ABSTRACT
This chapter examines the background of the Missile Crisis and stresses that the origin of the Missile Crisis was not the deployment of Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba in October 1962. The installation of these missiles on Cuban soil was perhaps the spark that ignited the crisis, but the principal reason for the crisis can be found in the hostile and aggressive U.S. policy against Cuba since the very beginning of the Revolution in 1959. After the U.S. defeat at the Bay of Pigs in April 1961, the Cuban government became fully aware of Washington’s policy objectives toward Cuba and how these were aimed at eliminating the Cuban revolutionary government and the socialist system. The conviction that the White House was seriously considering the military option of using its own armed forces in a direct invasion of the island prevailed.
