Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center has created this site as a resource for the Cuban Missile Crisis. Designed to help policymakers, students, and interested citizens draw lessons from these critical events half a century ago, this site not only provides background on the crisis that brought the world to the brink of nuclear disaster in October 1962 but also offers tools to understand how it can inform contemporary policy.
From 1962 to 1964 Edwin Martin served as Assistant Secretary of State for Inter-American Affairs, guiding the Kennedy administration’s policies toward Latin America. During the missile crisis, he favored the blockade option and helped to brief members of the Organization of American States (OAS) to obtain their backing for it.
Credit: Harry S. Truman Library. Accession number: 83-137