"The crisis years" of 1960-1962 are remembered as a peak of the Cold War, an apogee of the bipolar confrontation. Many consider them even more dangerous than the Korean War, when the military forces of West and East clashed and almost slipped into a global conflict. The early 1960s were all the more frightening since the two superpowers, the United States and the Soviet Union, were engaged in a fierce nuclear arms race, and two more states, Great Britain and France, had developed small nuclear arsenals of their own. By the end of the period the edge in this race clearly belonged to the Un…
