The Cuban Missile crisis comes to a close as Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev agrees to remove Russian missiles from Cuba in exchange for a promise from the United States to respect Cuba’s territorial sovereignty. This ended nearly two weeks of anxiety and tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union that came close to provoking a nuclear conflict. The consequences of the crisis were many and varied.
Relations between Cuba and the Soviet Union were on shaky ground for some time after Khrushchev’s removal of the missiles, as Fidel Castro accused the Russians of backing down from the Americans and deserting the Cuban revolution. European allies of the United States were also angered, not because of the U.S. stance during the crisis, but because the Kennedy administration kept them virtually in the dark about negotiations that might have led to an atomic war.
Inside the Soviet Union, hard-liners were appalled at Khrushchev’s withdrawal of the weapons. Two years later, in 1964, Leonid Brezhnev and Aleksei Kosygin pushed him from power and proceeded to lead the Soviet Union on a massive military buildup. There was perhaps one positive aspect of the crisis. Having gone to the edge of what President Kennedy referred to as the “abyss of destruction,” cooler heads in both nations initiated steps to begin some control over nuclear weapons. Less than a year after the crisis ended, the United States and Soviet Union signed an agreement to end aboveground testing; in 1968, both nations signed a non-proliferation treaty.
It was the last time the world came perilously close to a nuclear catastrophe. Thank goodness that it was managed on both sides by men who knew the horror and stupidity of war, JFK and Khrushchev. Now we have a retarded child playing with missiles and a bone spur commando with a big mouth.
Start praying.
There is not much that is praiseworthy about the Kennedy administration, but his use of diplomacy, his willingness to pull the missiles out of Turkey, and all the rest that he did to end this crisis without massive deaths on both sides was the kind of behavior we SHOULD expect of presidents. Sadly we have had nothing but children and tyrants (with regards to foreign policy for sure) since.
Kennedy got played by the Russians.
Because we’ve been taught to ‘win’ the contest instead of to win the peace. That ends badly.
cc,
there are older cubans here who believe that those missiles never left cuba,that they were hidden in caves in the mountains of cuba.
whether or not that is true i do not know but by backing down kennedy effectively legitimized castro’s regime,finishing what eisenhower had started by not overthrowing castro’s communist regime.
in addition to the fact that freedom and communism are incompatible,leaving a national leader whose beliefs are hostile to america in charge of a hostile nation that blocks access to 2 of america’s most important and strategic cities was incredibly stupid and amatuerish.
i also believe that either the missles are still there or kennedy made some sort of agreement
w/russia not to take castro out–do you believe that nixon or reagan would have allowed castro
to stay in power unless something prevented them from acting?
until i’m proven wrong i’ll stick w/my assertion that kennedy was rolled.
finally,i’m not much of a conspiracy buff but for all those who like to say that it was johnson,the cia,the military and big business that had kennedy killed,if one was of that mindset and watched kennedy give in to the enemy,it could set your mind to conspiring.
I don’t know if I can swallow the missiles in the cave deal Red, but who knows? We’ve been fed so much horseshit over the years like, for example; ‘the-commies-are-coming-to-get-us’ when the real enemies were in our own back yard. For me I so want to live in liberty I dismiss outright any attempts to scare me into any gov’t scam designed to pull in the other direction. And war, or the threat thereof is the worst of it.
“Of all the enemies to public liberty war is, perhaps, the most to be dreaded, because it comprises and develops the germ of every other. War is the parent of armies; from these proceed debts and taxes; and armies, and debts, and taxes are the known instruments for bringing the many under the domination of the few.” J. Madison.
Sounds vaguely familiar, no?
gotta go somewhere-
check this later & i’ll tell you why i say what i say–
The man who saved the world:
http://www.npr.org/sections/thetwo-way/2017/09/18/551792129/stanislav-petrov-the-man-who-saved-the-world-dies-at-77
He was a hero-although you’ll never hear Caroline Kennedy give him the Profiles in Courage award.
saw that a few weeks ago zara–
he was a brave man to ignore the rules and do what he thought was correct–
he was also very lucky not to have been court martialed–