"It is insane that two men, sitting on opposite sides of the world, should be able to decide to bring an end to civilization" -President John F. Kennedy. President Kennedy says this when the Cuban Missile Crisis was first beginning to unravel. The Cuban Missile Crisis was 13-day confrontation, in 1962, between the United States and the Soviet Union. The United States secretly had filmed footage of missiles being built on the island of Cuba. John F. Kennedy, who was president at that time, had to take a big leadership role in making decisions that concerned over 80 million lives of American citizens. The three main leadership roles and decisions Kennedy had to make were make an initial plan of attack, approach the problem of the missles being …show more content…
He knew that if the United States did nothing, 80 million Americans could lose their life. On the opposite side, if forces did something wrong, they could risk going into a full out war with the Soviet Union and other countries. He met with his advisors in secret for several days to discuss the problem and choose what would be the best decision concerning the wellbeing of the United States. Finally, after late nights and early mornings, the decision was to place a naval blockade, or a ring of ships, around Cuba. President Kennedy informs the citizens of the United States of this decision, which starting the crisis or panic of the United States citizens. The quartines main focus was to not allow the Soviet Union to bring anymore weapons into Cuba. They did this by commuting through radio with passing ships and sending an exception group over to the that ship. If the ship held weapons on it, that ship was forced to leave the quarantine area. If the ship refused to be inspected, they would fire upon that ship, they were to take no risks in this plan. It was remarkably dangerous, but in the end was effective, as shown in the movie “Thirteen Days.” Almost all of the ships had stopped or turned around and heading back to Cuba, except six. Overall, President Kennedy had to make the first hard decisions of how they should take this crisis