Instead, Kennedy chose a less aggressive path, setting up a naval "quarantine" to stop further missiles from reaching Cuba. Among his options was an airstrike on the missile sites. Kennedy, who had come into office just nine months earlier, had to decide how to respond. As part of routine US reconnaissance of Cuba, a U-2 plane captured images of the missile buildup on October 14, setting the crisis into motion. Following the invasion, Castro began to align his country politically with the Soviet Union in opposition to his northern neighbor.Īs part of this cooperation, Cuba agreed to allow the Soviet Union to place nuclear-tipped ICBMs on the island, located just 300 km from the United States. So in April 1961, the United States covertly led the "Bay of Pigs" invasion of the island, which Castro rebuffed. In the early 1960s, the United States was uncomfortable with the rise of revolutionary Fidel Castro in Cuba. "They had a very limited nuclear force that could potentially be neutralized in the early 1960s." The crisis "I actually think the world is a lot of more dangerous now, partly because the Russians have way more ways to nuke the West than they had in the early 1960s," Siddiqi told Ars. The works were edited by Asif Siddiqi, a Professor of History at Fordham University.Ĭhertok's chapter on the Cuban Missile Crisis is riveting today, considering the heightened tensions between Russia and the West and the reemergence of a Cold War mentality. To its immense credit, NASA translated and published all four volumes and made them freely available online. He was a key figure in the Soviet space program, and later in life, he wrote an authoritative, four-volume history of the Soviet space program. This account comes from Volume III of "Rockets and People," written by Boris Chertok. As tensions reached a crescendo, Russian rocket scientists almost launched an intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) against New York City instead. Instead, it will offer a look into the Russian side of the story from the perspective of the space program, which was trying to launch a series of Mars probes in October 1962. But this article will not cover the well-worn historical path of the conflict itself. To understand just how quickly things could spiral out of control, it's instructive to revisit the Cuban Missile Crisis. Such a move would almost certainly force a response from the West. A nuclear strike could take the form of a demonstration over an unpopulated area, or perhaps even a tactical blow in Ukraine. Were some or all of these things to happen, Putin could conceivably turn to his option of last resort. These include Russia losing the war badly, the country being crushed by economic sanctions, or Putin feeling as though his hold on power is threatened. While Putin employing nuclear weapons remains unlikely, experts say some situations may cause the Russian leader to lash out. Russian President Vladimir Putin has indicated that using his country's nuclear weapons stockpile is a possibility, and Western experts have not disputed that such use could happen. The crisis has fresh relevance today in the weeks after Russia's unprovoked invasion of Ukraine. The incredibly tense confrontation brought the United States and the Soviet Union to the brink of nuclear war. The world will mark the 60th anniversary of the Cuban Missile Crisis, which is known to Russians as the Caribbean Crisis, in October.
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