Battle Of The Bay Of Pigs

The Cuban Revolution was touchy topic for the United States and Cuba. America’s alienation of Cuba didn’t help when communism from the USSR was brewing over the revolution. When the revolution gained Castro as its leader, the worry and hatred from the United States was unbearable, especially when the Soviet Union landed in Cuba to interest Castro in its aid. The US’s fear of communism, Fidel Castro, and aid from the Soviet Union was significant because it changed the US’s political role in Cuba during the Cuban Revolution.

The Spanish-American War was considered short lived and relatively mild in terms of American casualties compared to the many wars that our nation has fought. However, it served as a historical marker that set the imperialistic momentum of our nation. It played a significant role in our nation’s strategic move towards acquiring trade routes and further strengthened our naval power. Throughout my research paper I will touch on what led to the Cuban revolution against Spain, America’s political climate at the time, and why our nation eventually decided to intervene and aid the Cubans in their fight for independence.

The Bay of Pigs invasion has come to be known as the perfect failure in American history. The invasion only lasted two days but the effects of the invasion lasted for decades. One of the most significant consequences of the Bay of Pigs was the thirteen day standoff between the Soviet Union and the United States over the installation of nuclear armed Soviet missiles on Cuba a year after the Bay of Pigs. The standoff, known as the Cuban Missile Crisis, is the closest the world has come to nuclear war. The causes and the responsibility for the Cuban Missile Crisis are many. Was the Bay of Pigs just another event in a timeline that was destined for the Cuban Missile Crisis or did the Bay of Pigs cause the Cuban Missile Crisis? A historical analysis of the events leading up to the Bay of Pigs as well as the aftermath of the Bay of Pigs will substantiate the fact that the Bay of Pigs was a substantial critical event causing the Cuban Missile Crisis.

It seems that the United States has been one of the most dominant, if not the most dominant, countries in the world, since the Declaration of Independence. Yet, on Monday, April 17, 1961, our government experienced incredible criticism and extreme embarrassment when Fidel Castro, dictator of Cuba, instantly stopped an invasion on the Cuban beach known as the Bay of Pigs. President John Fitzgerald Kennedy, his advisors, and many Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) officials, made the largest error of their political careers. Once the decision was made to invade Cuba, to end Castro and his Communist government, Kennedy and his administration were never looked at in the same light nor trusted again. Russian leader Nikita

After it became officially globally acknowledged that Cuba was in fact a communist state and was being led through a dictatorship run by Castro, it did not take long before powerful enemies and essential allies were formed. The act of seizing all foreign land with none or very little compensation was received with great hostility amongst those who lost in their property through this process, and probably the reaction that had the biggest impact on Cuba’s economy was that of the US. Castro’s communistic policies did not of course help calm this resentment and also took part in leading to the establishment of trade embargos with Cuba from the US. This meant that Cuba would now lose a very valuable buyer of their precious sugar, [5] but they did however gain another one, a powerful nation that shared quite similar Marxist ideals and were quick to form an alliance with the Cubans, the USSR.

The Bay of Pigs is on the coast of Cuba. The Americans sent Cubans, that wanted American citizenship, to Cuba, fighting against their home country. The Cuban immigrants were extremely outnumbered by the entire Cuban army. We fought hard but lost in the end. The C.I.A promised an easy victory, but we got the opposite. By the end of the fight, all our troops were either dead or captured.

Bay of Pigs and Cuban Missile Crisis- Believed the US was to weak to oppose Russian expansion to Cuba

The Bay of Pigs was a failed invasion by the United States to overthrow the communist government in Cuba run by the infamous Fidel Castro. The CIA-operated campaign attempted to use Cuban exiles as a Guerilla army in hopes of conducting a secret invasion. The objective was to remove the Cuban leader and establish a non-communist government that would benefit the United States. President John F. Kennedy, Commander in Chief during this time, wanted to prove to China, Russia, and even pessimistic Americans that he was determined to win the Cold War. Unfortunately, the campaign was extremely underprepared, which led to a disastrous outcome with Castro’s troops having the aggressors pinned on the beach under heavy fire. Soon after, the exiles surrendered in less than a single day of fighting, making the assault widely known as the CIA’s “perfect failure”. This topic was selected because the Cold War era intrigues me greatly; there is an abundance of covert operations, heightened tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union, as well as technological competitions such as the space race. The Bay of Pigs ties into all of this, which led to the Cuban missile crisis, causing one of the closest calls in history in regards to nuclear war. The information found for this paper is from sources including the History Chanel website, the JFK Library, the CIA website, and the United States History website.

The Invasion was destined to fail from the beginning due to the CIA’s plan being backed on false intelligence. From the Bay of Pigs Invasion, the mass exchange of communist ideas would begin, deepening the Cold War and attributing to the pressure and strain placed upon the United States and Russian foreign relations. Failure and doubt in the United States lead to the exploration of new policy and political ideology, as well as a new era in intelligence, political, and military fields, that continues to affect the domestic and foreign policy of today's

Imagine living your life in the US as a normal Cuban exile, then you get pulled away from your family and friends to go fight for the US against the culture you grew up with? How would you feel being captured and beat to the point you really don’t want to be there anymore? During the 1900s, the Cold War was a war of words between the US and the USSR. During the Cold War, the Bay of Pigs invasion happened in which the US trained Cuban exiles to land in Cuba and take over Cuba from the leading dictator, Fidel Castro. In this essay, I will write about one event in the Cold War- The Bay of Pigs: the CIA and the training of the Cuban exiles, the invasion, and the aftermath.

“Victory has a thousand fathers while defeat is an orphan,” remarked John F. Kennedy. The Bay of Pigs invasion code named operation Zapata began in March of 1960 one month and a year before the famed invasion took place. United States President Dwight D. Eisenhower ordered the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) to begin a covert operation to bring down the pro-communist Cuban government. Nonetheless Fidel Castro’s potential pro-communist beliefs, the seizure of American owned companies and land lead to extreme concern from United States policy makers and officials. The mission, however would become possibly one of the greatest intelligence failures in the history of the United States. The failed Bay of Pigs invasion lead to a new era in the military and intelligence fields that continues to affect foreign policy

The Cuban Government made the US feel scared when Cuba formed an alliance with Russia which Cuba was only 90 miles away from Florida. (Fogarty, Richard)The Russians wanted to install nuclear warheads on the island of Cuba. If they succeeded it would put the US in danger of being shot at with missiles. Which this conflict almost

In order to understand the importance of the Cuban Missile Crisis in American history one must first understand the Cold War drama, Castro’s rise to power, and the American operations that set up the crisis. “The term Cold War refers

(“America in the 1960s”) Many people suspected Castro was communist, and anti-Castro Cuban exiles, demanded that the US to do something about the situation. (“America in the 1960s”) Russia suggested if the US take any military action, they would support Cuba. (“America in the 1960s”) By the time John F. Kennedy became president, plans to invade Cuba were already under way. The landing was on a beach at the Bay of Pigs, south of Havana.(“America in the 1960s”) They were soon trapped in a swamp, and most of the invaders were captured. (“America in the 1960s”) Embarrassed by the failure at the Bay of Pigs, Kennedy later planned another sabotage against Cuba. (“America in the 1960s”) Meanwhile, the Soviets secretly had put nuclear missiles in Cuba. (“America in the 1960s”) The Western Military had already put NATO missiles in Turkey, very close to the Soviet Border. Cuba would "balance the terror" by having the Soviet missiles. (“America in the 1960s”) To try to stop any more missiles to be shipped to Cuba, the US set up the naval quarantine in Cuba. Any ships trying to reach the island would be searched for any kind of weapons. (“America in the 1960s”)

Many changes in Cuba caused tensions to mount between the United States, Cuba, and Russia. At the time before the Bay of Pigs incident, Cuba had a corrupt