Cuban Missile Crisis Causes, Timeline & Significance

Maoist China subsequently condemned Khrushchev’s cowardly “capitulationism” to the Americans and Moscow’s “sellout of the Cuban people.” Khrushchev in response, blasted the Chinese for aggression in the Sino-Indian dispute and China’s opportunist stand during the Cuban Missile Crisis. Actions in 1962 had a significant influence on the policy decisions of future occupants of the White House, and led to foreign policy decisions such as President Lyndon B. Johnson’s escalation of the war in Vietnam three years later. Similarly, Lorraine Bayard de Volo suggested that the masculine brinksmanship of the Cuban Missile Crisis had become a “touchstone of toughness by which presidents are measured”.

Cuban missile crisis

Colombia was reported ready to furnish units and had sent military officers to the US to discuss this assistance. The Government of Trinidad and Tobago offered the use of Chaguaramas Naval Base to warships of any OAS nation for the duration of the “quarantine”. Legal experts at the State Department and Justice Department concluded that a declaration of war could be avoided if another legal justification, based on the Rio Treaty for defence of the Western Hemisphere, was obtained from a resolution by a two-thirds vote from the members of the Organization of American States (OAS). Kennedy explained after the crisis that “it would have prabhu casino politically changed the balance of power. It would have appeared to, and appearances contribute to reality.” In 1990, he reiterated that “it made no difference…. The military balance wasn’t changed. I didn’t believe it then, and I don’t believe it now.” The US already had approximately 5,000 strategic warheads, but the Soviet Union had only 300.

Showdown at Sea: U.S. Blockades Cuba

If allowed to become operational, the missiles would fundamentally alter the complexion of the nuclear rivalry between the U.S. and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), which up to that point had been dominated by the Americans. For the American officials, the urgency of the situation stemmed from the fact that the nuclear-armed Cuban missiles were being installed so close to the U.S. mainland–just 90 miles south of Florida. Once operational, these nuclear-armed weapons could have been used on cities and military targets in most of the continental United States.

• Twenty-three nuclear-armed B-52 bombers were sent to orbit points within striking distance of the Soviet Union to demonstrate that the US was serious.
• American missiles could have been launched from Turkey to attack the USSR before the Soviets had a chance to react.
• On 18 October 1962, Kennedy met Soviet Minister of Foreign Affairs Andrei Gromyko, who claimed that the weapons were for defensive purposes only.
• The United States secretly agreed to dismantle all of the offensive weapons it had deployed to Turkey.

He made a televised address to the American people on 22 October and told them about the missiles on Cuba and the naval blockade that had been put in place. Navy to establish a blockade, or quarantine, of the island to prevent the Soviets from delivering additional missiles and military equipment. The Soviets had long felt uneasy about the number of nuclear weapons that were targeted at them from sites in Western Europe and Turkey, and they saw the deployment of missiles in Cuba as a way to level the playing field. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, leaders of the U.S. and the Soviet Union engaged in a tense, 13-day political and military standoff in October 1962 over the installation of nuclear-armed Soviet missiles on Cuba, just 90 miles from U.S. shores. To prevent this, Khrushchev decided to offer to give Cuba more than 100 tactical nuclear weapons that had been shipped there with the long-range missiles but, crucially, had escaped the notice of US intelligence.