ABSTRACT
The Cuban Missile Crisis in October 1962 was a momentous event in the Cold War, maybe the closest the United States and the USSR came to a nuclear exchange. The tensions were enormous, but the good news was that missiles were never fired. The confrontation was unique because it represented a shift from peripheral bomb-rattling in parts of Europe, Korea, the China Sea, Indochina, and elsewhere, to direct squaring off between the two superpowers. Whether it was posturing or deadly serious, for the first time, as B-52 commander Major ”King” Kong bluntly proclaimed in the apocalyptic Dr. Strangelove (1964), the United States faced nuclear combat “toe to toe with the Ruskies.” Possible confrontation between the Americans and Soviets in the early 1960s not only centered in the Caribbean, but also in Berlin. A new crisis there intensified risk in the mounting nuclear arms race. Cooler heads prevailing in both crises, however, led to the test ban talks in 1963. Yet the Cold War was far from over. Neither John F. Kennedy nor Nikita Khrushchev completely toned down their rhetoric or altered their security objectives. Had anything changed? Living in the moment, it was difficult to tell. There were other problems and other distractions in the 1960s that eventually stole the limelight from US-Soviet tensions. The potential for a nuclear exchange, although diminishing for a time, did not altogether disappear. Yet the world was spared from nuclear holocaust for one more day.
