The Cuban Missile Crisis was a crucial test for Truman's Containment policy. Cuba had been previously USA allied and ruled by dictator Batista; however the communist takeover in 1959 by Fidel Castro had brought direct problems to the USA. Cuba was known was the `back yard' of USA, located just off the state of Florida, and therefore, and when the communists took over the island, USA was facing a direct test of whether it's containment policy worked, and is a test for it's validity against a neighboring communism country.

The Cuban Missile Crisis differed from the Korean War because the missile crisis was a direct communism threat to USA's national security, yet the Korean War was fought just for the name of containment and to merely stop the spreading of communism, therefore was more of a test to USA.

President Kennedy had five options of treating and applying containment to the problem of soviet nuclear warfare aimed towards USA.

-Do Nothing

-Surgical Air Attack

-Invasion

-Blockade

-Diplomatic Pressure

Carefully pondering at these options, Kennedy chose to perform a blockade to ban the USSR bringing in any further military supplies to Cuba. After further negotiation, Khrushchev and Kennedy did agree on the withdraw of the weapons, and therefore realized the peril of nukes, therefore improved in relations and moved on in creating peace and avoiding further use of nuclear warfare. However, although the outcome of the crisis seemed to be beneficial to both Khrushchev and Kennedy, USA and USSR, but the concept of containment had failed. No matter how friendly the two leaders got, Cuba still became a communism state.

In conclusion, the Cuban Missile Crisis was a demonstration of failure of containment and did not succeed to halt the spread of communism. Although relations improved, communist still managed to advance and successfully retrieved a base just outside of USA. All of this signaled that the application of containment to the Cuban Missile Crisis was unsuccessful.