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Eventually, lawmakers and political campaigners in the United States successfully exploited the fear of a “missile gap” developing between U.S. and Soviet nuclear arsenals in the 1960 presidential election, which brought John F. Kennedy to power over Eisenhower’s vice president, Richard Nixon. The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 served to remind both sides of the dangers of the weapons they were developing.

* Republished from [https://history.state.gov/| Office of the Historian, United States Department of State]