...The cuban missile crisis is one of the most iconic event in American history, as well as one of the most frightening, as the horrible threat of war loomed over the American people. Under the leadership of young American president John F. Kennedy, the United States made numerous decisions to the intricate problems, that were brought on by the deadly and strategistic threats of Cuban primer Fidel Castro and Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev. The sudden threat of missiles combined with the rising panic of not only the American people, but those in governmental positions as well, made president John F. Kennedy’s strategies, actions, and decisions regarding the crises a favorite example to study amongst scholars. Nikita Khrushchev believes in...
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...Name: Aisha Faruk Course: Plsc 101 Date: 25th march 2014 The Cuban Missile Crisis Analysis The Cuban missile crisis was one of the greatest events in the United States. The crisis in October 19 to October 28, 1962 was a main cold war between the United States and the Soviet Union. And the crisis returns on the struggle of power between the United States and the Soviet Union throughout the war. The USSR increased its support of Fidel Castro's Cuban regime, and in the summer of 1962, Nikita Khrushchev decided to install flying arms in Cuba. President Kennedy and the other leaders of the country were faced with a bad problem where a decision had to be made. The Crisis started as a result of both the Soviet Union's fear of losing the arms fight, and Cuba's fear of US attack. The Soviet Premier, Nikita Khrushchev, thought that both problems could easily be solved by placing Soviet medium range missiles in Cuba. This placement would double the Soviet arsenal and protect Cuba from US attack. Khrushchev proposed this idea to Cuban Leading, Fidel Castro, who, like Khrushchev, saw the planned advantage. The two leaders worked together in privacy throughout the late-summer and early-fall of 1962. The Soviets shipped sixty medium-range flying missiles along with their weapons, equipment. When United States President, John F. Kennedy discovered the presence of these attacking weapons, he immediately organized a group of his important advisors...
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...On October 16th, 1962, the entire world witnessed what they believed might be the last week of their lives, or the human species entirely. The ongoing Cold War between the United States and Soviet Union had finally escalated to the unthinkable; legitimate nuclear threats, whose true wrath was displayed in the bombings of Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki following World War II. This was no minor conflict, however. Both countries were in fear of the other, and completely willing to fire the nukes the second the other did. With such unexplainable tensions, it’s understandably difficult to comprehend why both the US and USSR would sink to such dangerous circumstances. The question still stands, though: Could the Cuban Missile Crisis have...
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...iTHE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS Module prepared for CIAO By Richard Ned Lebow August 2000 The Cuban missile crisis of October 1962 is generally regarded as the most serious military confrontation of the Cold War. American destroyers deployed along a picket line to intercept Soviet ships transporting missiles and nuclear warheads to Cuba while American air, ground and naval forces prepared for air strikes against Soviet missile sites under construction in Cuba and a follow-up invasion. The Strategic Air Command was put on an unprecedented state of alert – “DEFCON II,” only one step away from “war is imminent.” On Saturday morning,October 27, President Kennedy and his advisors were pessimistic about their ability to preserve the peace. Robert Kennedy, the President’s brother and Attorney General of the U.S., had “the feeling that the noose was tightening on all of us, on Americans, on mankind, and that the bridges to escape were crumbling.”1 In Moscow, the tension was “phenomenal.” On Sunday morning, General Secretary Nikita Sergeyevich Khrushchev and his advisors worried “that Kennedy intended to declare war, to launch an attack” against the Soviet Union.2 That same day, the two leaders reached an accommodation that, in retrospect, turned out to be one of the key turning points of the Cold War. 1 OVERVIEW The “Caribbean crisis,” as it was known in the former Soviet Union, was attributed to the Kennedy administration’s unwillingness to accept the status quo in Cuba. Unalterably...
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...The Cuban Missile Crisis was a thirteen day confrontation between The United States and The Soviet Union that was arguably the closest the two countries ever came to a nuclear war during The Cold War. On October 14, 1962, photographs taken by United States reconnaissance planes showed that nuclear missile sites were being built in Cuba. Bypassing private, diplomatic procedures, Kennedy went on national television on October 22 and revealed to the public that nuclear missiles had been found in Cuba and were within range of the continental United States. Kennedy also announced in his speech that the United States would enact a naval blockade on Cuba by putting a ring of ships around Cuba. Kennedy placed this "quarantine," as he called it, to...
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...The Cuban Missile Crisis February 13, 2012 On October 14, 1962, a U2 spy plane, flying a mission over Cuba, snapped a series of photographs that became the first direct evidence of Soviet medium range ballistic nuclear missiles in Cuba. These missiles clearly displayed an offensive weapons buildup on the island. These photographs lead to the closest the world has ever came to a nuclear war. According to Nikita Khrushchev's memoirs, in May 1962 he conceived the idea of placing intermediate range nuclear missiles in Cuba as a means of countering an emerging lead of the United States in developing and deploying strategic missiles. He also presented the scheme as a means of protecting Cuba from another United States-sponsored invasion, such as the failed attempt at the Bay of Pigs in 1961. Furthermore, the Soviet Union wanted to have missiles within the range of major United States cities because of the Americans stash of missiles in Turkey. After obtaining Fidel Castro's approval, the Soviet Union worked quickly and secretly to build missile installations in Cuba. On October 16, 1962 President Kennedy was informed that the Soviet Union was constructing sites in Cuba for surface to air missiles with a range of 1000 miles. The United States is about 90 miles away from Cuba The missiles had the potential to carry warheads 60 times more powerful than the atomic bomb that destroyed Hiroshima. The President called together a group of advisors ( named the Ex -Comm) who contemplated...
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...The Cuban Missile Crisis: A Soviet Policy Failure and United States Success AP US History 03/13/13 Few events in modern history have ever come close to changing the course of the world as much as the Cuban Missile Crisis. The crisis which almost changed the Cold War into a truly hot and nuclear massacre, was resolved miraculously to those living through it. A pivotal turning point in the cold war, the Crisis led to increased calls for peaceful existence, and a change from confrontational to indirect policy. Along with these changes the Cuban Missile Crisis was the utter failure of Soviet Cold War policy, and the success of the United States, as evidenced by the Politburo's disorganization, the defeat of Soviet Policies on the floors of the United Nations, and the successful emergence of the United States from the crisis. The Cold War was the period between the end of World War II and the fall of the Soviet Union, during which the West characterized by the United States and the "West", and the "Soviet Union" along with other communist countries, competed for control of the world. These conflicting ideologies caused continuous confrontations, leading up to the Cuban Missile Crisis. There were three notable events setting the stage for the crisis. The first was the U.S.S.R. shooting down U-2 spy plane pilot, Gary Powers, flying a spy mission into the Soviet Union on May 1, 1960 (York). The handling of the affair by the Eisenhower administration was...
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...The missile crisis was unique in terms of having a balance of having thought out plans and having miscalculations. Fidel Castro rose to power in Cuba in 1959. Castro aligned himself with the Soviet Union. Under Castro, Cuba grew dependent on the Soviets for military and economic aid. During this time, the U.S. and the Soviets including their allies were engaged in the Cold War. The United States and the Soviet Union at this point had basically been in conflict on a global scale. “In 1960, President Dwight D. Eisenhower and the CIA began organizing and training anti-Castro Cuban exiles for a possible invasion. After President John F. Kennedy entered the White House in 1961, he agreed to continue this program, and in April, more than fourteen hundred commandos landed at the Bay of Pigs. U.S. experts believed that the people would rise up and revolt against Castro during this assault, but Castro easily quashed this rebellion. Afterward, Kennedy devised multiple assassination plans against Castro, and he sanctioned the CIA to conduct sabotage raids upon Cuban sugarcane fields, railroad bridges, and oil tanks through Project...
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...Isaac Montoya Junior English CP 16 February 2013 Period 2 The Cuban Missile Crisis was the closest the world ever came to nuclear war. The United States armed forces were at their highest state of readiness ever, and Soviet field commanders in Cuba were prepared to use battlefield nuclear weapons to defend the island if it was invaded. In 1962, the Soviet Union was desperately behind the United States in the arms race. Soviet missiles were only powerful enough to be launched against Europe but U.S. missiles were capable of striking the entire Soviet Union. In late April 1962, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev had the idea of placing intermediate-range missiles in Cuba. A deployment in Cuba would double the Soviet strategic arms and provide a real deterrent to a U.S. attack against the Soviet Union. Meanwhile, Fidel Castro was looking for a way to defend his island nation from an attack by the U.S. Ever since the failed Bay of Pigs invasion in 1961, Castro felt a second attack was inevitable. He approved of Khrushchev's plan to place missiles on the island. For the United States, the crisis began on October 15, 1962 when reconnaissance photographs revealed Soviet missiles under construction in Cuba. Kennedy organized the EX-COMM, a group of twelve advisors to handle the crisis. After seven days debate within the upper echelons of government, Kennedy concluded to impose a naval quarantine around Cuba; He wished to prevent the arrival of more Soviet offensive weapons on the...
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...Cold War: Postwar Estrangement The Western democracies and the Soviet Union discussed the progress of World War II and the nature of the postwar settlement at conferences in Tehran (1943), Yalta (February 1945), and Potsdam (July-August 1945). After the war, disputes between the Soviet Union and the Western democracies, particularly over the Soviet takeover of East European states, led Winston Churchill to warn in 1946 that an "iron curtain" was descending through the middle of Europe. For his part, Joseph Stalin deepened the estrangement between the United States and the Soviet Union when he asserted in 1946 that World War II was an unavoidable and inevitable consequence of "capitalist imperialism" and implied that such a war might reoccur. The Cold War was a period of East-West competition, tension, and conflict short of full-scale war, characterized by mutual perceptions of hostile intention between military-political alliances or blocs. There were real wars, sometimes called "proxy wars" because they were fought by Soviet allies rather than the USSR itself -- along with competition for influence in the Third World, and a major superpower arms race. After Stalin's death, East-West relations went through phases of alternating relaxation and confrontation, including a cooperative phase during the 1960s and another, termed dtente, during the 1970s. A final phase during the late 1980s and early 1990s was hailed by President Mikhail Gorbachev, and especially by the president...
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...The Cuban Missile Crisis: Reading the Lessons Correctly Author(s): Richard Ned Lebow Source: Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 98, No. 3 (Autumn, 1983), pp. 431-458 Published by: The Academy of Political Science Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2150497 Accessed: 10/11/2008 23:45 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=aps. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with the scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. The Academy of Political Science is collaborating with JSTOR to digitize, preserve...
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...The Cuban Missile Crisis: Reading the Lessons Correctly Author(s): Richard Ned Lebow Source: Political Science Quarterly, Vol. 98, No. 3 (Autumn, 1983), pp. 431-458 Published by: The Academy of Political Science Stable URL: http://www.jstor.org/stable/2150497 Accessed: 10/11/2008 23:45 Your use of the JSTOR archive indicates your acceptance of JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use, available at http://www.jstor.org/page/info/about/policies/terms.jsp. JSTOR's Terms and Conditions of Use provides, in part, that unless you have obtained prior permission, you may not download an entire issue of a journal or multiple copies of articles, and you may use content in the JSTOR archive only for your personal, non-commercial use. Please contact the publisher regarding any further use of this work. Publisher contact information may be obtained at http://www.jstor.org/action/showPublisher?publisherCode=aps. Each copy of any part of a JSTOR transmission must contain the same copyright notice that appears on the screen or printed page of such transmission. JSTOR is a not-for-profit organization founded in 1995 to build trusted digital archives for scholarship. We work with the scholarly community to preserve their work and the materials they rely upon, and to build a common research platform that promotes the discovery and use of these resources. For more information about JSTOR, please contact support@jstor.org. The Academy of Political Science is collaborating with JSTOR to...
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...The United States made the right decision in intervening during the Cuban Missile Crisis. The Missiles brought to Cuba were against the Monroe Doctrine, and the USA had to act on it. The Monroe Doctrine warns all nations to not interfere in American affairs. The Nuclear Missiles that were brought to Cuba were an extreme threat to the United States, therefore, establishing a naval quarantine around Cuba and intervening had to be done for the welfare of the United States. The Cuban Missile Crisis was a conflict between the United States and Soviet Union over Soviet nuclear missile bases that were found and being built in Cuba. The conflict only lasted 13 days in the October of 1962. In the short amount of time that the Cuban Missile Crisis transpired,...
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...dominated the 1960 presidential campaign. Senator John F. Kennedy and Vice President Richard M. Nixon both pledged to strengthen American military forces and promised a tough stance against the Soviet Union and international communism. Kennedy warned of the Soviet's growing arsenal of intercontinental ballistic missiles and pledged to revitalize American nuclear forces. He also criticized the Eisenhower administration for permitting the establishment of a pro-Soviet government in Cuba. (Roskin, 2010). Before his inauguration, JFK was briefed on a plan drafted during the Eisenhower administration to train Cuban exiles for an invasion of their homeland. The plan anticipated that support from the Cuban people and perhaps even elements of the Cuban military would lead to the overthrow of Castro and the establishment of a non-communist government friendly to the United States. Kennedy approved the operation and some 1,400 exiles landed at Cuba's Bay of Pigs on April 17. The entire force was either killed or captured, and Kennedy took full responsibility for the failure of the operation. (Schmalleger, 2009). In June 1961, Kennedy met with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev in Vienna,...
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...Doctrine focused on the containment of communism by providing assistance to countries resisting communism in Europe while the Eisenhower Doctrine was focused upon providing both military and economic assistance to nations resisting communism in the Middle East and by increasing the flow of trade from the United States into Latin America. The Kennedy Doctrine was based on these same objectives but was more concerned with the spread of communism and Soviet influence in Latin America following the Cuban revolution that brought Fidel Castro to power under Eisenhower during the 1950s. Some of the most notable events that stemmed from tenets of JFK’s foreign policy initiatives in regard to Latin America and the spread of communism were: The Bay of Pigs Invasion, April 17, 1961, Increase of U.S. involvement in Vietnam War, 1962, Cuban Missile Crisis, October, 1962, and Ratification of Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, July, 1963. The Bay of Pigs Invasion was an unsuccessful action by a CIA-trained force of Cuban exiles to invade southern Cuba, with support and encouragement from the US...
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