The Cuban Missile Crisis: An Examination of the Effort to Avert Catastrophe

Abstract

This project examines the history of the Cuban Missile Crisis from the perspective of once the crisis came to be, how the actors who had antagonized one another into the situation strove to the same end: to avoid mutually assured destruction. I offer a narrative of the events as they played out while focusing on the perilous nature of unintended consequences and the ways in which the central actors carefully navigate the thirteen day crisis.