The Cuban Missile Crisis: The Closest We Came to Nuclear Apocalypse

The first missile shipments arrived in September 1962, and pretty much immediately, there were numerous reports in the US that the Commies were up to something a bit dodgy. Congress dismissed these reports as speculation, but a month later, a US spy plane over Cuba took photographs that unmistakably showed a missile base. Understandably in a huge panic, the US responded by immediately preventing all military shipments from entering or leaving Cuba, and demanded that all weapons already there be removed. The Russians, in typical hard-arse fashion, shrugged this off by saying that their ships would simply ignore this. They then unbelievably followed this up by shooting down an American spy plane with a missile from Cuba, an act that JFK had previously said would result in another American invasion of Cuba. With the stakes never higher in the political chess match of international diplomacy, Kennedy refused temptation, and a stalemate began.

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John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev negotiating.

American and Russian officials soon began secret negotiations, and after a lot of toing and froing, came to an agreement. The US agreed to lift their Cuban blockade, remove their nuclear missiles on the Soviet-Turkey border, and to never invade Cuba again. The fact that Russia knew about the nuclear missiles on their border and didn’t kick up a fuss like the Americans did kinda testifies once again the ridiculously tough nature of the Russians, who themselves agreed to remove their nuclear missiles from Cuba.

So, negotiation and a willingness to put differences aside for the greater good saved the world from apocalypse, an even worse possibility than having Fred Durst’s ugly mug staring at you from your television set. In the present day, with the current tension between the West and Russia, Obama would do well to look back to 1962 and take note of JFK’s restraint, calmness and decisiveness in dealing with the threat of Putin in the event of some similar nuclear crisis ever happening now.