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The Cuban Missile Crisis During The Cold War

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The Cuban Missile Crisis occurred in 1963 in a setting that was the high point of tension in the Cold War. The most significant background cause of the Cuban Missile Crisis was the underlying cold war ideology of capitalism vs communism. This was dramatically increased by the second key cause, a series of events that quickly built tensions between the super powers from 1959 such as the U2 incident, JFK’s response to the Berlin Wall, and the Bay of Pigs incident. The third cause was the relationship between the leaders Khrushchev and Kennedy. It can be argued that the short-term consequences of the Crisis were concentrated geographically on the people of the United States, the Soviet Union, and Cuba during and immediately after the event. …show more content…

They divided it into 4 sections, one each for France, the UK, the USA and Russia. Berlin the capital of Germany and most important city was in the Russian sector, however all 4 countries wanted it, and so Berlin was split up in the same manner as the rest of Germany. Russia was given the largest sector because they had suffered the most during the war. It was also at Yalta that Russia declared war on Japan and the idea of a United Nation Organisation to help keep world peace was first introduced. Another example of the first cause of the Cuban Missile Crisis was the Iron Curtain. The Iron Curtain was the border between the East and West and acted as a buffer zone for Russia, protecting her against attack from the West. Churchill first coined the phrase in March 1946 when he was speaking at Fulton, Missouri. “From…the Baltic to…the Adriatic, and Iron Curtain has descended across the continent”. Churchill believed that Russia was attempting world domination by slowly expanding her borders. That Stalin was going to destroy democracy by spreading Communism, a communist government had already been set up in Poland. These actions were seen as a sign of aggression by the West, further creating a gap between the East and the West. A further example of the difference between the East and West ideologies was the Berlin Blockade. The Blockade began on June 24th 1948 when Russia closed all the roads, canals and railways from Berlin to West Germany after

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