President Kennedy as the Saviour of the Western World After The Cuban Missile Crisis

President Kennedy as the Saviour of the Western World After The Cuban Missile Crisis

On October 22 1962, President Kennedy informed the world, that the

Soviet Union was building missile bases in Cuba. Superpower

brinkmanship came close to exploding into nuclear war because of these

missiles. When Khrushchev finally backed down ,the crisis appeared to

have ended victoriously for Kennedy and America. American propaganda

took the opportunity to praise America's triumphant way of dealing

with the crisis and Kennedy's role of saving the Western World from

devastation.

However recent research is critical of Kennedy's claim to be the

Savior of the Western World, because he was not alone in resolving the

situation, and Kennedy's negative attitude towards Cuba contributed in

beginning, endorsing and escalating the crisis.

American Media presented Kennedy's role in the Crisis as that of the

Savior of the Western world. American propaganda said that his

resolutness to soviet hostility had caused Khrushchev to remove soviet

missiles from Cuba.

A cartoon, drawn at the height of the cold war, presented the idea of

the Crisis as an old fashioned Western shoot out. The cartoon enhanced

Kennedy's reputation by presenting him as the good guy ,standing up to

evil but also undermined Khrushchev's reputation.

At Kennedy's funeral, a member of Excom remarked on Kennedy's 'Skill

and firmness that saved the world'. Sorenson stressed that 'If anyone

else had been president, it is likely the world would have been blown

up'.

The American media held this view of Kennedy being the savior of the

Western world because they had confidence in Kenned...

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...om the Organization of American states, Cuba became

more reliant on the Soviet Union. The European Allies of the USA felt

stunned at how little they were consulted throughout the catastrophe

and felt insignificant.

I feel that contemporaries were wrong to regard President Kennedy as

the savoir of the Western world because although Kennedy successfully

stopped the Crisis from escalating into nuclear war, if it were not

for his actions towards Cuba in the beginning then the Cuban Missile

Crisis would never have occurred.

Kennedy's threats towards Cuba pushed Castro into a strong

relationship with the Soviets and many things that Kennedy was praised

for such as blockading Cuba were not even his own ideas. The cold war

and super power rivalry continued until the Soviet president Gorbachev

initiated peace proposels.