After extensive consultation with his foreign policy and military advisers, Kennedy blockaded Cuba on October 22, 1962. The two sides stood on the brink of nuclear war, but Khrushchev capitulated six days later and the missiles were dismantled.

It became a hot point of Cold War relations after the US trained Bay of Pigs invasion by Cuban rebels, and the Russians installed nuclear missiles in Cuba. The US and the USSR almost went to war, before the Russians backed down and removed the missiles.