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The Cold War: The Causes Of The Cuban Missile Crisis

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The Cuban missile Crisis was a tense period in the Cold War that lasted from October 16, 1962 to October 28, 1962, that started when the U.S.S.R. put missiles on the island of Cuba. U.S. President John F, Kennedy, and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev both battled to have nuclear superiority over one another and to try to resolve the conflict, which resulted in a U.S. victory having the missiles on Cuba being removed and a strengthened image for President Kennedy and the United States as a whole
On October 15, 1962, a 13-day political and military standoff began that is known as the Cuban Missile Crisis. After The Cuban Revolution the Cuban leader, Fidel Castro began to anger American officials because he executed people who resisted him and …show more content…

So the U.S. had an invasion planned by the Eisenhower administration but it had not been launched. Newly elected President John F. Kennedy felt that it would be a mistake to cancel an operation designed by the previous administration. However, Kennedy would not allow U.S. troops or U.S. air support to back up the invasion. It was a grave mistake. On April 17, 1961, the rebels landed on the Bay of Pigs on the south side of Cuba. The invasion was quickly domed because of no U.S. air support. It was an embarrassment for the new president Kennedy and it showed what many people thought he was, young, inexperienced, and soft on The Communist problem. Many people attacked him for missing such a good opportunity to remove Fidel Castro from power. Nikita Khrushchev saw that Kennedy did not supply planes and troops as a sign of instability and weakness in him and he urged to press him to make mistakes to make the Soviet Union and Communism look stronger to the world than the U.S. and Capitalism. Kennedy and the CIA planned another operation to try to remove Castro form power. The operation was called Operation Mongoose. The purpose was to weaken the Cuban government through sabotage and other means but they …show more content…

The U.S. military wanted an invasion but Kennedy countered saying it would be a bloody and terrible battle for both sides coming off with fresh wounds from World War 2. Both sides really did not want a war to begin and both superpowers were trying to get the upper hand in the arms race. But negotiations kept going and President Kennedy and Khrushchev both sent letters and radio messages to try to resolve the conflict before war sprung. Thus, the most tense part began wan both sides readied their armies because they thought war would happen. The doomsday clock had begun. However, the Kennedy administration worked hard. Even Kennedy’s brother Robert Kennedy negotiated with the Soviet ambassador Anatoly Dobrynin They negotiated through the night and reached an agreement that could possible benefit both sides. Robert Kennedy stated that the U.S. would call off the quarantine if the Soviet Union would remove the missiles from Cuba and stop their shipments to it. First, they needed to make sure the leaders approved and revised it so no miscommunications would happen and someone would get the wrong idea and begin world nuclear war. President Kennedy said something a little more different. He said the U.S. would call off the quarantine and promise not to invade Cuba if the Soviet Union disassemble the missiles on the island and remover them under U.N. (United Nations) inspection. Khrushchev also wanted to have the U.S. remove their

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The Kennedy administration would give it another try in 1961 and 1962 with Operation Mongoose which would even further put strain on the United States and Cuban relationship. During the one year period Operation Mongoose and the Cuban Missile Crisis would take center stage. It was brought to the attention of the administration by way of a U-2 spy plane that the Soviet Union was supplying materials and constructing nuclear missile sites on the island of Cuba. (Figure 2, Atomic Archive)

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One option during the Cuban Missile Crisis was to go into an all out nuclear war. None of the countries wanted this option, but it was still possible. This is true because in Document C it says, “The most important thing for us is to get an agreement as soon as possible.” This proves that both the USSR and the US wanted to come to a quick

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This was due to an incident called the Cuban Missile Crisis. The crisis was a result of the USSR putting nuclear weapons in Cuba. The, Cuba would be in range to hit the US with weapons of mass destruction. The incident lasted only a few days until the Kennedy administration defused the ticking time bomb. Though a great charismatic leader, one operation puts a blemish on JFK’s report card.

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McNamara states that although President Kennedy wanted to keep the nation out of war, there was a clear division between the cabinet on whether we should have invaded Cuba or not. McNamara also reveals that he later found out that we had attempted to assassinate Castro under a number of occasions, under the Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson administration. Nations were tense and on the verge of chaos, and McNamara reveals that the only reason we escaped nuclear war was because we were lucky. Also, McNamara later found out that in January 1962, there were 162 nuclear warheads in Cuba at the time of the crisis, and not only was President Kennedy fully aware of it, but he was willing to accept that Cuba would have been obliterated if anything were to have happened to any of those missiles. In the end we got missiles out without war, but McNamara states that the human race needs to think more about killing and conflict and realize the repercussions of it.

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Jack was involved Bay of Pigs Invasion which, occurred on April 17, 1961 where 1,500 troops of Cuba, deported at the Bahia de Cochinos (Bay of Pigs) on the southern cost of Cuba. Their mission was to fall down the government of Fidel Castro by inciting encourage to rebel among the Cuban people. This mission complete failure. The unsuccessful invasion stands out as one of the major mistakes of Kennedy 's presidency.

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In an effort to stop communism from spreading, the United States and its allies practiced containment. Containment is the act of keeping something harmful under control, this meant that the United States and its allies will get involved if they needed in order to stop communism from spreading. The U.S and its allies managed to help several countries from falling into communism, but they also suffered their hardships and lost many men during a war to protect their allie, South Korea. On February 1946, the United States, State Department received a telegram, the telegram seemed to give of two warnings.

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On 28 January 1961, President Kennedy was briefed, together with all the major departments, on the latest plan (code-named Operation Pluto), which involved 1,000 men landed in a ship-borne invasion at Trinidad, Cuba, about 270 km (170 mi) south-east of Havana, at the foothills of the Escambray Mountains in Sancti Spiritus province. The reason they wanted to do it that way was because Trinidad had good port facilities, it was closer to many existing counter-revolutionary activities, it had an easily defensible beachhead, and it offered an escape route into the Escambray Mountains. When that scheme was rejected by the State Department, the CIA went to propose a new plan. On 4 April 1961, President Kennedy then approved the Bay of Pigs plan, because it had an airfield that did not need extending to handle bomber operations, it was farther away from large groups of civilians than the Trinidad plan, and it was less "noisy" militarily, which would make any future denial of direct US involvement more

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He refused to send troops and ammunition because he thought that we were wasting more money on the war than on our economical problems. On April 17, 1961 through April 19, 1961 The Bay of Pigs was a failed military invasion of Cuba undertaken by the Central Intelligence Agency. The purpose of the Bay of Pigs invasion was that a group of 1,500 Cuban exiles were to be sent to invade the Bay of Pigs sea and the plan was to to overthrow Cuba’s communist leader Fidel Castro and his revolution. The plan ended up being a fail considering that it just made the matter of situation even worse because it caused the “Cold War” the government and J.F.K issued the “Bay of Pigs” invasion to stop Fidel Castro and his revolution(Helicher

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Also, in February of 1962 he ended all trade with Cuba which still stands today. On October 16th President Kennedy was informed of the missiles being placed in Cuba from the Soviet Union. Six days later, October 22nd Kennedy Informed the United States public about the issue. My fellow Americans, with a heavy heart, and in necessary fulfillment of my oath of office, I have ordered -- and the United States Air Force has now carried out -- military operations with conventional weapons only, to remove a major nuclear weapons build-up from the soil of

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The United States did not like this because it started to interfere with the trading. In any event, the destruction of the Maine, by whatever exterior cause, is a patent and impressive proof of a state of things in Cuba that is intolerable.1 When the sinking of the USS Maine happened it caused the US to realize how bad the problem was in

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The Cuban Missile Address is delivered October 22nd, 1962 in the Presidential office through a major radio and television address (Podell, Anzovin, and States United 705). Historically, it is worth mentioning that United States had attempted to overthrow Fidel Castro, who was at the time Prime Minister of the Republic of Cuba, in at least two occasions known as the Bay of Pigs Operation and Operation Mongoose, because of his communist regime and close relationship with the Soviet Union (Pious). Then, after the Bay of Pigs incident, Fidel Castro urged Nikita Khrushchev, the Secretary General of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, to send support and weapons to Cuba, because of the fear of another attack to his person/regime, Nikita did by sending missiles capable of carrying weapons of mass destruction, hence, this major crisis that lasted 14 days ending October 28, 1962 (Deinema and Leydesdorff). In addition, the target audience for this speech is the American people as President starts his speech with the phrase, “Good evening, my fellow citizens” (Kennedy); however, the secondary audience would be the Cuban people, whom he describes as captive people, the Soviet Union leaders, whom he directly addresses and even quotes, and Fidel Castro of course (Kennedy). As noted above, the cultural, socio-political context is important to understand the seriousness of this crisis and

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After relations with Cuba were broken in 1961, General Eisenhower authorized the Central Intelligence Agency to invade and overthrow Fidel Castro. They recruited exiles of Cuba and trained them. After Eisenhower left office, Kennedy made the decision to go forth with the plan which was called the Bay of Pigs invasion. The invasion

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The U.S. saw Fidel Castro as a leader who could not be trusted because of his ties close to communism. The Bay of Pigs was the U.S. government’s way to attempt to control the country of Cuba. When the U.S. backed invasion failed and became a public affair, Kennedy gave a speech on why he thinks it is necessary to act now against the “Dictatorship regime”, he Says, “Secondly, it is clear that this nation, in concert with all the free nations of this hemisphere, must take an even closer and more realistic look at the menace of external Communist intervention and domination in Cuba… The evidence is clear, and the hour is late. We and our Latin friends will have to face the fact that we cannot postpone any longer the real issue of the survival of freedom in this hemisphere”

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During the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis took place. It was when two superpowers were close to causing a nuclear war. Its main origin was when the United States invaded Cuba, on April 10, 1961; which is also known as the Bay of Pigs invasion. After the invasion, previous Prime Minister; Fidel Castro of Cuba, was ‘paranoid’ because he felt like America was planning another attack. So in order to protect his nation, he sought military and economic help from the Soviet Union.

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In an attempt to overthrow Castro and prevent the spread of communism throughout Latin America, Kennedy was forced to implement “a watered down plan inherited from the Eisenhower administration” , which involved using CIA trained Cuban rebels to encourage an anti-Castro uprising which would then appear as an internal uprising. This resulted in what historian Theodore Draper described as a “perfect failure” On April 17th 1961, 1500 rebels landed on the Bahia de Cochinos however invaders were swiftly captured or killed and as Kennedy refused to send in USA troops and cancelled a planned air strike in order to feign lack of American involvement, the plan ended in “total humiliating defeat” . Kennedy was enraged that he had signed what he had seen as an “unworkable plan” and that he had “allowed himself to be swept along by sheer bureaucratic momentum” . Despite this he took full responsibility for the failed operation stating in a news conference on March 21st 1961, that while “victory has a hundred fathers, defeat is an orphan” .

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