If you ask when the middle and late 20th century will be the most dangerous, and the closest to the demise of mankind, I think many people will blurt out the cuban missile crisis at the first time: the Cuban Missile Crisis. In those days, the two great powers of the United States and the Soviet Union mobilized all their military forces from each other, and nuclear weapons were directly pushed onto the launchers. The two world centers of Moscow and Washington were in a state of panic, and everyone felt that the end was coming.
Thankfully, the clouds from the Caribbean finally dissipated after 13 days of hanging over the world, and both the United States and the Soviet Union eased relations. However, many scholars believe that the United States is not the ultimate winner of this incident, and the Soviet Union not only did not lose but also made a profit.
Speaking of the Cuban Missile Crisis, we have to talk about Cuba. After all, Cuba is the trigger for the whole crisis. So, what kind of country is this Cuba that can make the United States pay so much attention?
The reason is simple, if you open the map and find this place in Cuba, you will be shocked to the point that your jaw will not be closed. Because the geographical location of this island nation of Cuba is extremely close to the United States, only 217 kilometers away from the Florida Peninsula, the United States is just outside.
Such a country was a hardcore ally of the Soviet Union during the Cold War. Cuba has been on the front lines of physical anti-Americanism since 1959, when Castro led guerrillas to overthrow the dictatorship of Batista, an american minion, and allied itself with the Soviet Union. And it is 60 years, rain or shine.
I don't know which master of international relations once famously said: "The sadness of Latin America is that it is too far from heaven and too close to the United States." Indeed, the vast lands of Central and South America continue to live under the interference and infiltration of the United States, controlled by the United States as the lifeblood of the economy, and can only be used as the raw material production base and product dumping ground of the United States, and the people's living standards can be said to be extremely poor, and even Christian missionaries cannot look down and pick up left-wing books to engage in liberation theology.
But the existence of Cuba can be said to tell us very eloquently about the superiority of socialism, because although Cuba, which has practiced socialism, is closer to the United States than anyone else, its average life expectancy is as high as 78 years, its literacy rate has reached an astonishing 99 percent, its medical system has come to the forefront of the world, and its life is better than that of the Latin American countries that are mixed with the United States and engage in capitalism.
But to be honest, Cuba was not very close to the Soviet Union at first, but simply opposed the United States. But for the United States, refusing to honestly allow itself to exploit is already a terrible crime, and it must be snuffed out.
Looking at the anti-American countries in the world, whether it is the Congo in Africa or Venezuela in the near future, the CIA has carried out a coup d'état. But the Cuba in front of us has made the CIA lose face.
For example, the CIA once announced that it would open green cards to all "dissidents" in Cuba in order to incite a wave of opposition in Cuba. As soon as the news came out, Castro directly pulled several large ships of criminals and mentally ill people to the United States, using the United States as an exile place.
In order to highlight its greatness and nobility, the United States could only grit its teeth and accept all these boats, and as a result, the whole of Florida was disturbed by chickens and dogs that could not jump peacefully, and Cuba emptied the population that did not contribute to eating, which greatly saved a lot of money.
Later, the United States planned to assassinate Castro, but because Castro's security work was so good, the killer could not complete the task.
In the end, the United States tore its face and ordered Dulles, the director of the CIA who had a record of subverting Guatemala for 10 days, to go to Cuba to carry out a coup d'état, and as a result, because of the successive mistakes of various departments, the ocean phase of the "Bay of Pigs Incident" was created, and Dulles, who had achieved fruitful results, was dismissed from his post.
Cuba's strength in the forefront of the war against the United States is really impressive to the soviet big brother on the other side of the ocean. After all, compared with the United States' allies in Western Europe, which have a fairly good foundation, the Eastern European countries controlled by the Soviet Union can be described as poor and white, and it is only by relying on the assistance provided by the Soviet Union that they can have the ability to fight with the Western countries.
Now it is rare that the United States has a country at its doorstep that is firmly anti-American and has a good level, and the United States' plan to subvert the Cuban government is already clear.
As a result, from the 1960s onwards, Cuba and the Soviet Union moved closer, and the two sides cooperated frequently in various fields. The Soviet Union also provided Cuba with a large number of interest-free loans and technicians, and vigorously supported the construction of Cuba, turning it into an anti-American outpost.
Strictly speaking, the Soviet Union's national strength in the Cold War was actually inferior to that of the United States. Specifically, it can be reflected in ballistic missiles, and the United States has missile bases in Turkey and other places, which seriously threaten the national security of the Soviet Union. In contrast, although the Soviet Union also had intercontinental ballistic missiles that could directly hit the United States mainland, it was still less than the United States.
Short- and medium-range ballistic missiles are difficult to launch into the United States because they do not have a strong missile base, so once a war starts, the Soviet Union will be very passive. So the Soviet Union always wanted to find a place that could hit the U.S. mainland and build a short- and medium-range missile base.
At that time, Khrushchev opened the map and found that Cuba was really a treasure of feng shui, and the construction of missile bases in this place could be collected by the entire United States. It just so happens that the United States has made an extremely ugly disturbance with Cuba because of the Bay of Pigs incident, so it has intensified the blockade and sanctions against Cuba.
So now Cuba needs the support of the Soviet Union even more urgently. In 1962, the Soviet Union began construction of a strategic nuclear missile base in Cuba.
It has to be said that the Progress of the Soviet Union was indeed rapid, and under the eyes of the United States, it unknowingly built nearly half of the missile launch bases.
However, the United States was able to find it in time, and by October 15, when the missile base was about to be completed, the U2 reconnaissance plane of the United States took pictures of the Soviet base. The news was quickly reported to then-U.S. President John F. Kennedy.
Kennedy was extremely shocked that the Soviet Union had built a nuclear missile launch base on its doorstep, and he soon realized that if the matter could not be handled in a timely, clean, and beautiful manner, his own downfall would be small, and the entire United States could be destroyed.
After pondering for a long time, Kennedy gave a televised address to the world on October 22, noting that the Deployment of Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba had seriously affected U.S. national security, and said that he would send a fleet to surround Cuba, blockade it, and order strategic bombers carrying nuclear warheads to enter Cuban territory for cruise.
The Soviet Union was obviously surprised by Kennedy's actions, but in their first response they insisted that the missiles deployed by the Soviet Union in Cuba were "purely defensive in nature", that the US blockade of Cuba and accusations against the Soviet Union were unacceptable, and that the Soviet Union would respond most violently.
For a moment, a suffocating net covered the atmosphere. All U.S. military bases and armed forces were mobilized, ready to respond to the soviet deployment of nuclear missiles in Cuba. Once the Soviet nuclear warhead fell into the U.S. mainland, the United States would not hesitate to cover the entire territory of the Soviet Union and its allies.
The same is true for the Soviet Union, when the nuclear warhead of the United States comes, the whole of Western Europe and the United States will not live alone.
The stalemate, tense, and unbearable stalemate lasted for four full days, and finally the Soviets sent a handwritten letter from Khrushchev.
In his letter, Khrushchev still expressed that the Accusations of the Soviet Union by the United States were exaggerated, but in the end he suddenly changed his mind and kept frantically suggesting from the inside out that if the United States withdrew from Turkey and could directly hit the short- and medium-range missiles deployed in Turkey, then everything would be negotiable.
At that time, there were indeed many war maniacs in the United States who clamored to die with the Soviet Union and resolutely refused to withdraw their missiles, but President Kennedy really understood the righteousness, and he knew that nuclear war was a lose-lose scene that everyone did not want to see. So he persuaded Congress that, after a series of internal maneuvers and mutual communications, the two sides finally reached an agreement.
On October 28, Khrushchev issued a speech announcing that he would withdraw "ballistic missiles that the United States called offensive" and gave the United States a face, without mentioning that the submission was based on the withdrawal of Turkish missiles by the United States as a reciprocal condition. In short, the Cuban Missile Crisis was successfully lifted, and everyone except the Cubans, who had always been firmly opposed to the withdrawal of the Soviet Missiles, breathed a sigh of relief.
Of course, in order to make up for Cuba's losses, the Soviet Union has indeed been very concerned about Cuba in the later period of the struggle for hegemony.
Soon after, the United States also withdrew its missiles in Turkey, and the two powers lingered on the brink of war for 13 days, eventually each taking a step back.
I have to say that the question of who won the Cuban Missile Crisis has always been a very interesting topic.
At present, most researchers believe that this is a draw, because after this contest, both sides have temporarily removed the security threat to the other side, nothing more than Khrushchev did not mention the exchange terms of the United States in his speech, which was a bit disgraced. But considering that Cuba's missile base was not fully built, the summary is that the United States won face and the Soviet Union won.
Moreover, many people even believe that the Cuban missile crisis is a wonderful operation of Khrushchev in the international political game, because it is impossible to completely bypass the Deployment of Nuclear Weapons by the United States in Cuba, but Turkey's Us missiles are real.
But now, Khrushchev has made up a card out of thin air, and in the end of the contest, he has only lost a project construction fund and a little face, but he has taken away the missiles deployed by the United States in Turkey.
Of course, there are also many people who firmly say that the Soviet Union just lost, because this point of face really has a huge impact. We are not in a position to say anything about this understanding, but here we can assume a little divergently: if it was not the United States but the Soviet Union that won the Cold War, or if the Soviet Union lost the Cold War but did not disappear and remained a powerful country, how would the Cuban Missile Crisis be described today?