J.F. Kennedy
In the fall of 1962, the United States and the Soviet Union came as close as they ever would to global nuclear war. Hoping to correct what he saw as a strategic imbalance with the United States, Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev began secretly deploying ballistic missiles in Cuba. Once operational, these nuclear-armed weapons could have reached cities and military targets in most of the continental United States. In what became known as the Cuban Missile Crisis, American forces prepared to attack Cuba, and compelled the Soviets to remove not only their missiles but all of their offensive weapons.
Jimmy Carter
On Nov. 4, 1979, Iranian students stormed the U.S. embassy in Tehran and took about 70 Americans captive, triggering the most profound crisis of the Carter presidency, an ordeal that lasted 444 days. Mr. Carter first tried sanctions and diplomacy to free the hostages, but eventually approved a high-risk rescue operation that ended in a shambles when three helicopters malfunctioned in a sand storm and another crashed into a transport plane while taking off. Eight servicemen were killed and three more were injured. In September, 1980, the Khomeini government decided to end the matter, but waited to release the hostages until minutes after Ronald Reagan was inaugurated.
Ronald Reagan
On Oct. 23, 1983, a truck bomb ripped through the U.S. Marine barracks in Beirut killing 241 U.S. servicemen in a single strike. It was a huge embarrassment for Mr. Reagan's administration, which was caught off-guard, and for the president, who had sent the Marines there over the objections of his Defence Secretary Caspar Weinberger. The White House went into damage control with a range of explanations about how the attack could not have been predicted or prevented. The Americans did not retaliate, and four months later, Mr. Reagan ordered the withdrawal of U.S. troops, who had been stationed in Lebanon to provide stability during the civil war between Muslims and Christians.
George H.W. Bush
Just before dawn on Aug. 2, 1990, an army of some 100,000 Iraqi troops supported by tanks stormed into Kuwait and seized the country in just five hours. The international community rejected Baghdad's argument that Kuwait was historically part of Iraq and demanded that it withdraw immediately. Baghdad refused, even after being slapped with United Nations economic sanctions, and instead formally annexed the oil-rich emirate as one of its provinces.
Baghdad seemed to believe it had been given the go ahead by the U.S. ambassador to Iraq, but the White House disagreed and the occupation ended some six months later, when a U.S.-led international coalition drove Iraqi troops back across the border. The coalition's actions caused some controversy, however, because of the extent of the military sweep and its destruction.
Bill Clinton
In the spring of 1999, president Bill Clinton launched a war to reverse Serbian dictator Slobodan Milosevic's "ethnic cleansing" of Albanians from the province of Kosovo. The Balkan wars that had plagued the West for a decade confronted Mr. Clinton with the gravest foreign policy crisis of his presidency.
On March 24, 1999, NATO, in accord with the U.S. administration, ordered air attacks on what was then Yugoslavia. A few months later, NATO peacekeepers were in Kosovo, beginning a process that drove Mr. Milosevic's forces back and led to a fragile peace.
NATO's actions, which resulted in a significant number of deaths, were criticized by some as illegal under international law and by others as an effort to short up Clinton's presidency, which had been undermined by scandal.
Compiled by staff
