Cuban Embargo Research Paper

The United State’s relationship with Cuba has been a complicated one. Close economic allies for much of the early 19th century, the relationship turned sour following the rise of Fidel Castro and communism in Cuba after the 1959 Cuban Revolution. Soon afterwards, in 1960, the Cuban Trade embargo was put in place by President Eisenhower to try to isolate Cuba and force the demise of Castro’s communist regime. U.S. presidents have taken different paths in regards to their attitudes and policies towards Cuba, yet Castro has been able to maintain his grip on power while numerous U.S. presidents have been elected, assassinated, impeached, and retired. During this time, the embargo has remained a constant, a symbol of the United States’ failure

trade embargo came into effect, the embargo became embedded in the politics of the Cold War. The U.S. had long been Cuba’s main trading partner, but after Castro came to power, the Soviet Union, the United States’ ideological enemy, became the island’s main supporter. This early Cold War period was also the era of the rise of the Imperial President, a time when presidents, working with select members of the executive branch and a few congressional leaders, were able to create Cuba policy with little intrusion from other domestic actors. From the imposition of the embargo by way of Executive Order, the failed invasion at the Bay of Pigs, and attempts at restoring normal relations during the 1970s, the president largely made all of the decisions during this

During the presidential campaign, Kennedy had accused Eisenhower of not doing enough about Castro. In fact, Eisenhower might have launched an invasion himself, had a proper excuse presented itself. Instead, he left an advanced plan for Kennedy, who was strongly inclined to pursue it. The failure at the Bay of Pigs can be mostly attributed to Kennedy’s poor understand of Cuba and the fact that the locals on whom the U.S. was counting on to revolt firmly supported Castro and the ideas of the Cuban Revolution. In essence, Kennedy had planned to free those who did not want to be freed. In what can only be described as a foreign policy disaster, of the roughly fourteen hundred Cuban exiles that landed on the morning of April 17th, 1961, two hundred were killed and the rest were captured by the Cuban military, which had been awaiting the attack. Intended to provoke popularity for an uprising against Castro, the Bay of Pigs fiasco instead gave Castro a military victory and a permanent symbol of Cuban resistance to American aggression. Somehow, Kennedy’s popularity actually grew after the incident , as the American people were happy that he was at least trying to do something to combat the communist forces just a hundred or so miles of the coast of the continental United States. Following the