In this essay it will be argued that indeed the Cuban Missile Crisis was the point of highest tension during the Cold War and also that Kennedy benefited the most from the outcome as opposed to Khrushchev who was the leader of the USSR. Firstly the Cuban Missile Crisis began on the 16th October 1962 when an American U2 spy plane photographed Soviet missiles sites in Cuba. The fact that the USSR had responded to appeals for help from Cuba following the Bay of Pigs invasion was a large problem for the USA and straight away increased the tensions of the Cold War. It was an issue because Cuba was lead by Castro, a communist who had already overthrown the pro- American government in 1961 and so he was motivated to possibly harm the United States of America and working with Khrushchev gave him the means to do so. Furthermore Cuba was only 90 miles off the coast of America, which meant these missiles, particularly the long-ranged weapons could reach major American cities.
In 1960 President Eisenhower game the CIA order to begin training Cuban exiles to lead resistance groups in Cuba. This was so when the United States invaders landed, there would already be a force slowing down Cuban forces. After John F. Kennedy was elected president, he was briefed on the latest plan and ended up giving the order for the Bay of Pigs invasion. About 1500 Cuban exiles landed on April 19, 1961. They were hoping to get support from the local population and intended to cross the island to Havana.
Later that night Kennedy got on television to tell the U.S that the Soviet Union had secret installed nuclear missiles in Cuba that were aimed at American cities. Kennedy didn’t know how to get the missiles removed without starting a nuclear was with the Soviets. If this were to happen tens of millions on both sides would be killed. Communism was a threat and it was coming to America in 1959 when Castro staged a revolution in Cuba and became allies with the Soviet Union. Khrushchev thought that by moving nuclear missiles to Cuba, he would not only help close the missile gay with the U.S but that it would also prevent another American invasion of Cuba.
By mid October, a U-2 photoreconnaissance plane retrieved pictures of missile sites in Cuba, giving Kennedy hard evidence that they existed. The public was eagerly trying to anticipate the difficult decision Kennedy had ahead of him: whether to listen to his military advisors who wanted him to command an air strike followed by ground invasion to remove Castro, or to “quarantine” Cuba. With global tensions extremely high, Kennedy understood invading Cuba might aggravate a third World War, so instead of “blockading” Cuba, which would have been an act of war, he cleverly decided to place ships around Cuba so the missiles could not get through. The conflict is resolved later that month under the agreement to withdraw U.S. missiles from Turkey and publicly state to never declare war on Cuba in exchange for the withdrawal of the Soviet missiles. While a peaceful solution was eventually reached, the amount of panic in the US caused by the soviets was enormous for those few months in
April 15: The attack begins in the early hours of a Saturday morning. The CIA-backed brigade of Cuban exiles sends eight B-26 bombers from Nicaragua to Cuba to destroy Fidel Castro’s air force on the ground. Staged to look like an internal revolt by Castro’s own men, the air raid is only partly successful. At least six of Castro’s fighter planes survive. That afternoon, Adlai Stevenson, U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, insists America had nothing to do with the air raids.
It focuses on the diplomatic and legal efforts of the Kennedy brothers in resolving the issue of Soviet nuclear missiles inside Cuba. They strived to get some type of legal approval for any actions they took. This was done through the United Nations and the Organization of American States, or OAS. This memoir highlights the access and influence that Robert Kennedy had in the Kennedy administration. Thirteen Days takes a rational actor approach1 to the problem and tends to give less weight to organizational pressures2.
Cubans live in a “big jail” where they can’t even express their selves freely nor travel to other countries. Fidel Castro Ruz who born on 1959 on the Oriente providence of Cuba being the son of Lina Ruz and Angel Castro who was a farmer. Castro grew up working on the sugar plantation of his father. Castro went to the University of the Havana where he studies civil law and was involved in many movements to over throw various regimes of dictators such as Generalissimo Rafael Trujillo in Dominican Republic, the so called Bogotazo in Colombia and of course the regime of Batista in Cuba. Fidel first try to defeat the dictatorship of Batista by the legal means, but there not much that he can do, so them he opted to form a militia army.
1962: A Cold War event known as the Cuban Missile Crisis occurred. The Cuban Missile Crisis was when the Soviets put missiles in Cuba, JFK requested the Soviets to remove them, and the Soviets would only do so as long as JFK were to promise not to invade Cuba and remove the US missile bases in Turkey. 1963: JFK established a hotline between the Soviet Union and the White House, sent advisors to Vietnam sparking the involvement of the US in Vietnam, and sent a US led coup to remove the leader of South Vietnam due to his corruption. JFK was assassinated three weeks later on November 22 by a man named Lee Harvey Oswald. 1964: Johnson took over for JFK and the 24th amendment was passed which was the abolition of poll tax.
At the same time they tried to create a strong non-communist South Vietnam under the leadership of Diem. By the late 1950s, the communist rebels in South Vietnam declared a revolutionary struggle against Diem, so as to reunify Vietnam under communist rule. In turn, by the 1960s the USA became more and more alarmed at this prospect, leading to further intervention in Vietnam to stop this. When Kennedy was inaugurated he inherited many crises around the globe, the most pertinent was the loss of Cuba. After the well known Bay of Pigs fiasco, he felt he was advised that he needed a foreign policy success.
U.S.S. Maine 5. This nation gained its independence in the Spanish-American War. Cuba 6. This general forced Cubans to relocate to reconcentration camps where thousands of them died.