What were the impacts of the Cuban Missile Crisis

   USA and Russia also signed a series of agreements; one called the Anti Ballistic Missile treaty. In this treaty, the USA and USSR agreed that each country could only have two anti-ballistic missiles and only two ABM deployment areas. This meant that these two countries could not easily attack or defend using nuclear weapons as a first resort. The USA also agreed to sell grain to the USSR.

   The other agreements were discussed in the Strategic Arms Limitation talks. At the first talk in May, 1972, The USA and USSR essentially agreed on freezing the existing levels of strategic ballistic missile launchers (operational and under construction) at a certain number agreed on by both parties. The primary goal of the second talk was to replace the provisional agreement (SALT 1) with a

long-term comprehensive treaty providing broad limits on strategic offensive weapons.

   One of the most important impacts of the Cuban Missile Crisis was that on the public worldwide. This incident showed the whole world that it was now possible to literally blow a country to pieces using nuclear weapons. People would have only just come to the realisation that if a nuclear war had started, then it could have easily been the end of existence for major parts of Russia and America. Like Kennedy said, “this could be the third world war and the last world war”.

   This crisis showed that the USSR were perhaps getting their way with communism. They now had a country within the sphere of influence, right next to America. This led people to think that because communism was so close to the USA, it could very easily spread to parts of the USA and eventually throughout the whole country.

   The crisis showed (publicly) that the Russians had lost face and had taken the missiles from Cuba without any terms (this is what the public thought). This may have led countries to see USA as being the stronger political setup as they had defeated the Russians in this crisis.