Robert F Kennedy Thirteen Days Essay Topics

Thirteen days, a novel written by Robert F. Kennedy, recalls the first hand accounts of Kennedy himself during the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis. The Cuban Missile Crisis was an event that took place during the Cold War, turning out to be a pivotal event during it's time. In 1962, there were extremely high tensions between the United States of America and the Soviet Union, they were incing closer and closer to a nuclear war, it was almost imminent. John F. Kennedy, Robert's brother, and the president, had made the discovery of nucelar missiles owned by the Soviets located in Cuba. Over the next thirteen days, hense the novel's name, he and Nikita Khrushchev, his soviet correspondant, argued and discussed how this situation would be handeled.

A nuclear war could mean the end of the United States of America and the Soviet Union completely. Both men made it clear that is the last thing they wanted.

President Kennedy was faced with huge decisions.

He and the council he assembled, spent days discussing possible options to confront this situiation. The discussions were closed to the public, but when they reached a decision they decided to tell the world. Preisdent Kennedy decided to create a naval blockade to prevent future shipments of nuclear utilites from arriving in Cuba. The next few days played out, tensions were higher than ever as both sides did not want to give up. Kennedy was eventually faced with a choice; attack the Soviet Union, or allow them to ship their nuclear supplies into Cuba. Kennedy decided to take a risky decision and choose neither. He instead created an alternative plan. The plan had three key components: the United States pledged not to invade Cuba if the Soviet Union were to withdraw their missiles, a threat to attack Cuba if the offer was rejected, and a promise that the United States would withdraw it's missiles from Turkey .It seemed as if Kennedy had just sealed the fate of America as nothing more than rubble, but at the last second Khrushchev accepted the offer and the entire situation was resolved. All of this account being from Robert F. Kennedy's

eyes.

The majority of the time, when you describe people you admire, you may glorify them more than they actually deserve, which is esentially being biased.

Robert F. Kennedy was no different when writing about his brother, and even himself. In his novel, he describes himself as a great supporter of the blockade, the reality was though, that he was a supporter of a war with the Soviet Union, or at least he was. He made no mention of his support of a war, which could be considered biased. When writing about his brother, he described him as a man that wanted nothing more than peace with the Soviet Union. Newer sources say though that John F. Kennedy wanted to show that America should not be messed with, and would do anything to prove so. While Robert F. Kennedy account is fairly accurate, historians and other experts belive some accounts in this book may not be true. A few discrepancies were found here and there in the book. Interestingly, sources say President Kennedy was determined to win this war. Yet in Robert F. Kennedy's account President Kennedy is portrayed as someone who wants to completely avoid war . I found it hard to choose which source to believe, then I realized, Robert F. Kennedy may be trying to paint a false image of his brother. That or perhaps he just didn't see President Kennedy's true intentions during the time. Throughout the book it's perhaps easy to tell that Robert F. Kennedy was trying to make his brother seem like a better man than he was. With many

sources disagreeing with Robert's accounts, it's hard to tell. Without a doubt though, President Kennedy was not a bad man, he was just trying to do the right thing to keep America safe, and sometimes you may have to do shady things. Thirteen Days does a great job describing the events of the Cuban Missile Crisis, but not so much of the events leading up to it. During my research I discovered that the tensions between the United States of America and the Soviet Union were so high that nuclear warfare was expected within the year. Beforehand, the United States had tried numerous times to eliminate Castro, seeing him as the ultimate threat to America. It's incredible to think that America could be in ruins today if there was not some kind of agreement.

These were really the only discrepancies I could find between Robert's account and other source's accounts. Robert F. Kennedy did a wonderful job describing what it was like behind closed doors when discussing the crisis. It was fascinating reading about the Cuban Missile Crisis as I never had really read anything about it before. I never realized that our country had come to close to nuclear warfare. It's kind of an eerie though knowing that if an agreement had not been made over those few days that I may not exist today. I think the same could be said for the rest of us, and really anyone living in the United States. Something like the destruction of an entire country through nuclear warfare is such a far fetched thought to me because nothing similar has ever occurred before. These days though, nuclear warfare is becoming more prevalent. I'm concerned of what the future will bring.