Crisis of 1962

The second half of October, 1962, was possibly the most dangerous period in the history of the world: the Cuba Missile Crisis, when for a week and a half the United States and the Soviet Union stood closer to the brink of nuclear war then ever before or since. In the aftermath of the crisis, much study has been given to two fundamental questions: how did the superpowers stumble so close to nuclear war, and perhaps even more important having come to the brink, how did they back down and succeed in avoiding a nuclear exchange? The latter question is the principal focus of this study.

Until recently, the efforts of scholars in the West to understand the events of October, 1962, suffered from a structural onesidedness. American policymakers were readily available for questioning, but Soviet policymakers were not, and the little published Soviet material on the subject could not be regarded as reliable. With the "opening" of the Soviet Union in the Gorbachev era, this has begun to change, and we are now increasingly able to fill in the Soviet side of the picture. Soviet changes also mean that the danger of a future confrontation of the superpowers is greatly reduced, but other nuclear crises will undoubtedly recur in the future, especially as nuclear weapons proliferate into the Third World. The problem of defusing nuclear crises thus remains as critical as ever.

To understand how the crisis ended, it is obviously necessary to have some understa

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Category: History - C