Student Question
What caused the Cuban missile crisis?
Quick answer:
The Cuban Missile Crisis was triggered by the discovery of Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba by American U-2 spy planes, posing a direct threat to the U.S. This situation arose due to the Soviet Union's desire to balance the nuclear power disparity, as the U.S. had missiles capable of striking the Soviet Union. Tensions were exacerbated by previous political conflicts, including U.S. trade embargoes on Cuba and Soviet Premier Khrushchev's aggressive diplomacy with President Kennedy.
This depends on how you mean the question.
The most immediate cause of the Cuban Missile Crisis was the fact that US U-2 spy planes detected Soviet missiles in Cuba. The US felt that this was too much of a threat to US soil and therefore Pres. Kennedy started to take actions to force the Soviets to remove the missiles.
If you take another step back, the cause of the crisis was the fact that the Soviet Union did not have missiles that could hit the US mainland while the United States did have missiles that could hit the Soviet Union. This imbalance made the Soviets uneasy and led them to try to even it out by putting missiles in Cuba.
What was the Cuban Missile Crisis?
The Cuban Missile crisis was the closest the United States came to nuclear war. President John Kennedy had recently met with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev in Paris...
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when the Soviet leader browbeat him unmercifully. Because Kennedy acted so cowed in the encounter, the Soviets placed OFFENSIVE nuclear weapons in Cuba aimed at strategic points in the United States. The United States had previously placed an embargo on Cuban sugar and tobacco in an attempt to eliminate the Cuban leader, Fidel Castro. Castro's response, probably at Soviet urging, was to declare himself a communist and to accept aid from the Soviets.
Soviet missiles in Cuba were discovered by flyovers from U-2 Airplanes. The discovery was kept top secret; so much so that when President Kennedy ended a planned trip early, the public was told that he had a cold and needed to return to Washington. Later, Kennedy informed the nation in a nationwide address that Soviet Missiles were place in Cuba aimed at the U.S.; and that should the missiles be launched, the U.S. would retaliate. The entire world held its breath.
Kennedy blockaded Cuba to prevent further missiles or Soviet supplies from entering Cuba. He did not refer to his action as a blockade, as this would have been an act of war; rather he called it a "quarantine." After several very tense days, a deal was struck by which the Soviets withdrew their missiles from Cuba, and the U.S. withdrew missiles it had based in Turkey aimed at the Soviet Union.