The Cuban missile crisis occurred in 1962 when the Soviet Union, under the leadership of Khrushchev, attempted to gain an advantage in the cold war by placing medium-range nuclear missiles in Cuba, which under Castro had gradually moved into an alliance with the Soviet bloc. The missiles would have threatened the American mainland—Cuba is only 90 miles (145 kilo-metres) from Florida, and constituted an escalation in international tension. In Soviet eyes, however, the placement of such missiles merely redressed an imbalance caused by the USA having similar weapons on the Soviet periphery, most notably in Turkey. John F.
Kennedy, the president of the USA, risked international opprobrium and even nuclear conflict by insisting on their removal, and used the US Navy to enforce a blockade of all Soviet ships trying to approach Cuba. Some analysts think that this was the nearest the world has come to a global war since 1945. In the event the Soviet Union gave in under the threat, and this retreat finally swung the Soviet military against Khrushchev, enabling his enemies in the politburo to oust him from power a year later. The political significance of the crisis was considerable; among other things it demonstrated the way in which a US president can ignore the other elected branches of government and commit US forces in a major conflict situation. Despite legislation such as the 1973 War Powers Act, the US Congress had not been asked to approve military action against an enemy in advance of that action for the entire time period between the Second World War and the Gulf War against Iraq in 1991.
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