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The Cuban Missile Crisis : The Cold War

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. The Cuban missile crisis was one event that helped ignite the Cold War. It was a thirteen day confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union over Soviet airborne missiles deployed in Cuba. It was the closest the Cold War came to escalating into a full blown nuclear war. It was an intense, 13-day political and military standoff in October 1962 over the installation of nuclear-armed Soviet missiles on Cuba, just 90 miles from US. The Cuban Missile Crisis was really about the location of weapons and the desire of both the Americans and Soviets to contain each other’s power in the world. The American advantage in weaponry led to the Soviets desire to counter it. Strategic weapons in Cuba were the best way to counter that. Until …show more content…

By contrast, Nikita Khrushchev gave Castro a warm welcome in the USSR, which further worried the White House. Khrushchev knew that the USA had nuclear weapons based in Italy and Turkey aimed at targets in the USSR. He felt that this provided justification for the USSR to also place its nuclear missiles abroad. In the summer of 1962, Khrushchev personally issued an order for Soviet missiles to be shipped to the island of Cuba. Americans voiced their concerns about Soviet military activity in Cuba. In October 1962, an American U2 spy plane took a series of photographs over Cuba. The photos revealed a nuclear missile site being built by the Soviets. Every major American city was within range of nuclear missiles launched from Cuba. Kennedy’s response to Soviet actions brought the world the closest it had ever been to the point of nuclear war.
1b.
1c. The main events that marked the end of the Cold War were the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989 and the breakup of the Soviet Union in 1991. The Berlin Wall had been the main symbol of the Cold War. It had kept people from Eastern Europe, which was communist, from escaping to the West. When the Wall came down along with other border barriers, it meant that people in the East could now leave. This pretty much meant the communist system was dead. The death was confirmed in 1991 when the Soviet Union fell apart. This made the remainder of the country much

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