The Cuban Missile Crisis

The Cuban Missile Crisis (known as The October Crisis in Cuba and Caribbean Crisis in Russia) was a confrontation between the Soviet Union, Cuba and the United States in October 1962, during the Cold War. The documents given are a map showing the location of Cuba and the range of the Cuban missiles, a photograph of Cuban missiles sites taken in October 1962, an extract of Robert Kennedy’s book, 13 Days describing events on Thursday 18th October, and a cartoon published in 1962 showing Khrushchev and Kennedy facing in an arm wrestling. We are in a context of a revolution. Fidel Castro, Ernesto “Che” Guevara and their “freedom fighters“sweep away the corrupted dictatorship of Fulgencio Batista and take over the capital Havana. After they tried to conclude an agreement with the USA in vain, they turn to the USSR and China. Cuban-American relationship become aggravated, the Castro regime officially becomes a communist one. The presence of a communist island within fifty miles south of the United States is an unexpected windfall for the USSR. This is indeed under the direct threat of American nuclear missiles and bombers stationed in Europe through NATO and SEATO in Asia. The very territory of the USA is protected by its location. They are too far to be reached by missiles or Russian planes. All those documents show that the USA stays the world leaders in spite of the danger of a 3rd World War weighing above them. Why the USA are in this predicament and what are the reasons of this conflict? In the first part we are going to study the causes of the Cuban missile crisis and in the second part we are going to describe the crisis.

I] The causes

A] The arms race
The arms race developed into propaganda and intelligence war as well as a forum for technological rivalry. Both sides were keen to find out what the other side was up to. Thus the need for intelligence. The USSR tended to use human spies. The USA,