During his presidency from 1961 to 1963, John F. Kennedy faced three major foreign policy crises related to the Cold War: the Bay of Pigs invasion, the Berlin Wall crisis, and the Cuban Missile Crisis. The Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961 was an unsuccessful CIA-backed effort to overthrow Fidel Castro in Cuba that embarrassed the U.S. The Berlin Wall crisis from 1961-1989 saw the Soviet Union construct the Berlin Wall to stop East Germans from defecting to the West. Finally, the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962 brought the U.S. and Soviet Union to the brink of nuclear war over Soviet missiles placed in Cuba but was eventually peacefully resolved through negotiations.