The Cuban Missile Crisis

Paper Summary:

This paper discusses that the Cuban Missile Crisis confrontation involved an American blockade around Cuba to prevent the Soviets from delivering any more missiles or other weapons to Cuba. The author points out that the event recently was compared to September 11, 2001, as a time when Americans realized that the oceans no longer protected us from enemy attack. The paper stresses that the speeches Kennedy made on American television demonstrated his concern about public opinion and his desire to have the American people watch carefully as he challenged the Soviets.

From the Paper:

"Kruschev believed that if he could get the missiles into Cuba, he would close the gap between the Soviet Union and the United States and gain a strategic advantage. Kennedy certainly saw this possibility as well. Kennedy knew that American strategic interests lay in keeping the Soviets from gaining this advantage and in keeping the Soviets out of the Western Hemisphere, asserting the Monroe Doctrine that told all other powers to keep out of this part of the world. Kennedy also knew the Soviet capacity in terms of missiles and other weaponry, though he could not be sure that the Soviets would not use those weapons even if they could not follow up an attack with as much power as could the United States. Morgenthau also cites the mass of intelligence data gathered from the Russian spy Penkovsky, a trove called Ironbark, which told the United States what weapons the Soviets had and much more about their operations."

More papers on The Cuban Missile Crisis:

• Analytical Essay # 3911 : "Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis"
• Term Paper # 131747 : "American Intelligence and the Cuban Missile Crisis"
• Analytical Essay # 74125 : "President Kennedy and the Cuban Missile Crisis"
• Analytical Essay # 134074 : "The Cuban Missile Crisis: An Analysis"

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