International conflicts

What was the Cuban Missile Crisis and why is it important?

In late 1962, the US and the Soviet Union teetered on the brink of nuclear conflict amid a Cold War standoff described as “arguably the most perilous moment in world history”.

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William Allen Roddy Cons

Update: May 31st, 2026 16:52 EDT

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On May 17, 2026, several U.S. media outlets reported that Cuba had obtained drones and that the country was planning to use them against targets in Florida and at Guantánamo Bay. Cuban Foreign Minister Bruno Rodríguez dismissed the news and blamed the Trump administration for making up a false flag operation to justify a potential military intervention.

The mere mention of Cuba potentially sitting at the center of U.S. strategic anxiety, where mistrust and military signaling can cause tensions to rise quickly, has stirred up memories of the Cuban Missile Crisis, which threatened to spark an all-out nuclear conflict between Cold War foes the United States and the Soviet Union.

How the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis came about

A Caribbean island located just 90 miles off the southern tip of the U.S., Cuba had, much to American chagrin, become a communist state in 1959 when a revolution led by leftist lawyer Fidel Castro overthrew the U.S.-backed dictator Fulgencio Batista. Castro quickly aligned himself with the USSR, which provided Cuba with military and economic aid.

In April 1961, just three months into the presidency of John F. Kennedy, a US-trained group of Cuban exiles attempted to remove Castro from power, invading the island at the Bay of Pigs, but the attack was a humiliating failure. Seven months later, in November 1961, President Kennedy authorized Operation Mongoose, a CIA espionage and sabotage campaign designed to bring down the communist regime in Cuba.

With Cuba under threat from the U.S., Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev began shipping nuclear weapons to the island in late 1962 as a means of deterring American aggression.

Khrushchev also saw the move as a way of extending the range of the Soviet Union’s nuclear arsenal and putting it on an even footing with the U.S., which had positioned weapons in European countries such as Turkey. According to historian Serhii Plokhy, author of “Nuclear Folly: A History of the Cuban Missile Crisis,” the Bay of Pigs fiasco led Khrushchev to view Kennedy as a weak president who would not stand in his way.

“Khrushchev thought he was dealing with a really very inexperienced, indecisive leader who he could push around, and who could swallow the Soviet missiles being delivered to Cuba,” Plokhy told the History Extra Podcast.

First week of the Cuban Missile Crisis: before the world knew

On Oct. 14, 1962, a U-2 U.S. spy plane flew over Cuba, capturing images that confirmed the presence of ballistic missiles at a launch site on the island. Two days later, on Oct. 16, National Security Adviser George Bundy broke the news to the president.

The events that followed can be split into two parts, the week the world did not know about the crisis, and the week the world did know.

To avoid giving Khrushchev the opportunity to react before the U.S. had time to consider its response, Kennedy and his advisers initially opted to keep the discovery secret. He set up a committee chiefly comprising national security officials, known as the ExComm, to decide what to do.

In daily ExComm meetings, early support for an airstrike on Cuba gave way to a decision to initiate a naval blockade of the island, which Kennedy referred to as a “quarantine,” designed to prevent any further weapons from being shipped to Cuba.

Second week of the Cuban Missile Crisis: when the world knew

In a televised address on the evening of Oct. 22, Kennedy informed the nation and the world of the crisis in Cuba. Vowing to “halt and eliminate this clandestine, reckless, and provocative threat to world peace,” the president detailed his blockade plan and declared that he was prepared to use military force if needed.

The Russians’ “sudden clandestine decision to station strategic weapons for the first time outside Soviet soil is a deliberately provocative and unjustified change in the status quo, which cannot be accepted by this country,” Kennedy said.

He added: “All ships of any kind bound for Cuba, from whatever nation or port, will, if found to contain cargoes of offensive weapons, be turned back.”

Kennedy also outlined the threat posed by the buildup of Soviet nuclear weapons on Cuba.

“Several of [the launch sites] include medium-range ballistic missiles capable of carrying a nuclear warhead for a distance of more than 1,000 nautical miles,” he said. “Each of these missiles, in short, is capable of striking Washington, D.C., the Panama Canal, Cape Canaveral, Mexico City, or any other city in the southeastern part of the United States, in Central America, or in the Caribbean area.”

“Additional sites not yet completed appear to be designed for intermediate-range ballistic missiles, capable of traveling more than twice as far and thus capable of striking most of the major cities in the Western Hemisphere, ranging as far north as Hudson Bay, Canada, and as far south as Lima, Peru.”

Two days after Kennedy’s address, the crisis reached its tensest point when it emerged that two Soviet ships and a submarine were approaching the blockade line. Would they attempt to force their way through, leading to military confrontation and potentially nuclear war? Thankfully, they did not. At the last minute, they relented, turning around and returning to the Soviet Union.

Reacting to the Soviet vessels’ 11th-hour about-face, U.S. Secretary of State Dean Rusk memorably said to Bundy: “We’re eyeball to eyeball and I think the other fellow just blinked.”

A deal is reached to end the crisis

Four days after that close call, Kennedy and Khrushchev struck a deal to bring the crisis to an end, and the world breathed a sigh of relief. It was an agreement that came about in confusing circumstances.

On Oct. 26, Khrushchev sent a letter to Kennedy offering to remove the missiles from Cuba on the condition that the U.S. president promised not to invade the island. On Oct. 27, however, the Soviet leader sent a second communication in which he changed the terms of the deal. He said he would dismantle the weapons in Cuba if the U.S. not only pledged not to invade Cuba, but also agreed to remove its nuclear missiles from Turkey.

It remains unclear why Khrushchev made one offer, then another. After deliberating on how to respond to the double communication, Kennedy decided to reply only to the first letter, accepting the Soviet demand for a promise not to invade Cuba.

However, he also sent his brother, Attorney General Bobby Kennedy, to tell Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin that the U.S. would remove missiles from Turkey, but that this part of the deal had to be kept secret.

“The most perilous moment in world history”

On Oct. 28, Khrushchev sent a letter agreeing to Kennedy’s response. The Cuban Missile Crisis was over. It had been a standoff that was “arguably the most perilous moment in world history,” historian Mark J. White concludes in Missiles in Cuba: Kennedy, Khrushchev, and the 1962 Crisis.

“Never before or since,” agrees fellow historian Sheldon Stern in “The Week the World Stood Still: Inside the Secret Cuban Missile Crisis,” “has the survival of human civilization been at stake in a few short weeks of dangerous deliberations.”

The key difference between now and then is that 1962 was a confirmed nuclear standoff. Today is a high-tension political and intelligence dispute with no comparable weapons deployment or immediate war scenario.

For now, there is no sign of a new Cuban Missile Crisis, but the recent drone claims have shown how events on the island can still reignite memories of one of the most dangerous moments in modern history.