Seminar paper from the year 2018 in the subject Politics - General and Theories of International Politics, grade: 1,3, University of Lisbon (Faculty of Social and Human Sciences), course: North American Policy, language: English, abstract: The Cuban Missile Crisis symbolizes a real showdown between two superpowers - the United States and the Soviet Union. Until today, the puzzling events occurred in the crisis prompt numerous questions, particularly in the scientific area. This research paper, therefore, aims the conduction of illustrating the main happenings during the crisis in order to be able to analyze them by using the three Conceptual Models developed by Graham T. Allison and Philip Zelikow. Allison and Zelikow use these models to give an adequate explanation of how the process of decision-making proceeds, taking the crisis as a case study and answering three main questions: Why did the Soviet Union decide to place offensive missiles in Cuba? Why did the United States respond to the missile deployment with a blockade? Why did the Soviet Union withdraw the missiles? For a better evaluation, this research paper thus, contextualizes firstly the Cuban Missile Crisis by explicating occurrences in the Cold War. Secondly, the suspenseful thirteen days during the Cuban Missile Crisis will be illuminated. Thirdly, in the last chapter, the models are outlined and used to answer the three puzzling questions stated above.

核戦争の瀬戸際という極限状態における「国家の決断」を、冷徹な理論で解剖した知のドラマです。三つのモデルを通して紐解かれる歴史の裏側は、単なる記録を超えた知的興奮を呼び起こし、巨大組織の論理と個人の野心が火花を散らす人間社会の宿命を鮮烈に描き出しています。 映像版が手に汗握る緊迫した体験を創出する一方、本書はテキストならではの緻密さで、画面から零れ落ちがちな構造的ジレンマを浮き彫りにします。ドラマチックな演出の背後にある国家の計算を理論で読み解く快感は視覚を超えた洞察をもたらし、我々を真の歴史の目撃者へと誘うでしょう。