Kennedy's Decision to Use a Blockade in the Cuban Missile Crisis
During fifty years of the Cold War between the United States and Cuba, the single incident which brought the world closest to nuclear conflict was the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. In the decades since that missile confrontation, historians and political scientists have debated whether the tactics employed by President Kennedy to resolve this dangerous crisis were the most beneficial for the United States in the long run. One of the most controversial tactics used by Kennedy was an air and naval blockade in the waters surrounding the Cuban island. In the short term, it is difficult to argue that this tactic was not the most effective means of resolving the crisis. After all, Soviet cargo ships carrying missiles and components turned back before challenging the US Navy's quarantine line, thus opening the door for the eventual dismantling of the missiles already on Cuban soil.
However, at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, many military leaders and critics outside the government pushed for direct military intervention in the form of air attacks or outright invasion. Some historians have seized upon this issue of direct military intervention to point out that in the long term, this tactic left a thorny problem in the United States' side by leaving Castro in power and free to meddle in international affairs throughout the western hemisphere for decades to come.
After careful examination of both the military and blockade options, as well as a careful analysis of the reasoning the Kennedy administration employed when opting for the blockade, it can be concluded that the President made the right decision the decision in the best interest of the American people and the world.
On September 6, 1962, the Soviet Union secretly deployed a number of intermediate ballistic nuclear missiles in launchers on the island of Cuba as a response to intermediate nuclear missi...