On The Dawn Of October 16Th, 1962, Began A 13-Day Standoff
1196 WordsMay 3, 20175 Pages
On the dawn of October 16th, 1962, began a 13-day standoff that would be formally known to the western world as the Cuban Missile Crisis. Growing tensions between the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) resulted in the closest the world has ever been to all-out nuclear war. This essay will talk about the initial weaponization of nuclear power, the events that led up to the missile crisis, the thirteen days the missile crisis took place and the measures taken to stop nuclear war. On August 6th, 1945, the world got their first look at the sheer power and destruction atomic weapons were capable of. Los Alamos, New Mexico was the birthplace of the atomic bomb with Robert Oppenheimer as its father. The secretive…show more content… “The United States countered Soviet expansion and propaganda with a policy of containment, initially with the Truman Doctrine of aid to Greece and Turkey in 1947, the Marshall Plan (1948) for Europe’s economic reconstruction the airlift (1948-49) to the blockaded city of Berlin, and the creation of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) in 1949” (Nogee, 2005) When things began to escalate, they escalated quickly, convinced the Soviet Union was the new worlds threat the United States deployed Jupiter Missiles to Italy in April 1960 within striking distance of Moscow. On May 1st, 1960, Francis Gary Powers is shot down by a Soviet ‘Surface To Air Missile’ (SAM) while flying high above Russia and captured by Soviet forces. Powers was working for the CIA flying a U2 spy plane. This incident will later be known as the U2 incident. Furthermore, this ended up resulting in the cancelation of a scheduled meeting between Eisenhower and Khrushchev that could have prevented the Cuban Missile Crisis. Powers was traded for two years later.
After the U-2 incident the Bay Of Pigs Invasion begins on April 7th, 1961, when CIA backed rebels attempt to overthrow Fidel Castro and his government in Cuba. The invasion failed miserably and the United States is left looking like the enemy. The failed Pay Of Pigs Invasion resulted in a communist backed Cuba and provided the framework to