Cuban Missile Crisis

The Cuban Missile Crisis began on October 14, 1962, when American, U-2 CIA spy planes took photographs of a Soviet intermediate-range ballistic missile site under construction in Cuba. The photos were shown to Kennedy on October 16, 1962. The United States would soon be posed with a serious nuclear threat. Kennedy faced a dialemma: if the U.S. attacked the sites, it might lead to nuclear war with the USSR., but if the U.S. did nothing, it would endure the threat of nuclear weapons being launched from close range. Many military officials and cabinet members pressed for an air assault on the missile sites, but Kennedy ordered a naval quarantine in which the U.S. Navy inspected all ships arriving in Cuba. He began negotiations with the Soviets and ordered the Soviets to remove all defensive material that was being built on Cuba. Without doing so, the Soviet and Cuban peoples would face naval quarantine. A week later, he and Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev reached a basically cordial, lasting agreement. Khrushchev agreed to remove the missiles subject to U.N. inspections if the U.S. publicly promised never to invade Cuba and quietly removed US missiles stationed in Turkey.