When speaking about the Cuban Missile Crisis, President Kennedy said, "It is insane that two men, sitting on opposite sides of the world, should be able to decide to bring an end to civilization” (“Nuclear Test Ban Treaty” 1). the Cuban Missile Crisis was a time where these two men, Kennedy and Khrushchev, had the power in their hands to end civilization. In order to understand the importance of the Cuban Missile Crisis one must understand, the Cold war drama; the dangerous crisis; and its importance today.
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
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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 forever marked 1962 as the year the world almost witnessed a nuclear war. The Soviet Union, Cuba, and the United States were all teetering on the edge of a cliff that was crumbling from the weight of fear, tension, and secrecy. It also marked the official end of Americans innocent belief that they were safe in the glow of Lady Liberty’s torch. Yet amidst the dark shadow of nuclear threat one American president rose to this challenge and proved that peace through strength is the best strategy.
The event of the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 was the closest the world has ever come to nuclear war. Fifteen years into the cold war, the two superpowers continued the fierce competition to increase their military strength. In 1962, the Soviet Union was desperately behind the United States in the nuclear arms race. Soviet missiles were only powerful enough to be launched against Europe, whereas the US missiles were capable of striking the entire Soviet Union. In late April 1962, Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev conceived the idea of placing intermediate-range missiles in Cuba which would double the Soviet strategic arsenal and provide a real deterrent to a potential U.S. attack against the Soviet Union. The fate of millions
The Cuban missile crisis of 1962 was the thirteen-day political standoff between the Soviet Union and the United states. To my knowledge, the crisis took place over whether nuclear weapons placed inside of Cuba were a threat to the United States. Under tremendous pressure, we see the crisis play out in the hands of John F. Kennedy. Handled very strategically and meticulously, President Kennedy very well saved the world from a human catastrophe. What president Kennedy was able to do at such a critical moment in time, gives the reader a great view into how the policymakers of yesterday, today, and the future should handle critical events.
In October of 1962 a pressing matter arose during John F. Kennedy’s presidential term. It was made apparent that the Soviet Union was holding and building missiles in Cuba, it was named the Cuban missile crisis. Being a dangerously close country to the United States, JFK knew he needed to make a smart and safe decision, and fast. Kennedy had suspicions that this option would cause a third World War and end in a nuclear fallout. Kennedy’s determination to be a participative leader was effective in the fact that he met with many people before making any decision on how to act next and the country was aware about the ongoing dilemma. He acted in a modest way that would prevent any country or individual to claim “victory” throughout the entirety of his time in office especially in the Bay of Pigs.
While it may be true that Fidel Castro had a strong impact on the uprising of the crisis, it is crucial to consider John F. Kennedy as the person most at fault for the Cuban Missile Crisis. Kennedy, America's president at the time, is often been called the most to blame because he overreacted to the missiles in Cuba. The question is if it was an overreaction or just a precaution for the safety and security of the American people. After the CIA spotted the missiles in Cuba, they informed Kennedy and he immediately called for a “quarantine” on Cuba’s eastern coast, setting up a blockade of ships along the coastline. Although many perceive this as an act of safety and protection, it is also easy to say that it was in fact “an act of aggression”
The Cuban Missile Crisis was a conflict caused by the U.S.S.R. setting up nuclear-armed missiles in Cuba. In October of 1962, Nikita Khrushchev, under the pretext the U.S.S.R. was protecting Cuba with soviet arms, began to transport military supplies to Cuba in order to set up missile bases. On Tuesday 16 October 1962, John F. Kennedy learned of the U.S.S.R.’s actions when he was brought an unmistakable photograph from a U-2 plane flying over Cuba. The photograph depicted Soviet soldiers hurriedly and secretly assembling nuclear-armed missiles. After Kennedy assembled a small counsel to aid in his decisions called the Executive Committee of the National Security Council, ExComm for short, he proceed to examine his options.
After World War II, according to Margaret MacMillan’s article published by The Guardian, both counties prospered greatly: “the United States was both a military power and an economic one; the Soviet Union had only brute force and the intangible attraction of Marxist ideology to keep its own people down and manage its newly acquired empire in the heart of Europe” (“MacMillan”, pgh. 6). Furthermore, Cuba itself also underwent drastic domestic changes (that is, the Cuban Revolution [1953–1959]), which served to deteriorate its relations with America while, contemporaneously, strengthening its ties with the U.S.S.R. Consequently, Cuba’s revolutionary regime, latterly induced by its leaders Che Guevara and Fidel Castro, grew progressively reliant on its freshly created amity with the U.S.S.R., which both shared corresponding ideological perspectives (namely, Marxism–Leninism) (“Cuba”, pgh. 1; “Marxism”, pgh. 1; Zelinski, p. 34). The Cuban Missile Crisis was patently an inordinately tense moment in history; accordingly, there must be an entity that is to be accounted most guilty for nearly bringing the world to a pitiful and devastating end. The United States of America is to be held most liable and culpable, out of the three primal nations enmeshed in the predicament, for instigating the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. An examination of the aspects that America had nefariously
Soviet general, Anatoly Gribkov recalled that during the Cuban Missile Crisis “Nuclear catastrophe was hanging by a thread and we weren’t counting days or hours, but minutes”. (5) The thirteen days of the Cuban Missile Crisis were one of the most dangerous and terrifying days in history. The Cuban Missile Crisis was a political and military standoff between the Soviet Union and the United States and is considered the closest moment the Cold War came to escalating into a fatal nuclear war. (1) During the incident, the leader of the Soviet Union, Nikita Khrushchev and the president of the U.S., John F Kennedy had the power to destroy half of the countries in the world. (5) The crisis resulted from the huge tensions between the U.S. and the Soviet
The discovery of the nuclear missiles in Cuba was a vast turning point in the way that the world would progress in terms of communication and various entertainment and political positions from that point forward. Before the assumptions of the United States were proved about the Soviet Union holding nuclear weapons in Cuba, there was a great lack of communications between the nations that caused major conflict between these two nations. The moment the nations got connected many problems could be solved, but until that point in time, there was misunderstanding and an apprehension of the unknown among many people who inhabited the United Sates. The Cuban missile crisis was the beginning of a revolution in communications between nations,
The Cuban Missile Crisis occurred as a result of the hard evidence captured by a U-2 spy plane (on the 15th October 1962) of Soviet missiles on the ground in Cuba. This event lasted thirteen days and is widely seen by most historians as the closest the world has ever come to all-out nuclear war. It is my belief that the crisis held a great significance to the Cold War, largely due to the major ease off in tensions between the USA and the USSR that occurred as a result.
Cuban Missile Crisis “It is insane that, two men sitting on opposite sides of the world, should be able to decide to bring an end to civilization” ( John F. Kennedy, Cuban Missile Crisis). The Cuban Missile Crisis took place for thirteen days. The countries involved in the Cuban Missile Crisis included the United States, Cuba, and the Soviet Union. Two of the main causes of the Cuban Missile Crisis were the bad relations between Cuba and its allies, the Soviet Union, with the United States and the Cold War. After the crisis, the humiliation of the Bay of Pigs Invasion to the United States and the breakup of Cuba with the Soviet Union were lasting effects of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
The Cuban Missile Crisis was a frightening moment for the entire world. It started October 14th, 1962 after the Soviet Union planted nuclear missiles inn Cuba. The U.S. found out that these missiles were being planted without their knowledge, but the Soviet Union continued the construction of these nuclear missile sites, even after President Kennedy, the president of the U.S., sent out a warning against these weapons in Cuba. Even after this warning, Kennedy once again found out that the construction was still happening. Following the discovery of the ongoing construction, Kennedy wanted to meet with people at the White House to solve the problem that they were encountering. There were multiple sides during their talk about the missiles. Some of the people at the meeting wanted to take a more aggressive approach and destroy these missiles and then follow up with an attack. Kennedy eventually decided to quarantine Cuba. After Kennedy quarantined Cuba, there were many messages sent between the White House and the Kremlin to try and solve the problem. The Cuban Missile Crisis lasted for thirteen extremely tense days. At the end of these thirteen days, the Cuban Missile Crisis ended with an agreement between the United States and Soviet Union. The Cuban Missile Crisis greatly impacted history. It strengthened the bond between the United States and Soviet Union, showed people how to come to a
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.
In summation, the Cuban Missile Crisis was a period of intense negotiations between two conflicting world powers, both went in wanting to assert their superiority over the other and both possessing the intention of stopping nuclear war. The Cuban Missile Crisis lead to many cultural and political changes internationally, making it a key factor in the modern development of Cuba, the United States, and
Strategic decision success is heavily reliant on the attitudes that managers take toward the decision-making process and toward the decision itself. The Cuban missile crisis is the most well known case of strategic decision making at the level of the nation-state. The nature of the case was such that the use of evaluative frameworks and concepts along with the right managerial attitudes eventuated in a successful strategic outcome. The Cuban Missile Crisis was a confrontation between the United States, the Soviet Union and Cuba. In April 1962 the Soviets began supplying Cuba with military arms in the form of surface-to-air missiles and surface-to-surface cruiser missiles, and later, sometime during the spring of 1962, the Soviets began to