Cuban Missile Crisis

Cuban Missile Crisis
Part of the Cold War and the aftermath of the Cuban Revolution
Top: US Jupiter medium-range ballistic missile on its launchpad Bottom: Soviet R-12 medium-range ballistic missile in Red Square, Moscow
Date 16–28 October 1962 (naval quarantine[3] of Cuba ended on 20 November) Location  Cuba Result Conflict resolved diplomatically Publicized removal of Soviet nuclear missiles from Cuba Non-publicized removal of American nuclear missiles from Turkey and Italy Agreement with the Soviet Union that the United States would never invade Cuba without direct provocation Creation of a nuclear hotline between the United States and the Soviet Union
Belligerents
Soviet Union  Cuba	United States  Italy  Turkey  Venezuela[1][2]
Commanders and leaders
Nikita Khrushchev Anastas Mikoyan Rodion Malinovsky Matvei Zakharov Sergey Biryuzov Issa Pliyev Georgy Abashvili Fidel Castro Raúl Castro Che Guevara	John F. Kennedy Robert McNamara Maxwell D. Taylor Curtis LeMay George W. Anderson Robert F. Kennedy Amintore Fanfani Giulio Andreotti Cemal Gürsel İlhami Sancar
Strength
43,000 soldiers[4]	100,000–180,000 (estimated)
Casualties and losses
None	1 U-2 spy aircraft lost 1 US pilot killed

The Cuban Missile Crisis, also known as the October Crisis (Spanish: Crisis de Octubre) in Cuba, or the Caribbean Crisis (Russian: Карибский кризис, romanized: Karibskiy krizis), was a 13-day confrontation between the governments of the United States and the Soviet Union, when American deployments of nuclear missiles in Italy and Turkey were matched by Soviet deployments of nuclear missiles in Cuba. The crisis lasted from 16 to 28 October 1962. The confrontation is widely considered the closest the Cold War came to escalating into full-scale nuclear war.^[5]

In 1961, the US government put Jupiter nuclear missiles in Italy and Turkey. It had also trained a paramilitary force of Cuban exiles, which the CIA led in an attempt to invade Cuba and overthrow its government. Starting in November of that year, the US government engaged in a violent campaign of terrorism and sabotage in Cuba, referred to as the Cuban Project, which continued throughout the first half of the 1960s. The Soviet administration was concerned about a Cuban drift towards China, with which the Soviets had an increasingly fractious relationship. In response to these factors, the Soviet and Cuban governments agreed to place nuclear missiles on Cuba to deter a future invasion. An agreement was reached during a meeting between Khrushchev and Castro in July 1962, and construction started later that summer.

A U-2 spy plane captured photographic evidence of medium- and long-range launch facilities in October. President John F. Kennedy convened a meeting of the National Security Council and other key advisers, forming the Executive Committee of the National Security Council (EXCOMM). Kennedy was advised to carry out an air strike on Cuban soil in order to compromise Soviet missile supplies, followed by an invasion of the Cuban mainland. He chose a less aggressive course in order to avoid a declaration of war. On 22 October Kennedy ordered a naval blockade, terming it a "quarantine", to prevent further missiles from reaching Cuba.^[6] The use of the term "quarantine", rather than "blockade", enabled the US to avoid the implications of a state of war.^[7]

An agreement was eventually reached between Kennedy and Khrushchev. Publicly, the Soviets would dismantle their offensive weapons in Cuba, subject to United Nations verification, in exchange for a US public declaration and agreement not to invade Cuba again. Secretly, the United States agreed to dismantle all of the offensive weapons it had deployed to Turkey. There has been debate on whether Italy was also included in the agreement. While the Soviets dismantled their missiles, some Soviet bombers remained in Cuba, and the United States kept the naval quarantine in place until 20 November 1962.^[7] The blockade was formally ended on 20 November after all offensive missiles and bombers had been withdrawn from Cuba. The evident necessity of a quick and direct communication line between the two powers resulted in the Moscow–Washington hotline. A series of agreements later reduced US–Soviet tensions for several years.

The compromise embarrassed Khrushchev and the Soviet Union because the withdrawal of US missiles from Italy and Turkey was a secret deal between Kennedy and Khrushchev, and the Soviets were seen as retreating from a situation that they had started. Khrushchev's fall from power two years later was in part because of the Soviet Politburo's embarrassment at both Khrushchev's eventual concessions to the US and his ineptitude in precipitating the crisis. According to Dobrynin, the top Soviet leadership took the Cuban outcome as "a blow to its prestige bordering on humiliation".^[8][9]