Cuba and the Missile Crisis
On 16 October 1962, President John F. Kennedy learned that the Soviet Union was building bases in Cuba for ballistic missiles that could destroy major US cities. In the days that followed, US officials focused nearly all their attention on strategies for removing the Soviet missiles, on Soviet motives, and on the Soviet Union's reaction to the naval quarantine. Cuba was the locus of this most dramatic superpower confrontation, but Cuban perceptions, motives, and reactions were largely ignored.