Analyzing Khrushchev's Justification Of The Cuban Missile Crisis

Using the sources I have provided I will now write my own analysis on what I think on whether the Soviets were justified in placing missiles in Cuba. To start off in think it is important we look at both America and the Soviets view on the crisis.

American perspective: America was slight unstable by October 1962, as the Berlin Wall had gone up; Kennedy, a relatively young and new leader, had suffered an embarrassing defeat at the Bay of Pigs incident in 1961, when the United States tried to get Castro out of power by starting a uprising. This plan failed and was embarrassing for Kennedy. The tensions of the Cold War were high. The United States was interested in Cuba for economic reasons, when Castro’s nationalist beliefs clashed with those

Kennedy was campaigning about the missile gap between the United States and Soviets and how Kennedy was preparing to change this. This action caused the Soviets to fear that the United States had real intentions of attacking them as well as attacking Cuba. Once Kennedy had come into power he found out that the missile gap was the complete opposite as to what he had previously thought and that the United States had nearly ten times more nuclear warheads then the Soviets; Kennedy went on to state that the United States would continue making nuclear warheads. This placed the Soviets in a situation where they felt as though they were the targets and that they did not have the strike force to counter the United States if a nuclear war was to

After the Bay of Pigs, Khrushchev saw that Kennedy was weak and unable to pull through the invasion thus Khrushchev felt he might be able to get away with placing missiles in Cuba. Khrushchev thought that if Kennedy was threatened he wouldn’t react or be able to stand his ground against the Soviets thus it would be a hugely beneficial victory for the Soviet leader. Khrushchev had been taking a fair amount of criticism from the Chinese government and needed to demonstrate himself. In a letter to United States Khrushchev stated: “The main thing was that the installation of our missiles in Cuba would, I thought restrain the United States from precipitous military action against Castro’s government.” He also stated in this letter: “The Americans has surrounded our country with military bases and threatened us with nuclear weapons and now they would learn just what it feels like to have enemy missiles pointing at you.” Through this we see how Khrushchev didn’t have one particular reason for the placement of missiles but rather a number of