Cuban Misile Crisis

18 Pages 4527 Words

hundred. The soviet knew this and thought we were planning an attack. It is clear why the Soviet and Cuban leaders were waiting for an American attack on the island. The US had covert operations extending over a long period of time. The Soviets and the Cuban leaders knew that. Soviet security people were worried about worst-case scenarios. The U.S. actions made them very nervous. The Soviets put nuclear missiles ninety miles away from the United States. This was very risky and dangerous. It made the U.S. go into a panic. Foreign leaders sometimes act in cautious and wrong ways when their national security is in danger.
On October 16, 1962 John F. Kennedy called a group of his closest advisers. The night before the CIA had shown him the pictures of the missiles. Now he and his men had to figure out how to deal with the dangerous problem. There were those, although they were a small minority, who felt the missiles did not alter the balance of power and therefore necessitated no action. The Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara came up with three different ways to deal with this problem. His first solution was to confront Premier Khrushchev and talk with him and try to resolve the crisis. The second would involve surveillance with a blockade against offensive weapons going into Cuba. Some of the men did not like the idea of a blockade because it wouldn’t be taking the missiles out of Cuba. It would just be stopping them from making anymore. The last was a military action against Cuba. They would start with an air attack against the missiles. The airforce could not guarantee all of the mis!
siles destroyed. If they did attack then there would be 10,000 to 20,000 deaths in Cuba. After seven days of intense debate within the government, Kennedy decided to start a naval quarantine around Cuba. He wished to prevent the arrival of more Soviet offensive weapons on the island. All the missile equipment that tried to enter Cuba...