The Castro Question and the Cuban Missile Crisis

Abstract

As the defining moment of the Kennedy Administration and a key watershed in the development of the Cold War, the Cuban missile crisis must also loom large in any analysis of Anglo-American relations in this period. In the minds of the key policy-makers on both sides of the Atlantic the missile crisis was closely linked to the problem of Berlin discussed in the previous chapter. Both Macmillan and Kennedy feared that Khrushchev’s goal in placing missiles in Cuba might be to press for some form of trade over Berlin. Nevertheless, although the crisis had broader ramifications for the waging of the Cold War, when judging the British role in October 1962 it is important always to have in mind Kennedy’s core perception of the Cuban problem. Here was a direct threat to the security of the United States, involving a Soviet incursion into the Western hemisphere. As such, it had the gravest potential domestic repercussions for the president. In this sense it was not a crisis in which from Kennedy’s perspective the Anglo-American relationship could expect to occupy centre stage.