The Cuban Missile Crisis In 13 Days

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The docudrama ‘13 Days’ depicts the conflicts between the United States and the Soviet Union which nearly ended in a cataclysmic crisis; widely known as the Cuban Missile crisis. The course of events and the escalation of the crisis during the intense 13-day period in October 1962 are conveyed to the audience through the perspective of US political leaders. The crisis begins as U-2 spy planes evidences that Soviet leader, Khrushchev, had intermediate-range missiles deployed to Cuba in secrecy and is in the process of activating them. The movie surfaces the conundrums faced by President Kennedy in deciding appropriate actions to be undertaken, such that the missiles in Cuba are removed without resorting to war. Audiences are acquainted with the various complexities involved in the decision making processes, as President Kennedy not only had to deal with the antagonistic Soviet Union, but also disagreements within his own administration.
At the start of the movie, photos of the medium-range ballistic Soviet missiles in Cuba are revealed to President Kennedy. This new information the United States possessed was unbeknownst to the public, press and the Soviets themselves. Therefore, a team of advisors known as exComm, including special assistant to the President, Kenneth O’Donnell, Robert Kennedy, and Joint Chiefs of Staff, are assembled to discuss the next course of action privately. The various public administration theories of decision making are useful in analysing the president and his team’s various deliberations on actions that should be taken to tackle the crisis as portrayed in the movie. Ideally, the President should have adopted the rational comprehensive approach in his decision making process; engaging a systematic ana...

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...attack Cuba and the Soviet Union violently. Thus, the President furthers his main objective of avoiding war with Soviet Union by asserting his legitimate power, seeing that he possesses the most power out of all the members in the exComm.
Incrementalism refers to
Khrushchev’s finally accepts the proposal the of removing Soviet missiles out of Cuba in exchange for United States removing its missiles from Turkey in a few months. Perhaps Khrushchev’s acquiescence can be explained by the political-bargaining model, which predicts that parties involved in a disagreement, where the states are incredibly high, would be motivated to take any necessary steps via a bargaining process to reach a resolution.

Movie reveals that the crisis was escalated not just by the Soviet Union, but also the inability of the American presidential unit to work cohesively on the same page.

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