3. The Cuban Missile Crisis
The culmination of superpower tensions, the US reaction to the Cuban Revolution and Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev’s decision to deploy nuclear weapons in Cuba led to what some historians have seen as the most dangerous crisis of the Cold War – the Cuban Missile Crisis. During the 13 days of the crisis in October 1962, the United States and the Soviet Union came close to a direct military showdown for the first...