Cuban Missile Crisis

The Cuban Missile Crisis was a confrontation during the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States regarding the Soviet deployment of nuclear missiles in Cuba. The missiles were ostensibly placed to protect Cuba from further planned attacks by the United States after the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion. The crisis began on October 14, 1962 when U.S. reconnaissance imagery revealing Soviet nuclear missile installations on the island were shown to U.S. President John F. Kennedy and ended fourteen days later on October 28, 1962, when Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev announced that the installations would be dismantled

The U.S. government became increasingly concerned about the new Cuban Government (Fidel Castro), which became a major focus of the new Kennedy administration when it took office in January 1961. In Havana, one of the consequences of this was the fear that the U.S. might intervene against the Cuban government. This fear materialized in April 1961 when Cuban exiles, trained by the U.S. Central Intelligence Agency, staged an invasion of Cuban territory at the Bay of Pigs.. U.S. armed forces then staged a mock invasion of a Caribbean island in 1962 called Operation Ortsac. The purpose of the invasion was to overthrow a leader whose name was, in fact, Castro ("Ortsac" spelled backwards). Shortly after the Bay of Pigs invasion, Castro declared Cuba to be a socialist republic and entered close ties with the Soviet Union leading to a major upgrade of Cuban military defense. In February 1962, the U.S. began an economic embargo against Cuba.

On 4 September, Robert Kennedy met with Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin. During the meeting Kennedy stated the U.S.'s concerns about weapons Cuba. The Ambassador assured Kennedy that they were defensive and the military build-up was of no significance. On 8 October Cuban President Dorticos gave a speech at the U.N. General Assembly, noting that "If... we are attacked, we will defend ourselves. I repeat, we have sufficient means with which to defend ourselves; we have indeed our inevitable weapons, the weapons which we would have preferred not to acquire and which we do not wish to employ." A number of unconnected problems meant that the missiles were not discovered by the U.S. until a U-2 flight of October 14 clearly showed the construction of an SS-4 site near San Cristobal in Pinar del Rнo Province in Western Cuba. October 22, President Kennedy delivered a televised address announcing the discovery of the installations. He proclaimed that any nuclear missile attack from Cuba on any nation would be regarded as an attack by the Soviet Union on the United States, and would be responded to accordingly. He also placed a blockade on Cuba to prevent further shipments of military weapons from arriving.

. On October 25 Kennedy received a telegram, in which Khrushchev stated that "if you cooly weight the situation which has developed, not giving way to passions, you will understand that the Soviet Union cannot fail to reject the arbitrary demands of the United States", and that the Soviet Union views the blockade as "an act of aggression" and their ships will be instructed to ignore it. That night, the Joint Chiefs of Staff instructed Strategic Air Command to go to DEFCON 2, for the first time in history. The message, and the response, were deliberately transmitted uncoded, in order to allow Soviet intelligence to capture them. Kennedy responded to Khrushchev's telegram, stating that the U.S. was forced into action after receiving repeated assurances that no offensive missiles were being placed in Cuba, and