The Cuban Missile Crisis can be seen as a turning point in global nuclear armament. It has been said that the event brought the world closer to nuclear war than anything before or since (Kross, 32). The attitude of American government officials toward the escalation of Cold War brinkmanship that led to the Cuban Missile Crisis is highlighted by John Foster Dulles' statement, "neutrality is an immoral and short-sighted concept... politics of calculated risk is the ability to get to the edge without entering into war.” (Purcell, 38). The attitude of the American public was that of a general consensus in the fear of the inevitability of nuclear war repeated Gallup polls over the years 1950s” which consistently found that 65% of adults were worried 'a lot' and 25% 'somewhat'” about the impending nuclear apocalypse. Public opinion in Cuba was very similar nuclear altercation and feared an attack by the United States, collaborating with the Russians to instill fear in the American people as a preventative measure. Castro himself said in an official statement: “I am here to tell you that the Russians did not want and do not want today the war." However, both sides were operating under the assumption that the other country was taking further steps towards war. While the Soviet nuclear weapons movement officially initiated the Cuban Missile Crisis, U.S., Cuban, and Soviet action jointly contributed, and all of these parties in some way saw the crisis as a turning point, both for escalation and for reduction of the arms race. no to plagiarism. Get a tailor-made essay on "Why Violent Video Games Shouldn't Be Banned"? Get an original essayThe United States was not innocent in the actions that culminated in the Cuban Missile Crisis. One of the major contributors was the humiliating Bay of Pigs invasion. Originally planned as a covert CIA operation, the project turned into a full invasion using Cuban exiles (Kross, 33). However, without direct U.S. military support, the invasion was doomed to fail unless the exiles could inspire a spontaneous uprising. As history goes, the invasion was a complete failure and a personal embarrassment to the United States and President Kennedy. This, among other factors, contributed to drastic U.S. intervention in the Caribbean. Operation Mongoose was one of the factors that led to the crisis, being a primary pressure on the Castro government to seek help from the Soviet Union. A number of high-ranking members of the U.S. government directly oversaw this operation, including Robert Kennedy, McNamara, Brig. General Edward Lansdale, and General Maxwell Taylor (Kross, 34). The intensity of this operation is well illustrated by three planned but never executed secondary operations: Operation Bingo, Operation Cover Up and Operation Free-Ride. In summary, these include such things as inciting war with Cuba through organized Cuban aggression, the use of American “psychological operations,” and the delivery of Cuba Pan American Air-Way tickets to various Latin American destinations. It is easy to see the pressure such a high-profile operation would place on the Cuban government. Aside from that, there was the persistent threat that US Jupiter missiles in Türkiye posed to the USSR. Indeed, during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the United States and NATO allies loaded planes with nuclear weapons in Türkiye. Ready to act at any time,these pilots were on high alert, ready to drop their bombs on Moscow. The perceived threat from the USSR is well illustrated in an article by Allison and Graham (2012), in which they highlight the awkward position in which Kennedy and the United States found themselves: war with Cuba may be necessary in the short term in order to avoid a long-term conflict with the USSR. The aggression against the small island nation could be seen as just another step in incremental hard-line measures (like Turkey's Jupiter missiles) to reduce the threat of a third world war. Although brinkmanship was at its core, the aggressive operations and verbal threats against Cuba that led to the crisis were of sufficient intensity to merit, in their view, the involvement of the USSR. The crisis itself shows how far the United States would be willing to go to prevent the danger posed by a nuclear-capable Cuba. “The next few days brought the United States and the Soviet Union to the brink of nuclear war. When the Ex-Comm tapes became available in the 1990s, at the end of the Cold War, they confirmed that there had been several moments when a further command or small move by either country could have unleashed a holocaust nuclear". (Hanes) The Cuban action that led to the crisis is more widely accepted by the US public. From their perspective it was clear that the Cubans were preparing these missiles as an act of aggression and not in defense. Furthermore, Cuba had to consider the fact that the risk of nuclear war has never been closer to us. However, although they view these missiles as defensive, they also present an additional risk of nuclear war close to home and in the US Kennedy declared in his speech: “The purpose of these bases can be no other than to provide a nuclear strike capability against the West. "(The Cuban Missile Crisis Fuels Fears of War, 763) The perceived threat by the American people and government of a socialist government in the Western Hemisphere is illustrated even more clearly by Castro's statements regarding his desperate situation, saying: " What did Kennedy say?...he said that the new situation in Cuba was intolerable for the United States, that the American government had decided it would no longer tolerate it; he had said that peaceful coexistence was seriously compromised by the fact that "Soviet influences" in Cuba were altering the balance of power, destroying the agreed balance." (Castro) The very presence of a socialist Cuban government was enough of a threat to merit an escalation of the Cold War by the United States. The USSR, of course, was not blameless for the escalations that contributed to the Cuban Missile Crisis. Khrushchev had a lot of influence over the United States because he could blame the United States for having more missile stations near the Soviet Union. This also gave him reason to place missiles in Cuba. It has been well said that “locating Cuba was a logistical dream for Khrushchev and a nightmare for the United States. Khrushchev was furious that US missiles with nuclear warheads were openly positioned in Türkiye, Italy and the United Kingdom, within easy reach of the Soviet Union.” (Hanes). It follows that, since Khrushchev had the ability to strike targets in both Western Europe and North America (via long-range missiles from the Soviet Union or nuclear-capable submarines), the placement of warheads in Cuba could only have incited the anxiety among the American people. . Further illustrating the American perception of Soviet action, President Kennedy directly asked Nikita Khrushchev “to abandon this course ofworld domination and to join in a historic effort to end the dangerous arms race and transform human history.” (The Cuban Missile Crisis Fuels Fears of War) These sentiments were reciprocated by Khrushchev in a public letter, accusing Kennedy of “an act of aggression that pushes humanity into the abyss of global nuclear missile war.” US Actions towards Cuba It was again the Soviet Union that sent the missiles to Cuba. The Soviets claimed they installed the missiles to intimidate the United States; however, if this were the case, this would not have been expected to happen in secret. Therefore, it is easy to see that the way they delivered the missiles was designed to be perceived by the United States as an act of aggression, not intimidation. The crisis itself has revealed the true colors of all sides of the conflict. All sides had to compromise to avoid the inevitable confrontation, which could easily have escalated into a conflict of world war proportions. The United States had a clear goal of forcing the Soviets to remove the nuclear missiles they had placed in Cuba (Brown). Likewise, the USSR was planning to ask the United States to withdraw its Jupiter missiles from Türkiye. Neither side wanted such drastic action on their part to resolve this situation. The United States initially conceived a policy to quarantine Soviet military equipment in Cuba (Cuban Missile Crisis Fuels Fear of War), but this policy was quickly reversed by the Soviets, who officially rejected the quarantine (Missile Crisis Cubans fuel fear of war). The United States also made it clear that any missile launched from Cuba would be regarded as coming from the Soviet Union itself (Cuban Missile Crisis Fuels War Fears). The Soviet Union's intentions were made clear by their official compromise. The agreement was that “If the United States promised not to invade Cuba… the missile bases would be demolished and the Soviet Union would promise not to send any more offensive missiles.” (Cuban Missile Crisis Fuels Fear of War) However it soon became apparent that this was not the sole purpose of the agreement when Khrushchev demanded that the United States remove its missiles from Turkey. The conflict revealed that all countries were forced to agree, or agree to disagree, so as not to go to nuclear war. The resolution of the conflict did more than just mitigate a single dangerous event, but had lasting repercussions on the world economy. both the public perception of the danger of nuclear war and changes in sentiment and government policy on both sides. After the Cuban Missile Crisis, public opinion changed significantly. When the same Gallup poll was redone in May 1963, it was found that only “12 percent were worried 'a lot' and 31 percent were worried 'somewhat'.” (Purcell, 38) This shows that as the United States got through the crisis, the public realized that there were not as many risks as they thought, that countries would be forced to understand their differences. The paranoia subsided, and ideas and rumors no longer spread as fast as before. While fears of nuclear war still existed, they had eased considerably as the tension of the Cuban Missile Crisis eased. Due to the Cuban Missile Crisis all three countries changed their sentiment towards peace with each other. Publicly all three world powers have identified their goals for moving towards peace. Castro, in his official statement on.