The Cold War: The Bay Of Pigs Invasion

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 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.

During the Cold War, a new leader of Cuba rose to the top. Fidel Castro threw Barista out of power and began to lead the Cuban people with flying colors. Little did these citizens know, was he was leading them into bad relations with his many Soviet ties. But before Cuba was touched upon by Castro, the U.S. had gained the territory from Spain in 1898, in the end of the Spanish-American War. Gaining Cuba as a territory to the U.S., it was then in charge of the country's affairs and leased its naval base at Guantanamo Bay. Cuba was also one of the largest sugar producers in the century. The U.S. saw the sugar business was essential for trade profit. Between Cuba's agriculture, while growing tobacco Cuba could partner with southern U.S. to harvest and export many

Before the invasion happened, the CIA had to train Cuban exiles to hate and destroy the Cuban government and economy. The reason they started training these Cuban exiles is because Fidel Castro overthrew Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista with an armed revolt. This made the CIA really mad because Batista was good allies with the US and Castro wasn’t. The CIA set up training camps in Guatemala in 1960, and in November the operation had trained a small army for an assault landing and guerilla warfare (jfklibrary.org). After a while, Kennedy confirmed the invasion plan, and was determined to disguise US support. The plan called for two airstrikes against Cuban air bases, a 1,400-man invasion, paratroopers would drop in before the invasion happened, and time after time, small forces would land on the

about Cuba: the Castro brothers, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the Bay of Pigs Invasion. The

Jose Miro Cardona was a former member of Fidel Castro which now the United States has. "Cardona was poised to take over the provisional presidency of Cuba if the invasion succeeded" (jfk library). It was Cardonas responsibility and only responsibility to take over the presidency of Cuba is the

Before the Bay of Pigs invasion began, many events took place that preceded and caused the invasion. Ever since Fidel Castro overthrew Fulgencio Batista, the former dictator of Cuba, the United States was suspicious of Cuba's seemingly communist behavior. Batista had always been pro-American and anti-communist, but Castro governed Cuba differently. Castro believed the United States had no right to have businesses in Cuba. He reduced the influence of American business in Cuba and even seized control of the American-run telephone company in Cuba. Castro also established diplomatic ties with Soviet Russia to stay in power. He accepted loans from Russia so that he could support an army and keep Cuba from an economic collapse. All of these actions caused the United Sates to distrust Castro. This distrust was amplified when Castro publicly announced that he was pro-communist in July of 1959. Because of this

In Shalom’s article, “The Cuban Missile Crisis and Liberal Foreign Policies,” Shalom states that America tried to invade Cuba which was known as the Bay of Pigs. “The Bay of Pigs invasion of April 1961 was totally organized, financed, equipped, and managed by the United States… the invasion was an utter failure.” (Shalom 2). This shows us that for the most part it was not very organized, and also America used outdated information therefore after this failure of an invasion it raised tensions between American and the Soviets. America did not only try to invade Cuba they also tried to kill their leader known as Castro.

In 1959, Fidel Castro seized power in Cuba during an armed revolt against then dictator Fulgencio Batista. The US government was apprehensive of his relationship with Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev and subsequent communist actions. After one year from seizing power, Castro expropriated $1 Billion in U.S. assets by nationalizing all U.S. owned businesses, including factories, casinos,

In 1959 the Cuban Revolution culminated with Fidel Castro’s overthrow of Cuban dictator Fulgencio Batista. Although wary of Castro’s communist philosophy, the U.S. initially accepted his governance. But unease turned to turmoil: “As Castro’s regime increased trade with the Soviet Union, nationalized U.S.-owned properties, and hiked taxes on American imports, the United States responded with escalating economic retaliation,” (CFR, 2015). Eisenhower cuts Cuban sugar imports and bans all U.S. exports with the exception of food and medicine. Soon after president elect John F. Kennedy takes office January 20, 1961. He leads the botched April 17, 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion intended to topple Castro, and imposes a complete economic embargo against Cuba on February 7, 1962 involving restricted travel and banned trade, with the exception of food and medicine. By October 1962 tension culminated with the Cuban Nuclear Crisis. Kennedy invoked a naval blockade of Cuba after a U.S. spy plane identifies Soviet missile sites. After intense negotiations between Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev and Kennedy the Soviet Union agreed to remove its missiles from the island in exchange for the U.S. not invading Cuba and removing missiles from Turkey. Afterwards tensions continued with mass Cuban immigration to the U.S., passage of the March 1996 Helms Burton Act after two U.S. planes, piloted by Cuban American exiles, were shot down and the arrest of the Cuban Five, Cuban spies sent to Florida by Castro’s government to spy on Cuban

The Cuba unexpected news broadcast through worldwide in January 1959 the president cuban Fidel Castro declared that they were under control with Communism. Because the time It seems from the small island of cuba had many troubles and so this cause the cuba became a communist. The Bay of Pigs was an ideas for invading the city on bay of pigs with the help of U.S and cuban who were been exiled by castro because those who never followed all his rules will be removed at cuba. After all Soviet Union begins transporting their missiles added more of troops. United States had declared from the quarantine line they needed to prevent communist since the disease spread out in cuba. In October 28, the missiles already removed from cuba and to America and

The purpose of the Bay of Pigs Invasion was to overthrow Fidel Castro as leader of Cuba and help stabilize the Cuban government. Fidel Castro started the MR-26-7, an anti-Batista group. At the time, Batista was the so called president and he claimed to be running a disciplined democracy.The people saw this as a dictatorship takeover. Castro ran the group as a clandestine cell system with ten members in each cell and they did not know the whereabouts or activities of the other cells. He was building his army to take Batista down. Between 1956 and 1959, Castro lead his Guerrilla army against Batista’s forces. Batista became unpopular and by 1958 they were sent in a retreat. By December 31, 1958 he resigned. In addition, he fled Cuba, taking with him roughly $300,000,000. Therefore, the presidency fell to Castro’s candidate, Manuel Urrutia Lleo, while most of the cabinet was made up of MR-26-7 members. Castro took the role of Prime Minister on February 16, 1959. His first order of business was to get rid of presidential elections, the same as the man he took down. This was the start of Fidel Castro 's reign. The United States wanted to make Cuba into a democratic country and stated that Castro was going to lead the nation into a communist or dictatorship country. America needs to cut the communists off and have a country that had the same political views, a democracy, and one that we would not have to fight in order to keep the country safe.

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

In 1959, Cuban nationalist, Fidel Castro, sent his army into Havana and usurped General Batista, the American-supported President. The U.S. State Department and CIA, launched a full out invasion of Cuba. Unfortunately, the invasion failed, greatly outnumbered by Castro’s troops, the invaders surrendered after less than a day of fighting. This failed invasion on Cuba to seize the Castro regime, is called the Bay of Pigs invasion. In July of 1962, Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev made a secret deal with Cuba to handle any future invasions. The benefit to the Soviet’s was to place their nuclear missiles on Cuban soil which was just 90 miles from American shores.

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