A History of the Cuban Missile Crisis and the Role of Fidel Castro in the Sixties

This is probably the closest mankind has ever gotten to extinction. This was a time when tensions were at its highest. For the first time in the history of the world, man could’ve made the earth look like an apple eaten down to the core. Of course, I am talking about the one and only Cuban Missile Crisis.

The U.S. was kicking the Soviet Union’s butt in the arms race. The Soviet Union’s missiles were only powerful enough to be launched against Europe, but the US missiles were capable of taking out the whole Soviet Union.

Then in 1962, Nikita Khrushchev came up with a dumb idea to put missiles in Cuba, which would decrease the chances of having a potential U.S. strike against the Soviet Union.

Fidel Castro was looking for a way to defend Cuba, which explains why he let Soviet missiles in. Castro felt that after the failure of the Bay of Pigs, a second attack was inevitable.

The real crisis for the U.S. didn’t occur until October 15, 1962, when reconnaissance photographs showed that Soviet missiles were under construction in Cuba.

After a week of intense debate, Kennedy decided to impose a naval quarantine around Cuba. This ensured that no more Soviet missiles would enter Cuba. Kennedy told the public about the situation and his decision to quarantine Cuba on October 22. He also said that any nuclear missile launched from Cuba would be regarded as an attack on the United States by the Soviet Union and demanded that the Soviets remove all their offensive weapons from Cuba.

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Then on the 26th, Khrushchev wrote a letter to the U.S. proposing that he would remove all the Soviet missiles if the U.S. guaranteed not to invade Cuba. Then the next day, which was the worst day of the crisis, a U-2 airplane was shot down over Cuba. The U.S. received another letter from Khrushchev demanding that the U.S. take its missiles out of Turkey in exchange for Soviet missiles in Cuba. That letter was pretty much ignored. Then, finally on the 28, Khrushchev announced that he would return the missiles to the Soviet Union, with the trust that the U.S. would not invade Cuba.

I think that this is the most influential event because they’re fingers were on the little red buttons that would fire the missiles, and all it would take is for that little finger to slip and press it accidentally (or intentionally), and we would all be dead. This is the first time that the fate of the world was held in the hands of two human beings. I wasn’t alive then, but I can imagine the fear in people when they heard that there were nuclear missiles aimed at the U.S.

But deep down inside, I don’t think that anyone would’ve fired a missile because anyone dumb enough to do that should be in either a mental institution or should be sent on the next plane to outer space. Because I think that they knew what would happen if they decided to launch a nuclear attack, and they decided it wasn’t worth becoming extinct because of a dumb decision that they would regret later but wouldn’t be able to because they would be dead before they could say “I never went to Disneyland!” To me they would have to be mentally ill in some way to make a decision like that. But that’s just my opinion.