Cuban Missile Crisis

On October 14, 1962, a U-2 reconnaissance flight photographed Soviet medium-range nuclear missile sites under construction in Cuba. President John F. Kennedy met with the Executive Committee of the National Security Council in Washington on October 16, 1962, and on October 22, 1962 he announced a naval quarantine around Cuba while demanding that Nikita Khrushchev remove the missiles. The confrontation ended on October 28, 1962, when Khrushchev agreed to withdraw the missiles in exchange for a U.S. pledge not to invade Cuba and a secret American promise to remove Jupiter missiles from Turkey.

The crisis tested whether the United States and the Soviet Union could manage nuclear brinkmanship without sliding into general war. Kennedy rejected immediate air strikes and invasion because ExComm understood that Soviet retaliation in Berlin or a nuclear exchange could follow any American attack on Cuba. Khrushchev also had to weigh Soviet prestige, Fidel Castro's security, and the risk that a failed gamble in the Caribbean would expose Moscow to a humiliating retreat before the entire Cold War world.

The Moscow-Washington hotline established in 1963 followed directly from the communication failures exposed during the crisis. The Limited Nuclear Test Ban Treaty signed in August 1963 also grew out of the October 1962 scare, because Kennedy and Khrushchev both wanted visible measures that reduced the danger of nuclear escalation.