Many Americans remember these days.
In 1949, the Soviet Union produced a nuclear bomb and started an arms race with the United States. Americans lived under the constant threat of nuclear war. At no time was this threat more real than in October 1962, in what is known as the Cuban Missile Crisis.
One year before the crisis, the United States had backed the Bay of Pigs Invasion, an attempt to arm and train Cuban refugees to overthrow the Communist government of Dictator Fidel Castro. The invasion failed and led Castro to request protection from the Soviet Union. Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev agreed to send resources to Cuba, including offensive nuclear weapons, to send a message to the United States not to attack Cuba and establish a Soviet presence in the West. These weapons not only acted as protection for Cuba but also gave the Soviet Union a first-strike capability against America in the event of a nuclear exchange. Soviet nuclear weapons would only be 90 miles off the U.S. coast and could arrive within minutes.
On October 14, 1962, a U2 spy plane over Cuba took photos of nuclear missile launch sites being constructed. This immediately set in motion a crisis within the U.S. government. President John F. Kennedy was informed two days later and immediately convened senior government officials and military advisers in a group called the National Security Council Executive Committee or ExComm. Everyone involved understood the seriousness of the situation. Various options were proposed as a response, including bombing the sites, a ground invasion, or a naval blockade to prevent further weapons from being brought in. Military advisers favored bombing or an invasion but in the end, President Kennedy chose the blockade option, feeling it had the appropriate forcefulness with less risk of loss of life.
As the crisis continued, President Kennedy went on television on October 22 and informed the American people of the situation in Cuba. He chose to call the blockade a “quarantine,” believing it would soften the military nature of the action. Upon learning of the crisis, the mood of the country was tense. Two days later, on October 24, the United States Navy was positioned outside of Cuba where Soviet ships, along with Soviet nuclear submarines, were en route. Nobody knew how the Soviets would react. Would there be open warfare on the seas or would the Soviet ships turn around? Nobody in the U.S. government knew the answer. However, as the moment of truth arrived, the Soviet ships did turn around and warfare was avoided, at least temporarily.
Even though the blockade seemed to be working, the crisis was far from over. There were still nuclear missiles in Cuba that could reach virtually the entire United States. For the first and only time in American history, the military was put on Defcon 2 status. This meant the entire military was in a complete state of readiness around the world. Defcon 1 meant nuclear war was imminent. The U.S. military was assembling units in Florida for an attack on Cuba.
It was Saturday, October 27, which proved the pivotal day of the crisis. A U2 spy plane flying over Cuba was shot down, and the pilot, U.S. Air Force Major Rudolf Anderson Jr., was killed. U.S. intelligence also discovered that the Soviet missiles in Cuba were now ready for launch. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara states in his memoir that as he left the White House that Saturday, he remembers thinking it might be the last Saturday he ever saw. Many Americans had similar thoughts.
President Kennedy realized that events could spiral out of control so he sent his brother, Attorney General Robert Kennedy, to meet with Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin in secret. Before the meeting, President Kennedy had received two different letters from Khrushchev. In the first, Khrushchev said he would end the crisis if the U.S. agreed not to invade Cuba. In the second, Khrushchev demanded the United States remove missiles from Turkey.
Kennedy and the U.S. government wrote a letter back to Khrushchev agreeing not to attack Cuba. He decided not to respond publicly to the Soviet request to remove missiles from Turkey. However, when Robert Kennedy met the Soviet ambassador, he privately told him that the United States would remove missiles from Turkey. These were missiles already scheduled to be withdrawn. Upon hearing this, the Soviets agreed to remove the missiles from Cuba, and the crisis ended on Sunday, October 28, 13 days after it started.
After the crisis, the United States and the Soviet Union installed a “hotline” between the two nations to avoid a miscommunication that would lead to a nuclear exchange. The U.S. never attacked Cuba. Although the Soviet Union collapsed in 1991, the danger of nuclear war is still present. With countries like North Korea and Iran continuing to develop nuclear weapons and Russia and China among nations hostile to the U.S. maintaining them, the U.S. must always remain vigilant against nuclear threats. The stakes could not be higher.