After many long and difficult meetings, Kennedy decided to place a naval blockade, or a ring of ships, around Cuba. The aim of this "quarantine," as he called it, was to prevent the Soviets from bringing in more military supplies. He demanded the removal of the missiles already there and the destruction of the sites.
Following his election in November 1960, President John F. Kennedy learned of the invasion plan, concluded that Fidel Castro was a Soviet client posing a threat to all of Latin America and, after consultations with his advisors, gave his consent for the CIA-planned clandestine invasion of Cuba to proceed.
The missile sites, he announced, would be dismantled immediately. The peaceful resolution of the crisis is considered to be one of President Kennedy's greatest achievements.
The Cuban Missile Crisis had ended the previous day, October 28, when Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev acquiesced to Kennedy's demands, agreeing to remove missiles from Cuba if the United States would promise not to invade Cuba and secretly remove missiles from Turkey.
The Bay of Pigs invasion was the failed attempt by US-backed Cuban exiles to overthrow the government of Fidel Castro.
Though Kennedy is most to blame in terms of the increasing in hostility in the region, Khrushchev was the individual that created the crisis as it existed. Kennedy's actions were a direct cause of Soviet interference, yet Khrushchev's decision to place nuclear weapons on the island is the cause of the crisis.
Kennedy did not want the conflict to escalate and refused to send more aid than what was already in the pipeline.
And the person who likely did more than anyone else to prevent that dangerous day from becoming an existential catastrophe was a quiet Soviet naval officer named Vasili Arkhipov. On that day, Arkhipov was serving aboard the nuclear-armed Soviet submarine B-59 in international waters near Cuba.
At the peak of the crisis on Oct. 27, 1962, Kennedy agreed to "give assurances against an invasion of Cuba" and to call off the U.S. naval quarantine in return for Khrushchev's agreement to remove the missiles under U.N. supervision and not to reintroduce them.
The Soviets announced they would remove their missiles from Cuba on Oct. 28, ending the standoff. A letter to Kennedy from Khrushchev detailed the agreement that the missiles would be removed from Cuba in exchange for a US promise not to invade.
After many long and difficult meetings, Kennedy decided to place a naval blockade, or a ring of ships, around Cuba. The aim of this "quarantine," as he called it, was to prevent the Soviets from bringing in more military supplies.
Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev decided to agree to Cuba's request to place nuclear missiles there to deter future harassment of Cuba. An agreement was reached during a secret meeting between Khrushchev and Fidel Castro in July 1962 and construction of a number of missile launch facilities started later that summer.
Khrushchev agreed to remove missiles from Cuba if the United States promised not to invade Cuba and to eventually remove missiles from Turkey. Kennedy agreed. The United States secretly removed missiles from Turkey. Khrushchev openly removed missiles from Cuba, ending the Cuban Missile Crisis.
Cuba's alliance with the Soviet Union was the main reason the United States viewed Castro as a security threat–a fear that was arguably vindicated during the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962.
On April 17, 1961, 1,400 Cuban exiles launched what became a botched invasion at the Bay of Pigs on the south coast of Cuba. In 1959, Fidel Castro came to power in an armed revolt that overthrew Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista.
The Bay of Pigs invasion failed for several reasons including poor planning and execution by the CIA, which oversaw the operation. The CIA underestimated the strength of the Cuban military and the level of popular support for Fidel Castro's government.
In 1961, the US government put Jupiter nuclear missiles in Italy and Turkey. It had also trained a paramilitary force of Cuban exiles, which the CIA led in an attempt to invade Cuba and overthrow the Cuban government.
This action would have turned the Cold War into a hot nuclear war. The leaders of the two superpowers – Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev and President Kennedy —were able to overcome the inertia of groupthink by their advisors and be calmer and cooler than everyone around them to prevent a catastrophe.
It derives its name from the location of the invasion, the Bahía de Cochinos (Bay of Pigs), also known to Cubans as the Playa Girón (Girón Beach), on Cuba's southwestern coast.
Because of his decision not to launch a retaliatory nuclear strike amid this incident, Petrov is often credited as having "saved the world".
Three years after his death, Director of the American Research and Archival Institution, Tom Blanton while commenting on the move of Arkhipov said; “A man called Vasili Arkhipov saved the world.”
Kennedy awoke to a political and security nightmare. At 9 A.M., McGeorge Bundy, his National Security Adviser, informed him that a U-2 reconnaissance mission over Cuba had photographed Soviet medium range ballistic missiles, nuclear capable weapons with a range of 1,200 miles.
Ambassador Stevenson's early suggestion of negotiating a missile swap helped set the stage for the ultimate resolution of the dangerous crisis 11 days later, after President Kennedy agreed with Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev to trade U.S. Jupiter missiles based in Turkey for the withdrawal of the newly installed ...
The compromise embarrassed Khrushchev and the Soviet Union because the withdrawal of U.S. missiles from Italy and Turkey was a secret deal between Kennedy and Khrushchev. Khrushchev went to Kennedy thinking that the crisis was getting out of hand. The Soviets were seen as retreating from circumstances they had started.