Lessons Learned Through History Are The Foundation For Not Repeating Previous Mistakes

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

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.

“One of our greatest assets is that all men aspire to be equal and free. This fact haunts the rulers of the Kremlin today for they cannot change the law of nature and they know it.” stated Allen Dulles, the fifth director of the Central Intelligence Agency. The Cold War, Bay of Pigs Invasion began on April 17, 1961 and has had an everlasting effect on the history of the United States and the world. The Bay of Pigs Invasion was an encounter between Cuban exiles, armed and trained by the American Central Intelligence Agency and the military forces of Fidel Castro. The failure of the Bay of Pigs Invasion proceeded to unite the Soviet Union and Cuba to create mass terror in the United States and for its allies. The belief was that if the Soviet

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.

During the same time as Cuba and the Soviet Union's relationship, the significant events of the Bay of Pigs and Cuban Missile Crisis brought in the United States, Cuba, and Soviet Union into conflict. John F. Kennedy believed that Castro was becoming a threat and that he would become to powerful. So on April 16, 1961, the CIA launched the Bay of Pigs Invasion. Over 2,000 "Anti- Castrolies" stormed up the Bay of Pigs in Southern Cuba. In fact, most of the Anti- Castrolies were Cuban exiles who disagreed with Castro's ideas for Cuba. For some months prior, the CIA had gathered these people to train for an assassination attempt on Castro. This group was given the codename "Brigade 2506," and in less then 24-72 hours 100 were dead and 1,189

The CIA initiated the training process by setting up training camps in Guatemala and trained "counter-revolutionary Cubans serving as the armed wing of the Democratic Revolutionary Front, known as Brigade 2506" (The Bay of Pigs Invasion and its Aftermath). Soon, by November the United States had prepared a small army to perform assault landing and guerilla warfare. If the invasion turned out to be a success a former member of Castro's government, José Miró Cardona, was going to take the presidential position of Cuba. However, the plan was already in trouble by October of 1960 when Castro found out about the guerilla training camps that were based in Guatemala. Once John F. Kennedy became president, one of his first decisions in office was authorizing the plan in February of 1961. Although Castro was aware of the United States' intentions, President Kennedy still put in effort to keep the U.S. support disguised. One of the ways he attempted to do this was by assigning The Bay of Pigs as the landing point. "The site was a remote swampy area on the southern coast of Cuba, where a night landing might bring a force ashore against little resistance and help to hide any United States involvement" (The Bay of Pigs). The down side to this was that the Bay of Pigs was 80 miles from refuge in Cuba's Escambray Mountains, giving us an excessive distance which would be a problem if we were faced with an

A crisis occurred in April of 1961 when Kennedy approved the plan to send 1,400 CIA-trained Cuban exiles in a landing at the Bay of Pigs in Cuba. He intended to cause a rebellion that would overthrow the communist leader Fidel Castro. The mission would conclude with failure, with nearly all of the soldiers killed.

armed forces, Castro felt a second attack was inevitable. Although he was reluctant to accept the missiles at the beginning, he was finally persuaded. It could be argued that Castro pursued closer relations with the Soviet Union mainly for the protection of Cuba, and therefore was more open to Soviet suggestions such as placing nuclear weapons in Cuba to ensure its security. Che Guevara, a major figure to play a central role in training the military forces for the Bays of Pigs invasion and in bringing the Soviet nuclear weapons to Cuba, stated that "all the Cuban people must become a guerrilla army, each and every Cuban must learn to handle and if necessary use firearms in defence of the nation.1" Guevara's statement suggests that if the Cuban people had to fight, they were willing to fight, which shows the Cuban enthusiasm towards protection and, therefore, towards the Soviets. The Soviets, seeing an opportunity to make their international position feel close to the one of the US, rushed to aid Castro in order to double their military strength. Having said that, it could be argued that the Cuban-Soviet relationship was inevitable due to the poor U.S.-Cuban relationship. Placing the missiles in Cuba was a huge military step for the Soviets as it could enable them to reach and destroy most of the continental U.S. And, for that reason, the Cuban Missile Crisis was an event of a very high international importance.

After Fidel Castro overthrew Fulgencio Batista on July 26, 1959, he adopted a communist platform and instituted agrarian land reform programs to push the U.S. out of Cuba. President John F. Kennedy was alarmed that communism was close to the U.S. shores and was worried that Castro would spread his communist ideology throughout Latin America. Kennedy implemented the Bay of Pigs invasion on April 17, 1961, which was a plan to depose Castro and end the communist government in Cuba, but failed because Castro defeated the Guatemalan and Nicaraguan forces trained by the U.S.. The failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion exemplifies the failure of the containment policies in the 1960s because Cuba remained a communist country, and therefore shows that the U.S. was unsuccessful in curbing the spread of communism that George Kennan advocated for in his Long Telegram. Kennedy was aware that Castro was trying to spread the Domino Theory, which was the spread of communist ideology into neighbouring countries, so he established the Peace Corp and the Alliance for Progress in March 1961. These organizations were used to send aid to Latin American countries through economic development, which was supposed to reduce the attraction to communism. However, these organizations were a failure in Latin American countries like the Dominican Republic, Venezuela, and Chile because they turned to Castro’s communist ideology and resisted U.S. land reforms and

“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

Castro intended on helping Cuba’s high poverty, but Castro did not turn Cuba into a democracy like he said he would (“Cuban missile Crisis”2). In 1960 the soviet premier attempted to convince Castro to become communist, soon after this castro became communist, probably influenced by the soviet premier (“Cuban missile Crisis”3). A new american president, that could probably change the war, was coming into office around this time, President Kennedy. The new president would take on the problem of this new cuban leader (International Encyclopedia of the… 1). Before him, Eisenhower trained about 1,500 Cuban Exiles in secret to try to take over Cuba, Kennedy allowed this to go on. On april 17, the exils attempted to invade Cuba(“Cuban missile Crisis”3). Since Castro had found out about the invasion, he was ready and defeated the the incoming force easily(“Cuban missile Crisis”3-4). The failed invasion seemed to help the Cuban opinion of Castro. He was now an obvious threat and so the U.S. decided to start operation Mongoose. Operation Mongoose was a secret operation to get rid of Castro, it was an operation where the U.S. would try to sabotage Cuba, but Operation Mongoose never ended up happening. The U.S.S.R. did not want to lose Cuba so they decided to secretly send weapons into Cuba, including nuclear weapons (“Cuban missile Crisis”4). These arm shipments would lead to one of the

The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 reflects possibly the most precarious moment in nuclear history. For the first time, the world’s two nuclear super powers, the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, were poised to destroy each other in a war of unprecedented proportion. On the brink of what may have escalated into a nuclear war, the leaders of two nations showed courageous restraint and diplomacy to avoid an exchange of brute force and unimaginable desolation. The situation was preempted by the Bay of Pigs, an unsuccessful attempt to assassinate Fidel Castro, Prime Minister of the Republic of Cuba. Castro had gained authority through a rebellion against Fulgencio Batista, the previous Cuban dictator (Bay of Pigs). America was displeased with Castro, mainly because he was a Communist leader so close to American shores, so a plan to depose him was made, without official United States military support.

On April 15, 1961 the Bay of Pigs invasion began to invade Cuba and remove Castro from the leadership. The unsuccessful invasion was stopped two days later. Now Castro needed the strong arm of the Soviets even more. With the Cold War arms race in effect, Castro knew that the Soviets could protect him from future invasions from the United States.