Cuban Missile Crisis
Caribbean nuclear confrontation
The Cuban Missile Crisis was a thirteen-day confrontation in October 1962 between the United States and Soviet Union over Soviet nuclear missiles deployed in Cuba.
The standoff brought the superpowers to the brink of nuclear war before the Soviets agreed to remove the missiles.
The phrase now serves as shorthand for any high-stakes diplomatic showdown: This trade dispute is becoming our own Cuban Missile Crisis.
- thirteen daysQuantity between twelve and fourteen days
- Cold WarProlonged East-West standoff
- arms raceEscalating weapons accumulation between nations
- brinkmanshipPushing conflicts to disaster's threshold
- eyeball to eyeballIn direct confrontation
quarantine · Fidel Castro · NATO · Berlin Wall · deterrence · United States · Jupiter · mutual assured destruction · red button · fallout shelter · nuclear weapons · Khrushchev · Bay of Pigs · nuclear · John F. Kennedy · Cuba · naval blockade · air strike
- 1962 EventsJohn Glenn, Johnny Carson, Rolling Stones, Lawrence of Arabia, Dr. No
- Cold War ConflictsKorean War, Vietnam War, Berlin Wall, Bay of Pigs, Prague Spring
- 20th CenturyWorld War I aftermath, atomic bomb, New Deal, Nazi Germany, Spanish Civil War
- US HistoryAmerican Revolution, US history, Civil War, George Washington, Abraham Lincoln
- Sixtieshippies, Beatles, Woodstock, Vietnam War, JFK
- Cold WarBerlin Wall, Iron Curtain, arms race, Warsaw Pact, Eastern Bloc
Cuban Missile CrisisWorld War III
Hypothetical global nuclear conflict
nuclear war · Korean War · Vietnam War · hot war · nuclear holocaust
Cuban Missile Crisisdétente
Easing of strained relations
Helsinki Accords · peaceful coexistence · thaw · rapprochement · glasnost
Cuban Missile CrisisMarshall Plan
Postwar American economic assistance
Yalta Conference · Potsdam Conference · UN peacekeeping · alliance building