CHAOS IN CUBA

When one of the US's closest neighbours agreed to host Soviet nuclear missiles, it triggered the most dangerous crisis in world history

- EMMA SLATTERY WILLIAMS

In October 1962, the world held a collective breath as the US and the Soviet Union teetered on the brink of nuclear war. The Cuban Missile Crisis, as it became known, lasted less than a fortnight, but it was the closest the two great superpowers came to direct confrontation.

The tensions that had led to the crisis had been building for some time. Cuba, which is just 90 miles from the coast of Florida, had previously been a close ally of the US, with the Americans having a large business presence on the island. On 1 January 1959, however, the relationship was thrown into turmoil when the Cuban dictator, Fulgencio Batista, was toppled in a revolution. Whereas the US had backed Batista due to his staunch opposition to communism, the country's new leader, Fidel Castro, wanted to eradicate the US presence on the island altogether, seeking to create a government that would serve the nation's poor.

Castro set about implementing socialist reforms, nationalising many US-owned businesses and gaining the support of the Soviet Union in the process. This only seemed to confirm US fears that its neighbour had ambitions of becoming a fully-fledged communist state - at a time when the US foreign policy was focused on stopping communism from spreading. By January 1960, President Dwight D Eisenhower had severed all diplomatic ties with Castro, and the US government set about finding a way to get rid of him.

A FAILED INTERVENTION

In April 1961, after months of planning, Eisenhower's successor John F Kennedy sanctioned a covert invasion of Cuba in a bid to overthrow Castro. Rather than using their own forces, the Americans would sponsor an army of 1,500 Cuban exiles to land on an area of coastline known as the Bay of Pigs and provoke an anti-communist uprising. Comprising members of political groups bitterly opposed to the Castro regime, the CIA-trained troops would be assisted by air strikes on Cuban military targets.