New Delhi: Miscalculation, misinformation and misperceptions in the fall of 1962 almost brought the two superpowers of the time, the US and the USSR, to the brink of nuclear conflict, as the sandy beaches of Cuba became home to a mini-arsenal of Soviet weaponry.

It was on 16 October, 1962, when McGeorge Bundy, National Security Adviser (NSA) to then US President John F. Kennedy (JFK) walked into the White House armed with ‘proof’ of Soviet missile deployment in Cuba. The Caribbean island nation had just a few years earlier witnessed a revolution, which brought Communism to the Western Hemisphere.

Bundy’s ‘proof’ set off alarm bells across the Kennedy administration. Any aggressive action could have led to the potential eruption of a thermonuclear war not just in the Caribbean but in

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