Thirteen days when nuclear missiles faced each other at sea
The Cuban Missile Crisis, lasting 16–28 October 1962, was a thirteen-day standoff after Soviet nuclear deployments in Cuba matched earlier U.S. missiles in Britain, Italy, and Turkey. U-2 photos forced Kennedy's ExComm into quarantine diplomacy that pulled the Cold War back from the brink.
The crisis had roots on both sides. In 1959 the United States stationed Thor nuclear missiles in England under Project Emily, and in 1961 it added Jupiters in Italy and Turkey, all able to reach Moscow. In April 1961 a CIA-trained force of Cuban exiles tried and failed to invade the island at the Bay of Pigs, and from late 1961 Washington sponsored a campaign of sabotage and attacks inside Cuba that killed many civilians. A US intelligence estimate at the time recognised that the invasion threat was a main reason for the Soviet military buildup.
Strategic arithmetic pushed Moscow too. Kennedy had campaigned in 1960 on a supposed missile gap, yet the real gap favoured the United States: the Soviets had four R-7 intercontinental missiles in 1961, while the US had 170 and eight submarines each carrying 16 Polaris missiles. Nikita Khrushchev, who judged Kennedy weak after the Bay of Pigs and the building of the Berlin Wall, decided in May 1962 to place intermediate-range missiles in Cuba, overriding his own ambassador's doubts that Castro would accept them. The historian Timothy Naftali adds that Moscow feared Cuba drifting toward China after Castro purged the communist Anibal Escalante in March 1962.
In October a U-2 reconnaissance flight photographed launch sites under construction. Kennedy gathered his advisers into the Executive Committee of the National Security Council, where some urged air strikes on the bases; he chose a naval quarantine instead.
The settlement had a public face and a hidden one. Khrushchev agreed to remove the Cuban missiles under United Nations verification in return for an American pledge not to invade Cuba, while the United States quietly promised to take its missiles out of Turkey; the Thors in Britain were also withdrawn. Because that half of the deal stayed secret, the Soviets appeared to have backed down from a confrontation they had started, and the Politburo's embarrassment contributed to Khrushchev's fall two years later.
Source: Cuban Missile Crisis
