The Law of War

ordered operation to assassinate Castro. Preparations to install Soviet nuclear missiles
in Cuba were undertaken in response.
Alarmed, Kennedy considered various reactions, and ultimately responded to the
installation of nuclear missiles in Cuba with a naval blockade and presented an
ultimatum to the Soviets. Khrushchev backed down from a confrontation, and the Soviet
Union removed the missiles in return for an American pledge not to invade Cuba again.
Castro later admitted that "I would have agreed to the use of nuclear weapons. ... we
took it for granted that it would become a nuclear war anyway, and that we were going
to disappear."
The Cuban Missile Crisis (October–November 1962) brought the world closer to nuclear
war than ever before. The aftermath of the crisis led to the first efforts in the nuclear
arms race at nuclear disarmament and improving relations, although the Cold War's first
arms control agreement, the Antarctic Treaty, had come into force in 1961.
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