In October 1962 Cold War came close to nuclear war. Ever since scholars, political leaders and military officials have pondered and debated how close we were to Armageddon. The causes, courses and consequences of the crisis continue to generate debate and disagreement among academics and surviving participants on all sides.

The aim of the module is to explore the debates surrounding the Cuban Missile Crisis, and examine how historians, political scientists and students of crisis management analyse the events of 1962. A second aim is to show how the study of the crisis illuminates various aspects of scholarship. What, for example, can recent historiography tell us about the opportunities and challenges for historical method, especially now that the Cold War is over? Third, the possible lessons of the crisis for diplomacy and crisis management are studied not just in the Cold War context, but in the age of weapons of mass destruction which we still inhabit.