Essay On The Cuban Missile Crisis

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This paper is about the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. It was a confrontation between the United States and the Soviet Union over the presence of missile sites in Cuba (Medina 2002, 12). The Cuban Missile Crisis was kicked off when President John Kennedy heard rumors that the Russians were building nuclear missile sites in Cuba. Really the tension between Cuba was growing when Cuba turned towards communism in 1962, after the bay of pigs attack failed (Galegroup.com 2003). But at the time, Kennedy learned that the sites were being built whepn his U.S. intelligence experts found photographs taken by a U-2 drone plane. The few days after this information was discovered, President Kennedy told 7 million American citizens that nuclear war might …show more content…

After American citizens spent 6 days in fear, wondering if bombs would be launched from Cuba; President Kennedy announced that the quarantine presumed to have worked and that the crisis appeared to be over. However soon after this announcement, Soviet Leader Khrushchev decided to aggravate the blockade by sending a cargo ship filled with weapons down Cuba’s way restocking American fears. (Hester-Hall 1987, …show more content…

Castro refused to allow US administration on Cuban territory, and Khrushchev refused to agree that the Soviet IL-28 Beagle bombers were weapons. Discussions through the UN finally led to Khrushchev agreeing to remove the bombers in exchange for dismissing the quarantine/blockade (Galegroup.com 2003). Although the Cold War was dominated by two superpowers, it had other key participants in 1962. Just 4 years earlier, Cuba waged a revolution in which Fidel Castro had ousted, the dictator Fulgencio Batista. Shortly thereafter, Cuba quickly began moving towards the Russians and became a model of socialism that should be saved from the U.S. imperialism. But to the U.S., Cuba could open the way for Soviet expansionism into South America (Medina, Loreta M. 2002,