The Cuban Missile Crisis: A Realist's Perspective

The Cuban Missile Crisis: A Realist Perspective

On Monday, October 15, 1962, an American U-2 plane taking reconnaissance photographs over Cuba discovered something that drastically affected world politics. In vacant fields, Soviet military experts were constructing launch sites for long-range ballistic missiles. The Soviets had placed MRBMs and IRBMs in four different missile sites on the island. In all, there were to be forty launch pads set up throughout Cuba, with capabilities of destroying every U.S. city, except Seattle (Brussel 6). These missiles posed serious threats to the security of the United States. The two countries had been battling it out for hegemony ever since World War II. However, President Kennedy and the ExComm were not about to tolerate offensive Soviet acts in the Western Hemisphere, as they violated the United States’ sphere of influence (Brussel 3). It was clear that the Soviets had to be stopped, but how? What were the reasons behind these missiles in C...