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Analyse the cuban missle crisis
Impacts of the Cuban Missile Crisis
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Can you imagine being afraid of being bombed? Can you imagine going into hiding? On October 16, 1962, the people of America were afraid for their lives. This was a confrontation during the Cold War between the Soviet Union and the United States. The Soviets were said to have nuclear weapons. The American people knew that they would be closer to a nuclear war than ever before. (Wikipedia)
By most historical accounts, the closest the United States has ever come to the brink of the nuclear holocaust occurred during a tense thirteen-day standoff between the Soviet Union and the United States in October 1962 known as the Cuban Missile Crisis. The U.S. was able to avoid nuclear disaster through a show of military power and tense negotiation.(The Struggle Over Policy)
By the spring of 1945, two world superpowers emerged from the rubble of the Second World War: the United States and Soviet Union. Within a year of the end of the war, these two allies had become advisories. During the 1950's, under Nikita Khrushchev, the Soviet Union (USSR) was actively trying to establish a foothold in the Western Hemisphere closer to its enemy, the United States. On New Years Day in 1959 they got their perfect opportunity in Cuba. They had a revolution led by a young guerilla fighter named Fidel Castro. Within a year of the revolution, the Castro government
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fearing invasion from the USA turned to the Soviets for military and financial aid. By the early 1960's, Cuba was a communist state with a growing presence of Soviet military advisors throughout the country.(The Struggle Over Policy)
On October 16, 1962, President Kennedy was shown pictures that revealed Soviet nuclear missile installations on the island. The President felt that he had a nuclear advantage with three hundred land based missiles and Polaris submarines. The Soviet Union was said to have only four to six land based ICBMs and about one hundred short range V-1 type missiles that could be launched from surface submarines. (Wikipedia)
In late July, over sixty Soviet ships were en route to Cuba because Khrushchev devised the deployment plan in May of 1962. Even though President Kennedy was
warned that the ships might be carrying weapons, he dismissed this accusation because he did not believe that the Soviets would try such a thing.
He stated that if the Soviets execute a “hostile move anywhere in the world against the safety and freedom of peoples to whom we are committed, including in particular the brave people of West Berlin, [it] will be met by whatever action is needed” (source). Respectively, war was not the President’s first choice. President Kennedy declared that he himself and government officials “are prepared to discuss new proposals for the removal of tensions on both sides, including the possibilities of a genuinely independent Cuba, free to determine its own destiny” (source). During the Cuban Missile Crisis, America desired peace without war in the Western Hemisphere, but President Kennedy made it clear that the U.S. would fight for it if necessary. Throughout his address, President Kennedy utilized the logos appeal wonderfully to gain the trust of the American and Cuban
It seems that the United States has been one of the most dominant, if not the most dominant, countries in the world, since the Declaration of Independence. Yet, on Monday, April 17, 1961, our government experienced incredible criticism and extreme embarrassment when Fidel Castro, dictator of Cuba, instantly stopped an invasion on the Cuban beach known as the Bay of Pigs. President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, his advisors, and many Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officials, made the largest error of their political careers. Once the decision was made to invade Cuba, to end Castro and his Communist government, Kennedy and his administration were never looked at in the same light nor trusted again. Russian leader Nikita Khrushchev was affiliated with Castro, and the two countries made many military decisions together. As Kennedy and the United States tried to stop Cuba and Russia from becoming a threat to the world, an invasion was planned out and executed. The results were a disaster. The Bay of Pigs invasion was the largest military mistake ever made by the United States government and the CIA in the 20th century and brought America to the brink of war with Cuba and Russia. The Bay of Pigs invasion was not a quick decision, many hours of meetings and conferences occurred before President Kennedy gave permission for the attack. President Kennedy was inaugurated on January 20, 1961, and immediately wanted to take the initiative with the Soviet and Cuban governments (Pearson 12). Russia was already under Communist control, and Fidel Castro took over the Cuban government with heavily armed troops and policeman. Castro’s policemen filled the streets, and he ran the newspapers, as well as many assembly buildings (Frankel 60). At the beginning, Castro did not run a Communist government, but once he began to meet with Russian leader, Nikita Khrushchev, Castro started a Communist government (Crassweller 23). Max Frankel, writer for the New York Times, summarizes the situation in Cuba by saying, “Little by little, the vise tightened. Little by little the free people of Cuba came to realize it could happen there. The grim facts of life on an island that became a police state” (Frankel 59). Every day, Castro came closer to controlling every aspect in life in Cuba. Fidel Castro even took control of the schools in Cuba, throwing out any teacher who he thought...
...roposed that if the U.S. removed its missiles from Turkey then Russia would remove its missiles from Cuba. Robert Kennedy wanted Soviet missiles and offensive weapons removed from Cuba under UN inspection. Later that same day, a U.S. U-2 was shot down over Cuba. Bombardment of Cuba was the initial reaction, but JFK calmed everyone down. The next day on October 28, Russia agreed to withdraw their missiles from Cuba. If they had not, war may have begun.
The U.S.’s relationship with Cuba has been arduous and stained with mutual suspicion and obstinateness, and the repeated U.S. interventions. The Platt agreement and Castro’s rise to power, served to introduce the years of difficulty to come, while, the embargo the U.S. placed on Cuba, enforced the harsh feelings. The two major events that caused the most problems were the Bays of Pigs and Cuban Missile Crisis.
1 The missiles were being brought to Cuba by Russian leader, Nikita Khrushchev, who guaranteed President Kennedy that the missiles would never be used as a weapon against the United States. This is a lie. Khrushchev fully intended to use the missiles as a mechanism of defense against the United States and as a way to further pursue a relationship with Fidel Castro, who was the President of Cuba at the time. The United States needed to find a way to stop the development of missile sites without causing a break out of violent warfare.
The first official diplomatic relationship between the Soviet Union and Cuba began developing during World War II, in 1943. With the establishment of the first Soviet embassy by Maxim Litvinov, stationed in Havana, Cuba; this was after Cuba gained its independence from the United States in 1902 and the Russian Revolution in 1917. Litvinov was a Russian revolutionary and a conspicuous Soviet ambassador. Due to communist action taking place within Russia, Cuba temporarily terminated the relationship. Russia saw Cuba as unimportant territory, mainly because of how close it was to the United States, its size, and its remoteness away from Russia; making it harder to defend . The relationship was officially confirmed and expressed when Cuban representatives visited Moscow, Russia later in 1943. Fifteen years later, Fidel Castro, a communist revolutionary and politician who promised and ensured Cubans freedom, led what is known today as the Cuban Revolution. Often referred to as the “26th of July Movement”, the armed revolt that began in 1956 and lasting until ’59, resulted in the successful overthrow of Fulgencio Batista, a brutal Cuban dictator sponsored by the United States. With the use of guerilla warfare, Castro over threw Batista. After the fall and exile of Batista, Castro was sworn into office as prime minister of Cuba and transformed the country into an important aspect of the Sovie...
The Soviet Union and the United States were very distant during three decades of a nuclear arms race. Even though the two nations never directly had a battle, the Cuban Missile Crisis, amongst other things, was a result of the tension. The missile crisis began in October of 1962, when an American spy plane secretly photographed nuclear missile sites being built by the Soviet Union in Cuba. JFK did not want the Soviet Union and Cuba to know that he had discovered the missiles, so he made his decisions very secretly. Eventually, Kennedy decided to place a ring of ships around Cuba and place missiles in Turkey. Eventually, both leaders superpowers realized the possibility of a nuclear war and agreed to a deal in which the Soviets would remove the missiles from Cuba if the US didn't invade Cuba. Even though the Soviets removed took their missiles out of Cuba and the US eventually taking their missiles out of Turkey, they (the Soviets) continued to build a more advanced military; the missile crisis was over, but the arms race was not.
The situation continued to escalate from this point. Kennedy met with the Soviet Ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin on several occasions, and he consistently claimed that Soviet Chairman Nikita Khrushchev assured him that "there would be no...offensive weapons placed in Cuba."4
When President Truman authorized the use of two nuclear weapons in 1945 against the Japanese in the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki to end World War II, the nature of international security was changed irreversibly. At that time, the United States had what was said to have a monopoly of atomic bombs. Soon thereafter, the Soviet Union began working on atomic weaponry. In 1949, it had already detonated it first atomic bomb and tensions began to heat up between the two countries. With the information that the Soviets had tested their first bomb, the United States began work on more powerful weapons1, and a fight for nuclear superiority had begun.
...he Cuban missiles in exchange for a promise by U.S. leaders not to invade Cuba. The
According to Elaine Tyler May in her article Security against Democracy: The Legacy of the Cod War at Home, the cold war made an impact on Americans state of mind. During the nuclear arms race, many Americans became paranoid about their own country as well as foreigners . Instead of trying to get rid of this situation and mediating it , America decides to join this race, which only fuels the fire. At the same, American citizens were living their lives in fear everyday. Citizens were preparing themselves in case of an attack, as a result of the government doing nothing to try to protect America. Elaine Tyler May also states that the media back then was only fueling this phobia to grow. For example, the Los Angeles Times showing hypothetical bomb targets if the Soviets were to attack in Los Angeles. Some Americans, who were considering the possibility of a nuclear war, modified their homes into concrete to resist an atomic blast, created backyard bunkers, or even sheltered in their basements. In addition, whether you were for or against the buildup of nuclear weapons, fear would be present.
The Cuban Missile Crisis was a major event in U.S History that almost led to nuclear destruction. It was over a period of thirteen days in which diplomats from the U.S and the Soviet Union were trying to reach a peaceful resolution so that they wouldn’t have to engage in physical warfare. The crisis was the hallmark of the Cold War era which lasted from the 1950’s to the late 1980’s. The Cold War was a power struggle between the U.S and Soviet Union in which the two nations had a massive arms race to become the strongest military force. The U.S considered Communism to be an opposing political entity, and therefore branded them as enemies. Khrushchev’s antagonistic view of Americans also played a big role in the conflict. The Cold War tensions, coupled with a political shift in Cuba eventually lead to the military struggle known as the Cuban Missile Crisis. The Cuban Missile Crisis was the point of most tension and near collapse causing the Cold War to almost shift from a passive and underground struggle to a violent and catastrophic one.
This evidence shows how Kennedy looked into the crisis and spoke to Soviet Foreign Minister Gromyko. Only to discovered that his statement was false. Kennedy got Soviet Foreign Minister Gromyko to give his input on the missile, but it turned out to be false. This was quite alarming. Not as alarming as this. “New missile sites… more than 1,000 nautical miles. Each of these missiles, in short, is capable of striking Washington, D. C., the Panama Canal, Cape Canaveral, Mexico City, or any other city in the southeastern part of the United States, in Central America, or in the Caribbean area.” This quote gives information about out how far this missile would go will cause such a panic because that range could/ will destroy the nations and all around it. Which is some shocking things He made the choice to believe that the world will be safe and will understand. Though his tone was informative and worried. Also, the soviets agree that they have been wrong and should fix or least try to compromise to make sure everything was okay. “ (Kennedy, Cuban Missile
By the early 1960’s the U.S. had cut off ties with Cuba and was engaging to overthrow the Castro regime. In 1961 the Bay of Pigs Invasion, a fumbled CIA attempt to crush the government, inflamed
The tropical island of Cuba had been an object of empire for the United States. Before the Missile Crisis, the relationship between Castro and the US were strained by the Bay of Pigs occurrence in 1961. This was where counterrevolutionary Cubans were American funded and tried to invade Cuba and overthrow Castro. However, the counterrevolutionaries failed. Castro then found an alliance with the Soviet Union and an increase of distrust that Castro had on the US. On January 18, 1962, the United States’ Operation Mongoose was learned. The objective would be “to help the Cubans overthrow the Communist regime” so that the US could live in peace. Consequently, Castro informed the Soviet Union that they were worried about a direct invasion on Cuba, thus longed for protection against th...