How Did Kennedy Solve The Cuban Missile Crisis

The Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union produced an already tense period of time that was further exacerbated by the placement of Soviet missiles in Cuba. President John F. Kennedy handled the threat of these missiles in the best way that he could. In October of 1962, A pilot named Richard Heyser flying an American U2 spy plane discovered medium-range missile sites being constructed in Cuba. After an analysis of photographic evidence, the sites were identified as possessions of the Soviet Union. President Kennedy recognized the threat these weapons posed to the United States. If launched, they would take a mere ten minutes to reach the nation’s capital- Washington D.C. It was a threat that was far too close to home.

Although they were fundamentally different, neither nation wanted to go to war, but both would do whatever it took to protect themselves and their people. As a result of President Kennedy’s board of advisors, his calm demeanor, and diplomatic behavior when speaking with Nikita Khrushchev, the Cuban Missile Crisis was a crisis no more. Given the circumstances, what President Kennedy did was the best that he could have done. It is known today that that is what it took to avoid further crisis at the time, so any deviation from it could have been disastrous. Kennedy did not try to insult or offend the Soviets, he did not severely threaten them, and he did not try to provoke them. He was calm and kept the nation’s best interests in

The telegram that Germany tried to send to Mexico prior to the United States’s involvement in World War I determined the course of world history for that period of time and the communications between Khrushchev and Kennedy determined the course of world history during the 1960s and the Cold War. The Zimmerman Telegram proposed an alliance between Germany and Mexico under the condition that Mexico enter the war, and it provoked the United States, while the letters between Kennedy and Khrushchev allowed the United States to remain calm since there was a stream of communication in which agreements and peace could be reached. The Zimmerman Telegram angered the United States and was a contributing factor in their involvement in World War I because it said that if Mexico entered the war, then they could take back territories they had lost to the United States. This was to be, of course, with German assistance if they won. The telegram also declared Germany’s intentions to continue unrestricted submarine warfare. In both cases, communication changed history. Had Khrushchev and Kennedy not corresponded as diplomatically as they did in the 1960s, nuclear war may not have been avoided, and had the Zimmerman Telegram not been intercepted and decoded in the early 1900s, the United States may not have entered World War I. One time a