Never Back Down

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Recommended: Fidel Castro and the Cuban missile crisis

In October 1962, when the world came extremely close to the beginning of a World War 3, any hope of achieving peace was almost destroyed at the hands of Kennedy, Khrushchev, and to a lesser degree, Castro. After the end of diplomatic relations between the U.S. and Cuba in early 1961, the Soviets gained the perfect opportunity to develop an alliance with Cuba (Falk 145). Subsequently, in 1961 the Soviets decided to place missiles in Cuba threatening the Americans which became the basis of the Cuban Missile Crisis. The fact of the matter was that both the Soviet Union and the U.S.A. had enough military power to absolutely destroy the world and the only way to successfully impede this was for Kennedy and Khrushchev to come to a mutual agreement. Unfortunately, both sides could not afford to displease their people or appear weak, so reaching an agreement seemed very unlikely for quite some time. Yet surprisingly enough, over the years historians and the general public mostly learned of the American version of how the situation unfolded and concluded that Kennedy was the best example of how to deal with a crisis until recently when new evidence suggests there was more to the story. The world came to the verge of downright destruction during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 when president Kennedy and Khrushchev almost failed to settle their differences regarding the missiles in Cuba and Turkey.
John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev were both powerful political figures but yet their fear of appearing weak in front of the world kept them from compromising for quite some time. Time and time again, the Kennedy administration had attempted to overthrow Fidel Castro and his government to take over Cuba once again. According to Len Scot...

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...h.Hesitation, desire for dominance, and misleading information are not only some of the reasons for the outcome of this crisis but also some of the many factors that played a key role in shaping the history we very closely study now. The only thing that the two countries could have been equally certain about was found within the Mutually Assured Destruction doctrine between the United States and the Soviet Union. Dreading over people’s judgement complexes matters to a greater degree. Nevertheless, Kennedy was taken into regard as a celebrated exemplar for others to follow.
For all we know, if the documents and information that were previously used for learning about the history of the Cuban Missile Crisis, perhaps researchers and historians would not get to see how the other people involved saw it and even today we would learn only the American version of the story.

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