Cuban Missile Crisis colonies and European affairs but holding that the Western Hemisphere was in the US sphere of influence. The Kennedy administration had been publicly embarrassed by the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion in May 1961, which had been launched under President John F. Kennedy by CIA-trained forces of Cuban exiles. Afterward, former President Dwight Eisenhower told Kennedy that "the failure of the Bay of Pigs will embolden the Soviets to do something that they would otherwise not do." The half-hearted invasion left Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev and his advisers with the impression that Kennedy was indecisive and, as one Soviet adviser
Brinkmanship War was the Cuban Missile Crisis (15.10.62 - 28.10.62), a 13-day conflict between the US, USSR and Cuba. The US and the USSR, each armed with nuclear weapons, both practiced brinkmanship during this conflict. The Cuban Missile Crisis was not only the closest the US and USSR came to an armed conflict during The Cold War, but also, to this day, the "closest the world has come to [a full-scale] nuclear war." The crisis was caused by the placement of Soviet nuclear weapons in Cuba, an island that was within the "Sphere of Influence" and launching distance of the US.