Cuba is a small island attached to America. It was a former part of the USSR. In 1962, at the peak of the Cold War, the former premier of the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev, deployed missiles in Cuba, which threatened the security of America. US President Kennedy was not in favour of going to war. But for his country’s security, he seeks to withdraw missiles from Cuba.
When the Soviet ships armed with missiles headed for Cuba and the US ordered the war fleets to stop them from advancing, it seemed that the war would go on; this is known as the Cuban Missile Crisis. But in the end, both superpowers settled the matter by negotiation, and the world was saved from the third world war.
The biggest crisis of the Cold War era was the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. America also supported corrupt governments in order to stop communism.
One such was the government of Batista in Cuba. Fidel Castro overthrew this government in 1959. Castro resorted to the Soviet Union to break free from US control.
In 1961, the US attempted to infiltrate Cuba through the ‘Bey of Pigs’. This was the time in 1962 when a US spy ship took pictures of the Russian missile base in Cuba.
The Russian missiles in Cuba turned the tide in their favor. US President John F. Kennedy told his army to be ready without panic and asked Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev to remove the missiles. When Soviet ships armed with missiles headed for Cuba, the world felt the threat of the first nuclear war between the two superpowers.
If the President assures that America will not attack Cuba, and lifts the siege, then the question of the presence of missiles in Cuba does not arise. We should not grab and pull the ends of the rope in which you have tied the knot of war, because the more we pull, the harder it becomes
Nikita Khrushchev, the former premier of the Soviet Union
American President Kennedy accepted Nikita Khrushchev‘s offer and lifted the siege. Russia also removed the missiles and sent them back to the Soviet Union. It was the end of the nuclear war that didn’t happen.
After the crisis, closer relations developed between the United States and the Soviet Union.
In 1983, a hotline was established between the two as a direct phone service from Moscow to the White House. In the same year, the two superpowers signed a limited nuclear test treaty.
After this, there were wars in other parts of the world between the alliances supported by the two superpowers, but they tried to avoid another world war. Fortunately, none of the crises could turn into a war.