Mishandling Of The Cuban Missile Crisis

The Mishandling of the Cuban Missile Crisis Some of the most nerve-racking moments in United States history happened during the Cold War. Every day, people worried that the Soviet Union was about to launch a full-scale nuclear attack on them. These types of worries peaked in the early 1960s because of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Castro’s growing relationship with Khrushchev started to really instill fear into not only the American public, but to the entire world as a whole. Not only was the Soviet Union forming an alliance with an unpredictable dictator, their nuclear weapons were now considerably closer to United States land. This meant that the United States would now have very little time to react if they were attacked. Now, despite the fact …show more content…
Because of this, their relationship with the Soviet Union immediately went south. Both sides were trying to exceed each other’s nuclear arsenal. In addition, the United States’ various attempts at stopping Communism from spreading, such as the Korean War, led to a countless amount of threats and false alarms. So, in late 1959, the United States sent “fifteen nuclear tipped Jupiter missiles” to Turkey to try and intimidate the Soviets (GWU, n.d., p.1). At this time, relations between the United States and Cuba started to get rocky as well. Fidel’s Castro’s Communist belief put him and the American’s hot list. So much so that in August of 1960, the US underwent their first assassination attempt on Castro with a poisoned box of cigars (GWU, n.d., p. 2). This, along with several trade embargos placed on Cuba, made Castro grow paranoid towards the United States. He believed that the capitalist leaders in America would do anything they could to get rid of him, and after seeing their failed assassination attempt, he knew that killing him was an option. This concern was strengthened with the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion. The CIA organized and trained around 1400 Cuban exiles and rebels to try and overthrow Castro’s government (GWU, n.d., p. 2). They were supposed to take out Castro’s air support around the Bay of Pigs so that US trained Cuban exiles could land on the beach and take out the government outposts as they continued through Cuba. But in an attempt to keep their involvement out of the invasion, they cancelled some of the previously planned airstrikes on local airfields. Because of this, Castro’s supporters were able to completely hold back the rebels and the United State’s involvement in the invasion was revealed. Nearly a year later, Castro began installing Soviet nuclear warheads on Cuban land. Then, in August of 1962, American spy planes spotted those