Tom Bilyeu

With a flight time of only minutes, they could strike New York, Washington, or Chicago.

For 13 days, the entire world held its breath as the two nations escalated towards nuclear war.

The US Navy blockaded Cuba.

American forces went to DEFCON 2, which is one step away from nuclear war.

Soviet ships steamed towards the blockade line.

Nuclear submarines lurked just beneath the waves.

Multiple times, individual commanders on both sides were just seconds away from launching preemptive strikes

that would have ended civilization.

Finally, through public and private negotiations between JFK and Khrushchev, a deal was reached and both nations stepped back from the brink.

Despite the fact that disaster was averted, historians overwhelmingly view the Cuban Missile Crisis as one of the clearest modern examples of what's known as the Monroe Doctrine.

The Monroe Doctrine is the rule that no rival superpower can have military or strategic footholds in the Americas.

And the US will enforce that rule violently if necessary.

Listen, at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the United States was already living under the threat of Soviet nuclear weapons.

Missiles in Cuba did not radically change the balance of power, but superpowers take their spheres of influence very seriously, and they will not tolerate a rival establishing a strategic foothold in their own hemisphere.

Since the Berlin Wall fell in the early 90s, however, the US has been a solo superpower.

So for a long time, we've just turned a blind eye to the strategic moves that China has been making in the Americas with their Belt and Road Initiative.

But those days are now over.

For many, this is going to feel like a very confusing new frontier.

But the reality is, this is just a return to normal.

Most people get lost in the slogans of the day that we're living in right now.