The major participants in the Cuban Missile Crisis were in many ways driven by intelligence information to make the decisions upon which the crisis centered. The Soviet Union and its puppet nation Cuba relied on the heavy detail they received from their own agencies and believed that as a result of the failure and humiliation of the U.S. during the infamous Bay of Pigs incident that America would be blind at worst to its nuclear build up in Cuba and impotent at best. "At the time of the crisis, the United States possessed many more weapons than the Soviet Union, and thus had a military advantage. Khrushchev had formulated the plan...when he was searching for a place to install nuclear warheads that could not be detected by the U.S. early warning system..." ("Cuban Missile Crisis," 2002, p. 18) Simultaneously, the Americans both feared the Soviets and resented the clear violation of the nation's stated policy commonly known as The Monroe Doctrine which had initially intended to warn European powers from establishing colonies in the Western hemisphere.
The United States gathered intelligence information from U-2 spy planes which conducted reconnaissance flights over Soviet controlled Cuba and identified the construction of short and medium ranged missile silos that could be used for nuclear weapons. Tragically, the United States had failed for nearly two years to correctly identify the build up taking place so close to its own borders. But, it wasn't simply a matter of not knowing about the silos, it was a matter of not being willing to know. President Kennedy refused to know what many in the intelligence agency and in the larger world understood - the Soviets were building missile silos close to the United States. "Only when the CIA was able to deliver a picture to Kennedy was he ready to believe what everyone else knew." (Kaplan, 2002, p. 12) As a result, there were very few options left open to the American government once Kennedy had seen the photos. As a result of the information, the United States blockaded Cuba and refused to let any Soviet vessel near the island.
The blockade brought the U.S. And the U.S.S.R. To a critical stage. On the one hand, the Soviets scrambled to gather information about American strength in the region, American will to strike against the Soviets without sufficient provocation and to determine what other actions the communist empire could take. Conversely, the U.S. had to use intelligence gathering capabilities to assess the strength of the Russian fleet headed toward Cuba, to assemble information regarding the nature and readiness of the silos as well as determine what other threats were already installed on the Cuban isle.
The failure of both the Soviets and the Americans to know more information in advance of the crisis should be a significant model from which nations can learn. However, many of the lessons that were taught during the Cuban Missile Crisis were not learned as is evidenced by the failure of U.S. intelligence to predict or prepare for the attacks on 9/11/01. That lack of intelligence gathering capability was further demonstrated by the buildup to the U.S. war in Iraq in 2003 under the auspices of regime change due to the assumed possession of WMD by Saddam Hussein. But these examples are merely two of the most recent examples of the failure of intelligence agencies to accurately gather key information and provide that information with reliability to officials in government. In addition, these failures were not simply those of the United States but with respect to the attacks on 9/11 and the absence of WMD, many of the world's foremost intelligence agencies were similarly inadequate to the job of assessing the conditions that were presenting themselves. Therefore, it may be that the lessons that should be learned from an event of this nature are simply un-learnable and nations will be forced to repeat the tragedies that have occurred so often in the past.
4. How does cyber warfare threaten U.S. Homeland Security, and can it be countered effectively without an unacceptable sacrifice of U.S....
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