Another reason that caused it to become a crisis was that Kennedy had to rebuild his reputation after he looked weak, due to The Berlin Wall and The Bay of Pigs. At the point of The Berlin Wall Kennedy looked extremely weak. He did nothing to stop the wall from being placed there and did nothing to remove it. He knew that he was going to look weak, but he believed a wall was better than a war. At The Bay of Pigs Kennedy once again looked weak. He supplied arms, equipment and transport for 1.400 anti-Castro exiles and invaded Cuba and tried to overthrow Castro. They were then met by 20,000 Cuban troops; and Cuba slaughtered them. This showed to the Soviets and Cuba, due to the failed invasion from the USA, that they weren’t willing to go directly to war. Kennedy now needed to rebuild his reputation by winning the Cuban missile crisis by doing as much as he could. But Kennedy wining through fighting would have led to World War 3; so he had to find another way of winning!
The limited communication between USA and USSR caused many problems. There was never any direct communication between Khrushchev and Kennedy; so things weren’t clear to either of them what was happening.
A clear indication of the lack of communication was during the blockade. USA didn’t know whether the USSR ships had had the message to stop their ships and turn around or if they were just ignoring the command. The USA troops therefore decided to fire flares. The USSR, due to the lack of communication, didn’t know what this meant and they could have taken it as a sign of war beginning.
However, the US generals shot these flares and rockets against Kennedy’s command! The generals obviously wanted to fight, as it’s what they do best, but because of their ignorance, by not listening to Kennedy, they could have caused the world to be destroyed. The USA generals also wanted revenge on Cuba for shooting one of their planes down. It’s normal to want to get revenge, however they should have listened to Kennedy who, for the time being, wanted to hold back on declaring war.
Cuba shooting down the US plane caused it to become a crisis as, by doing this, they gave the USA the picture that they were willing to fight to win. If they then did begin fighting then it would have ended up in a world war!
The USSR generals also had a major part to play in causing it to become a crisis! During the quarantine they had a soviet submarine placed between a soviet ship and a US ship, this means that the USSR aren’t giving the Americans a chance to fight back, if they do decide to hit; which could have given the USA the impression that they were planning on attacking – again this could have been avoided if they had more communication present. Also, the USSR generals put a lot of unneeded and unwanted pressure on Khrushchev to send a second letter, which basically went against the first letter that he had sent. This could have made the USA think that they were time buying, in order to attack, or throw them off track, in other words, the USA do not know what is happening on the other side; again due to the lack of communication! This caused it to become a crisis because neither country really knew what the other country was really planning on doing, so if they acted on what they were thinking the other was doing, then they could have got it wrong and therefore would fight for no reason; and fighting would then cause a world war!
In conclusion, the main thing that caused the Cuban Missile Crises to be an actual crisis was down to the lack of communication between the two super powers. All of the reasons above which resulted in it being a crisis link back to the lack of communication! If they had improved the communication between themselves; then many of these things above could have been avoided. Also, the generals of all the countries forced it to become a crisis; as they were acting on their own instinct and what they wanted to do; rather than the plans that had been made up for a reason!