Cuban Missile CrisisCuban Missile CrisisDuring the administration of our thirty fifth United States President, John F. Kennedy, the Cold War reached its most dangerous state, when the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR) came to the brink of nuclear war in what was known as the Cuban Missile Crisis. In this analysis, I will research and answer questions such as, what was the Cold War? What started the tensions between the United States and the USSR? What actions were taken and how were the problems resolved? And finally how the systematic level of analysis explains how the international theory of Liberalism was used during the Cuban Missile Crisis.
The Cold War was a struggle between the United States and its allies and the Soviet Union. Although direct military conflict never took place, diplomatic and economic struggles occurred. It occurred during the Cold War. The Cold War began when Joseph Stalin, leader of the Communist Party, used the Red Army to take control of most of the countries of Eastern Europe. The United States as well as Western European countries were greatly concerned. In response to Stalin’s military movements, President Harry Truman issued the Truman Doctrine in 1947.
In his address to Congress, President Truman decided that the United States would aid any country that asked for help in resisting communism (Browne 263). The Truman Doctrine became known as the basis for containment, the policy to keep communism from spreading to other countries. According to White House documents online, after the Truman Doctrine, George Catlett Marshall, Secretary of State, proposed the Marshall Plan, the European Recovery Program through which the United States provided aid to Western Europe after World War II, in June 1947. The Marshall Plan was offered to all European countries, but Stalin would not allow the countries his military was occupying to take part. In April 1949, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was formed (Browne 263). The countries involved in this pact were the United States, Britain, France, Canada, Belgium, Denmark, Iceland, Italy, Luxembourg, the Netherlands, Norway, and Portugal.
The Truman Doctrine and Western Europe: In the early years after the war, President Truman made efforts to isolate and crush communism. He did so, for example, by threatening to destroy all U.S. military and naval forces abroad on the basis that these forces would not be able to cope with the Soviet threat. Although it is true that the United States has been the primary defender of Eastern Europe from communism since before World War II, it was under the Truman Doctrine that the United States provided assistance, primarily direct support to the Soviet Union. Under President Dwight Eisenhower’s presidency, however, Soviet support was greatly diminished.
The Clinton Administration was unable to prevent the Soviet Union from invading Western Europe. In response to this threat, Truman ordered his National Security Council to be convened. This new leadership, led by General Vatasiewicz, followed shortly after by John G. Allen, Secretary of State, and Admiral William H. McPherson, Director of National Intelligence (Bureau of Near Eastern and Southern Strategic Communications) (NISCEOMRITOC.ORG). By late 1947, after it had reached the point where President Truman was satisfied with the Soviet threat, a joint session of Congress and the Senate was convened in December of that year. The committee chaired by Senator Robert Bennett and Senator Henry A. “Bill” Carbery (D-New York) called upon the U.S. to “assassinate enemy leaders of the Soviet Union as of July 1949 and to destroy Communism as soon as possible” (Browne 263). During this meeting, the U.S. government, concerned that the Soviets were rapidly expanding their control of foreign trade, announced in 1949 that it wanted all Soviet military and industrial bases in Eastern Europe to remain closed to the Soviet Union. It was agreed that the Soviet Union would do the same. In May of that year, President Eisenhower ordered the creation of a permanent counterintelligence service with CIA personnel.
The Eisenhower Administration had not yet established a formal counterintelligence department, but, after the fall of the Berlin Wall, did attempt to establish this one when the Nixon Administration was inaugurated (Browne 263), on August 19, 1973 (Browne 264). In response to this, the North Atlantic Treaty Organization and NATO decided to join the White House, which then took up the task of establishing one. As such, in March of 1973 Eisenhower called on British Prime Minister Margaret Thatcher to submit to the United Nations their list of demands by October 1, 1973, including providing for a thorough investigation and identification of those who carried out mass arrests, sabotage, and genocide of ethnic minority groups within a country (Browne 264). The United Nations would thus provide for the implementation of that treaty and for the recognition of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization by the United Nations Conference on the Rights of the Child. Eisenhower later described these demands as an “unprecedented attempt by the government of the United States to prevent Soviet assistance from reaching the peoples of Eastern Europe” (Browne 264).
As the US’s role in the Cold War progressed, these demands were made, but not addressed to any significant extent. The first step forward toward the Soviet collapse stemmed from the Soviet-American alliance. The Soviet Union, by then, was a non-nuclear, non-strategic entity with a long history of aggressive military expansion and covert actions against other world nations. Since the Truman Doctrine became law upon the death of President Richard Nixon on September 5, 1974, the United States has been in a position to exert its military, economic, and financial dominance over other states in the world. At the same time, the United States has maintained military and industrial bases there. It also maintains bases in Russia and in Kazakhstan during these conflicts, but this is a short-term solution given
The NATO agreement said that “an armed attack against one or more of its members in Europe and/or America shall be considered an attack against them all.” To ward off aggressors, American forces and nuclear weapons were to be kept in Western Europe. In response to NATO, the Soviet Union formed a similar pact between seven Eastern European countries called the Warsaw Treaty Organization, or Warsaw Pact (Browne 263). The countries involved along with the Soviet Union were Albania, Bulgaria, Czechoslovakia, East Germany, Hungary, Poland, and Romania.
While these pacts were forming, the United States and the Soviet Union were in an arms race. They were building nuclear weapons, trying to out produce each other so that neither dares attack. This policy was called deterrence, and is still in use today. By 1952, the United States tested a hydrogen bomb, a bomb more powerful than an atomic bomb. A year later, the Soviet Union also tested a hydrogen bomb. Both countries developed rockets that had nuclear warheads. By 1957, the Soviet Union had developed intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBM’s). ICBM’s could reach targets all over the world.
While arms were building, the Soviet Union went through a major change in power. In 1953, Joseph Stalin, leader of the Communist Party, died. After Stalin’s death, Nikita Khrushchev took over the Communist Party. This is where the effects of a change of power come into play. See Khrushchev’s policies were vastly different from those of Stalin. He said that the Soviet Union would follow a policy of “peaceful coexistence” with the West. This “peace” was to continue until the early sixties, when new conflicts surfaced.
In the early 1960’s, tensions rose between the United States and the USSR when Fidel Castro openly embraced communism and allied with the Soviet Union. Anastas Mikoyan, the Soviet First Deputy Prime Minister, negotiated this alliance. Increasing friction between the United States and the Soviet Union caused President Dwight D. Eisenhower to sever diplomatic ties with Cuba. This was the unofficial beginning of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Before the ties were severed, the Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) had been training Cuban exiles for a possible invasion of Cuba. Newly inaugurated President John F. Kennedy approved this invasion on April 12, 1961. On April 14, 1961, a group of B-26 bombers, which were piloted by Cuban exiles, attacked air bases in Cuba. This raid was designed to destroy most of Castro’s air power before the land invasion was to take place.
Somewhere at this point in the Cold War, the two countries had decided to form a new alliance, but not before Fidel Castro had agreed to support US support under a “special status” in 1956. (On August 7, 1956, during the annual Soviet-Cuba War in the Black Sea, a Cuban military delegation visited the North American island of Cuba and reported that Soviet forces would be deployed.[2]). According to a CIA official who served in the Carter administration, the next day, Cuban Foreign Minister, Yuli LaRosa, ordered a meeting in Islamabad and informed General Carter. The meeting lasted between the two leaders, but was then abruptly shut down and the two sides had to agree to a non-aggression pact. The meeting was closed but at that moment the former president of Cuba, Raul Castro, had decided to allow US troops to enter Cuba for “special status”. A year later, in February 1976, the President of the United States, Jimmy Carter, signed a deal ending the Cold War. By the end of the Cold War, all of the countries of Latin America, especially the Caribbean and those with deep ties to China, were members of the BRIC and this has not changed by the end of the new era. The relationship exists, in one form or another, as of 1995. A number of countries on the list were also recognized as “special” nations. Many of these countries used the United Nations Resolution of 1950–53 which declared that they would be neutral in the Cold War. However, they still retained their democratic statehood and also remained independent on security affairs. The United Nations General Assembly, the Security Council, and other international organizations have been involved in the region for over 30 years. In 1996, former President Carter gave his first speech to the United Nations as part of UN General Assembly Resolution 567 (1979 and 1991) that declared the United Nations as the “sole, permanent sovereign state with a seat in the international community.” He also stated that a UN Security Council resolution would “protect to the greatest extent international law.” Although the United Nations has remained a member since 1977, it is still held by a relatively small group, the UN Special Envoy for Eastern Africa, that is not a member nor that of the Organization of American States. (Although it has been referred to as the “Special Rapporteur in respect of the administration of justice and of the rights of peacekeeping personnel on the territory of the United States”; it is the only UN Office for the Coordination of Humanitarian Affairs of those jurisdictions that does not maintain the designation as a Special Envoy to the United Nations and is not included in any list of members of the UN Security Council.) After the Cold War, several high level international human rights organizations, including the International Tribunal for the Former Yugoslavia, the Office of the High Commissioner for Human Rights and Human Rights in the Dominican Republic, and the Council of Europe, sought to form a permanent body to represent them and to make such recommendations. However, in 2004, an international tribunal judge ruled that United Nations human rights organizations such as the International Criminal Court and the International Tribunal for the former Yugoslavia could not represent a country. Human Rights groups continued to advocate for this rule until 2009. By the end of October 2006 the United Nations Special Envoy on Eastern Africa, Dr. Nour Al Oya, had taken up his position as the special envoy to Sudan and Ethiopia,
According to J.A. Sierra, on April 17, 1961, the land invasion of Cuba took place at the Bay of Pigs. The invasion forces consisted of about 1400 Cuban exiles. Not much was achieved, however. Cuban ground forces