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History paper 1 Cuban missile crisis
History paper 1 Cuban missile crisis
Entire story of cuban missile crisis
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Thirteen days is a historical account of the Cuban Missile Crisis. It is told from the perspective of Robert F. Kennedy, senator and brother to President John F. Kennedy. It is an account of the thirteen days in October of 1962. It lasted from the 16th to the 28th. During this time many crucial events in United States.
These thirteen days were the time period in which the fate of the world was decided. The focus of the book was on the decision of both the United States and Russia. The United States had to come to an agreement on what measures would be taken in order to prevent further establishment of Russian missiles in Cuba. No one could really agree on what actions to take "And so we argued, and so we disagreed- all dedicated, intelligent men, disagreeing and fighting about the future of their country, and of mankind."¹ The missiles were being brought to Cuba by Russian leader, Nikita Khrushchev, who guaranteed President Kennedy that the missiles would never be used as a weapon against the United States. This was a lie. Khrushchev fully intended to use the missiles as a mechanism of defense against the United States and as a way to further pursue a relationship with Fidel Castro who was the President of Cuba at the time. The United States needed to find a way to stop the development of missile sites without causing a break out of violent warfare.
The account is told from Robert F. Kennedy's point of view. Kennedy was a key player in the decisions made during the thirteen days of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Kennedy believed that the United States should try and resolve The Cuban Missile Crisis peacefully and that the United States needed to try and avoid resolving to violent measures. Kennedy took over for his brother, the President on many occasions. He led important meetings and tried to negotiate an understanding with the other cabinet members who were involved. At first he believed that a blockade around Cuba would be the right maneuver and his proposal was supported by the majority of the other members. Soon he realized though that the Russians were not planning on negotiating or dealing with this matter in any peaceful manner. Though apposed to it Kennedy moved for an air strike. He was very uncomfortable with the idea and he showed this with his remark to the president of "I now know how Tojo felt when he was planning Pearl Harbor.
In January of 1959 , Communist dicator Fidel Castro took over Cuba. The United States in 1961 tried to overthrow Fidel by arming rebels and attempting to support them. This was the failure known as the Bay of Pigs. In October of 1962 , The US finds evidence that medium range nuclear sites had been installed in Cuba. They annonce that on the twenty-third that a quatntine was being Cuba and that any ship carrying offensive weapons to Cuba wasn’t allowed. Five days later , the crisis was averted when the Soviets began to remove the
Thomas G. Paterson's essay, "Kennedy's Fixation with Cuba," is an essay primarily based on the controversy and times of President Kennedy's foreign relations with Cuba. Throughout President Kennedy's short term, he devoted the majority of his time to the foreign relations between Cuba and the Soviet Union. After the struggle of WW II, John F. Kennedy tried to keep a tight strong hold over Cuba as to not let Cuba turn to the Communist Soviet Union. Kennedy seen Cuba and the Soviet Union as a major threat to the United States. As Castro fell farther and farther into the Communist party, he inched his way closer and closer to becoming a close ally with the Soviet's, As Kennedy seen this happen before his eyes, he was astonished. Kennedy, a newly formed president, did not want to seem like the kind to just sit back and roll with the punches, he wanted immediate action taken for these measures. "As someone said, Cuba was one of the four-letter words of the 1960s" (268). Cuba was not viewed as a very potential power before Fidel Castro took office. It was viewed more as a neutral country that we sent aide and military supplies to in exchange for sugar and other products. When Castro took office, things drastically changed. He started taking back land that we had set aside for military bases, he wanted the American forces no more than what they had in Washington, and he openly defied orders from America. Unknown to Kennedy Khrushchev, leader of the Soviet Union, was also watching everything that played out between Cuba and the United States. President Kennedy, later realizing, would make a few decisions for the worst. These decisions would haunt him for the re...
Ultimately, the hostages were released, and Kennedy would learn a lesson that he would incorporate into the rest of his administration. From that moment on Kennedy grew more opposed to using military forces, and sought plausible deniability in his actions. The Bay of Pigs was not the end of Kennedy’s relationship with communist Cuba; his other two
May, Ernest R. “John F Kennedy and the Cuban MIssile Crisis.” BBC News. BBC., 18 Nov. 2013.
The Soviet Union and the United States were very distant during three decades of a nuclear arms race. Even though the two nations never directly had a battle, the Cuban Missile Crisis, amongst other things, was a result of the tension. The missile crisis began in October of 1962, when an American spy plane secretly photographed nuclear missile sites being built by the Soviet Union in Cuba. JFK did not want the Soviet Union and Cuba to know that he had discovered the missiles, so he made his decisions very secretly. Eventually, Kennedy decided to place a ring of ships around Cuba and place missiles in Turkey. Eventually, both leaders superpowers realized the possibility of a nuclear war and agreed to a deal in which the Soviets would remove the missiles from Cuba if the US didn't invade Cuba. Even though the Soviets removed took their missiles out of Cuba and the US eventually taking their missiles out of Turkey, they (the Soviets) continued to build a more advanced military; the missile crisis was over, but the arms race was not.
This paper will analyze the role of John McCone in the thirteen-day crisis, how the crisis impacted the United States, the Soviet Union, Cuba, and the world, and lastly whether the resolution achieved reflected the United States triumph and its success in handling the crisis. Several months before the crisis, the Director of Central Intelligence Agency (C.I.A. John McCone, a paranoid anticommunist, was one of the first government officials to discover the massive military buildup ongoing in Cuba. Starting August 1962, he insistently advocated his hypothesis about Soviet actions in Cuba to the President advisors that the Soviets might take a risk and place nuclear missiles in Cuba. He reasoned that the placement of missiles in Cuba gave Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev a way to counter the growing American nuclear superiority and to protect the communist government in Cuba (I). He also thought that one potential political motive from the Soviet action was that if a missile was fired from Cuba and struck Washington, the Russians could later deny being involved with the catastrophe and put the blame on the Cubans, rather than if the missile was fired from the Russia itself (11).
Robert F. Kennedy's chilling account of his experiences with his brother, President John F. Kennedy over thirteen days in October of 1962 give an idea to the reader of just how alarmingly close our country came to nuclear war. Kennedy sums up the Cuban Missile Crisis as "a confrontation between two atomic nations...which brought the world to the abyss of nuclear destruction and the end of mankind."1 The author's purpose for writing this memoir seems to be to give readers an idea of the danger confronted during the Cuban Missile Crisis and to reflect on the lessons we should learn from it as a country, and for future members of government.
The movie Thirteen Days is 2000 docudrama and is directed by Roger Donaldson who is Australian and tries to portray the film in a serious manor. The movie is based on the 13 days of the Cuban Missile Crisis, and shows the perspective of the US political leadership, specifically Special Assistant to the president Kenny O’Donnell, President John F. Kennedy and the Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy. This film is not based on the book of the same name written by Robert F. Kennedy like the first docudrama film about the Cuban Missile Crisis, The Missiles of October; this film was meticulously researched and was based on The Kennedy Tapes: inside the white house during the Cuban Missile Crisis which was written by Ernest May and Phillip Zelikow. This is a positive for the film because Thirteen Days had the possibility to become an almost accurate film due to the declassification of important documents, but this was not the case due to the ‘Hollywood effect’ which is a key reason why this film is not history but entertainment. This film exposes how close America actually came to a Nuclear Holocaust. In this essay I shall cover all the positives and negatives to show whether or not the film is a good source of history but or actually was made for entertainment purposes. There are two main historical issues with this film that make it more entertainment than History; the first being Kevin Costner’s portrayal of Special Assistant Kenny O’Donnell, although the film is seen through his eyes and shows him to be in John F. Kennedy inner circle; in reality he may not have played an important role as the film portrays, since he was only Kennedy’s appointment secretary not the Personal advisor he is portrayed as in this film. Another historical w...
...he Cuban missiles in exchange for a promise by U.S. leaders not to invade Cuba. The
Perhaps the most critical moment that had occurred to the United States and the world of the last century is the Cuban Missile Crisis. The significance of this event was that it had brought the world to the closest it could ever be to a nuclear war. Millions of lives, cultures and infrastructure would have been lost if it was not splendidly dealt with. Yet, a man was able to prevent this devastation, and he was none other than President John Fitzgerald Kennedy (JFK) of the United States. How was he significant to the event? This research paper will discuss it with the points that are based on JFK’s characteristics. Hence, to provide an overview of this paper; the outbreak of nuclear warfare was prevented in the Cuban Missile Crisis specifically by John F. Kennedy’s many distinguished characteristics.
On October 22, 1962, President John F. Kennedy reached out to America and the Cubans with his Cuban Missile Crisis Address to the Nation. During this time, the Cold War had occupied several countries of world. This war resulted from tensions, military and political, between Russia and its allies and America, its allies, and the Western Hemisphere. When President Kennedy gave his speech, Russia had occupied Cuba and began building military bases that contained nuclear warheads and other deadly missiles. People of America saw this as a threat to the freedom of the U.S. and the Western Hemisphere. In a time of great tension and fear, President Kennedy delivered his spectacular and reassuring speech that appealed to the citizens of American in several ways.
“The Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962: A National Security Archive Documents Reader” edited by Laurence Chang and Peter Kornbluh and “Cuba on the Brink: Castro, the Missile Crisis and the Soviet Collapse” by James G. Blight will be evaluated by referring to their origin, purpose, value and limitation.
The Cuban Missile Crisis lasted two weeks in the midst of the Cold War, and brought the world closer to nuclear war than ever before. In October of 1962 multiple nuclear missiles of the Soviet Union’ s were discovered in Cuba, a mere 90 miles south of the United States. Given the communist ties between Cuba and the USSR, this poised a considerable threat to our national security. Throughout the 14 days the two leaders, John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev struggled to clearly understand each others‘ genuine intentions. Actions taken by each state during this crisis demonstrates the realist point of view, in a variety of ways. The fundamentals of Realism will be explored and explained along with actions taken during this crisis from a realist point of view.
"The Cuban Missile Crisis, October 1962." U.S. Dept. of State Office of the Historian. Office of the Historian, 31 Oct. 2013. Web. 24 Mar. 2014. .
Roger Donaldson’s film, Thirteen Days dramatizes the Kennedy administration reaction to the Cuban Missile Crisis. The film discusses a time when the United States had come close to a nuclear war with other nations. The film mainly focuses on showing the audience the United States perspective of the crisis. The Cuban Missile crisis was a thirteen-day long confrontation between the United States, Cuba, and the Soviet Union. This crisis started out when both the United States and the Soviet Union wanted to be seen as the most superior nation in the world. Therefore, both nations decided to use the technology they had in order to produce nuclear missiles and other weapons to show the globe how powerful they were as nations. The United States and