To most of my generation the Cuban missile crisis is nonexistent. No one tends to look at non-physical actions as ones of any importance. However, if the successes and failures of past generations are not properly looked at we will be blind as to what should be done in the future. The anxiety and emotions felt by 200 million Americans as the U.S. was on the brink of nuclear war has since been forgotten.

The Cuban missile crisis is an important facet of American history for many reasons. When Eisenhower yielded the presidency to Kennedy the gross yield of all U.S. weapons probably equaled about one million times that of the bomb that had obliterated Hiroshima. We must pay close attention to these figures because, in October 1962 the United States was on the brink of a nuclear war with the Soviet Union; we must realize just how close we came to death if i

In one letter on October 28th, 1962 Khrushchev agreed to withdraw the missiles if the United Sates pledged never to invade Cuba. The containment policy that the U.S. had implemented against the Soviet Union had worked again. The "bear" was back in its lair.

One can speculate that the Soviet Union placed weapons in Cuba not to attack the U.S. but to give the impression that they could if they wanted to. In doing this, the Soviet's intention was most likely to instill fear into the American populous and government. Expecting the U.S. to take the matter to the U.N., the Kremlin may have placed offensive weapons in Cuba solely to be used as a bargaining chip within the U.N. so that the U.S. would agree to a Berlin and German settlement on Soviet terms. The Kremlin has been historically bad at judging other nations responses to its actions and did not realize that the American government would not consider this a mere threat, but a threat to the American way of life. The Kremlin mistakenly believed that the United States would tolerate its own methods of foreign policy being used upon it.

Bohlen, Charles E., Witness to History, 1929-1969. New York: Norton, 1973.

Between October 16th and 22nd Kennedy spoke with his National Security Advisors so that he might come to the best decision as to what to do in such a nuclear face-off. One suggestion was that the U.S. should invade Cuba but this was overturned due to the losses and media frenzy that The Bay of Pigs invasion had caused. Another suggestion was that the U.S. should bomb the sites where it was determined that nuclear warheads were located. This decision, too, was overturned as Kennedy felt that if the Soviets were willing to put warheads in Cuba they might retaliate if the United States bombed these warheads and the thousands of technicians in Cuba needed to ensu

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Approximate Word count = 1239
Approximate Pages = 5 (250 words per page double spaced)