeing that such weaponry would also protected him from any future US incursions.
In the summer of 1962 the Russians secretly began to build missile sites on Cuba. On 15th October, 1962, these sites were spotted by the Americans. The aim now was to stop any missiles reaching the launch pads in Cuba. So the US President, John Fitzgerald Kennedy, dispatched the US Navy to blockade or quarantine Cuba to prevent the delivery of the missiles.
On October 22nd, Kennedy went on TV to reveal the existence of the missile threat and the resultant blockade to a world audience. He went on to say that any attack on the West would be regarded as a Soviet attack on the USA which would result in a full retaliatory strike. He demanded that all missiles be removed from Cuba.
With tensions running high, the Soviets ordered their ships to slow down. There then followed the story of the two letters. On October 26th, Khrushchev sent Kennedy a letter stating he would remove the missiles if the US guaranteed not to invade Cuba. However, the next day a US spy plane was shot down and its pilot killed. This was one of many small incidents. It began to look like local commanders on the ground were beginning to make decisions which would result in World War 3.
On October 27th, Khrushchev sent another letter this time demanding the removal of American missiles from Turkey, a NATO member bordering the Soviet Union. It was now that Robert Kennedy, the brother of the President and the US Attorney General, came up with a brilliant idea. He advised that the Americans should respond to the first letter and ignore the second. Kennedy and Khrushchev then struck a deal whereby the Soviets would turn their ships around while a secret agreement was reached by which American missiles would later be removed from Turkey so long as the Soviets agreed to keep the secret.
The world had been pushed to the brink of nuclear war, but in the end clear heads prevailed. In fact, there were four winners. The US ensured that no Soviet nuclear weapons would be located on Cuba. The Soviets were able to ensure the safety of the new Cuban regime. Castro knew that he no longer needed to fear an American attack. The biggest winner was Planet Earth and its inhabitants who were spared massive destruction on an unprecedented scale.
As a consequence, Washington and Moscow were linked by what was known as the Hotline which ensured direct communication between the Americans and the Soviets to ensure that this state of affairs would never happen again.