The Cuban missile crisis began 60 years ago today. Over 13 days, the U.S. and Soviet Union were at the brink of a nuclear conflict. But since the Cold War ended, some historical assumptions about the crisis have changed.
To Khrushchev, the Jupiters on his own doorstep were a provocation. He saw putting his own missiles in Cuba as rebalancing the status quo.
Well before the crisis, Kennedy had actually wanted to remove the missiles because"the Pentagon told him that they were obsolete and they didn't really add anything to American security," explains Hastings.President John F. Kennedy and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev head to their first meeting on June 3, 1961, at the start of the East-West talks in Vienna, the year before the Cuban missile crisis.President John F.
The move was politically risky for Kennedy, but it proved much more so for Khrushchev. The senior Soviet leadership"never forgave Khrushchev for the humiliation that he presided over that Russia suffered," Hastings says."They understood thoroughly that they got the American missiles out of Turkey, but all they could see was the fact that Russia had been publicly humiliated."
Two years after the Cuban missile crisis, and a year after Kennedy's assassination, Khrushchev was ousted.Robert Kennedy in a news conference at the Bourget airport, Paris, in February 1962.Robert Kennedy in a news conference at the Bourget airport, Paris, in February 1962.For decades, historians relied heavily on Robert Kennedy's own account of the behind-closed-doors discussions during the missile crisis.
When White House tapes from the era were carefully analyzed by scholars years later, it became clear that RFK"was actually among the most hawkish," she says."He was arguing for airstrikes on the missile sites.
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