Cuban Missile Crisis
In October 1962 the world came closest to a nuclear holocaust than it has ever done before or since in a critical standoff between the two major nuclear powers (the U.S. And the U.S.S.R.) over the deployment of missiles in Cuba by the Soviet Union. This paper discusses the causes and consequences of the Cuban Missile Crisis and assesses President Kennedy's handling of the crisis.
Causes
After the Spanish-American War of 1898 that ended the Spanish Empire and Spain's control of Cuba, the United States had given itself the right to intervene in the internal affairs of Cuba and U.S. businesses established extensive interests on the island. All of this ended with the Cuban Revolution under Fidel Castro in 1959. The U.S. was not prepared to accept a leftist revolution so close to its borders and the CIA carried out several covert and overt attempts to dislodge Castro, which culminated in the disastrous Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba in 1961. The failure of the invasion did not deter the U.S. And it continued to threaten the Cuban regime with covert operations and hostile acts and the Cubans feared another imminent invasion by the U.S.
The...
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