Events of the Cuban Missile crisis

• When the USA discovered the Soviet Union's missile sites on Cuba, the USA was torn on how best to respond: attack while it could or do everything possible to avoid war.
• The Soviet Union saw Cuba as a fix to a key strategic problem: the USA had missiles close to the Soviet Union (e.g. in the UK ), but the Soviet Union had no missiles close to the USA
• Cuba saw Soviet missiles as a great way to prevent the USA from invading Cuba again. In September 1962, Soviet ships carried nuclear warheads and missiles to Cuba
• In October 1962, US spy planes photographed the Cuban missile sites and the secret was out. The US public learned that they were now in range of Soviet nuclear missiles. There was panic.
• During the Cuban Missile Crisis the world came very close to nuclear war. There was a need to ensure this did not happen again, so relations between the United States and the Soviet Union actually improved after the crisis, leading to a period of cooling tensions, known as détente
• After USA discovered the soviet missiles in Cuba, they put a naval blockade on Cuba to prevent more coming in. In response the Soviet Union considered the blockade as an act of aggression and that their ships would ignore it.
• The Cuban Missile Crisis showed how easily a nuclear war could start. The USA initiated a move to détente – a less stressful, more informed relationship between the USA and the Soviet Union
• Following detente, a direct communication link between Washington and Moscow so that they knew what eachother were doing and it was not like an ' iron wall '
• In 1963, the USSR and USA agreed to the Limited Test Ban Treaty, which restricted testing of nuclear weapons expect underground
• In 1967, the outer space treaty banned superpowers from testing nuclear weapons in space. This would prevent attacks from space
• In 1968, the nuclear non-proliferation treaty made that superpowers could not share nuclear weapons with other countries. This would reduce the likelihood of nuclear weapons being used
• After the crisis, the Soviet Union looked weak as the world did not know that the USA removed missile bases from Turkey and Italy
• After the crisis, Communist Cuba survived as the USA assured that they would not invade Cuba again