The book Thirteen Days is Robert F. Kennedy’s account of the thirteen days the world was almost blown up due to nuclear weapons in October 1962. Robert Kennedy was the U.S. Attorney General at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis and his brother, John F. Kennedy was the President of the United States. During Robert’s account of these thirteen days I was informed of the two super powers that challenged each other, The United States and the USSR. The challenge started when the U.S. found Soviet nuclear missiles in Cuba, just 90 miles away from the U.S. state of Florida leaving the U.S. with the hard decision of what course of action should be taken.
This book gives the reader great insight to what was happening between JFK, Ex Comm., Castro,…show more content… President Kennedy then immediately assembled his National Security (Ex Comm.) team including military members to determine a course of action. Both John and Robert Kennedy were determined to get the missiles out of Cuba peacefully to avoid any launching of nuclear weapons. After several days of all options being thought out, administration announced a strict naval quarantine in which the Navy would prevent any type of offensive military weapons from being delivered into Cuba in attempts to stop the assembling of nuclear missiles.
While this policy was thought as less risky than a full scale strike against Cuba it was however not without risk. A blockade is in fact thought of as an act of war, but by calling it a “quarantine” and limiting it to offensive military weapons only, the U.S. gained support from other allied governments to continue on with the…show more content… At the beginning of the book on page 14 we are given a quote by Kennedy that says,” One of the ironic things is that Mr. Khrushchev and I occupy approximately the same political positions inside our governments. He would like to prevent a nuclear war but is under severe pressure from his hard-line crowd, which interprets every move in that direction as appeasement. I’ve got similar problems… The hard-liners in the Soviet Union and the United States feed on one another.” This is an example of why you should step back and put yourself in your enemies’ shoes before you make any extreme decisions, because you may be in the same position that your enemy is