Cuba Missile Crisis

The Cuban Missile Crisis has been known in history as the closest that the USSR and the United States have ever come to the brink of nuclear war. With escalation of war rising on both sides and, the threat of first strike upon one another, government officials tried to understand the conflict, and to find a peaceful resolution to this problem being faced. With a peaceful resolution in sight both countries gained, and lost certain abilities and attributes, as well as both of the leaders gaining and losing certain abilities.

At the beginning of the crisis Cuba just had a revolution and had changed it government to that of a Communist ideology under the leadership of Fidel Castro. In 1961 the United States sent a group of Cuban exiles on a CIA operation known as the Bay of Pigs to overthrow the communist government and to reinstate a democracy in Cuba, this operation was a failure and a major embarrassment to the United States. With Cuba just becoming a new communist country the USSR wanted to offer Cuba both humanitarian assistance as well as defensive weapons to help deter further US led invasions that may occur in the future. The USSR placed the weapons in Cuba for two reasons. The first was to deter an invasion of Cuba, and the second was to readdress the nuclear balance in placing warheads close to the United States, just like the US had with warheads in Italy and Turkey pointing at the USSR.

With the ending of this crisis both sides gained and lost certain abilities and attributes that they once had. The United States gained power through the enforcement of the Monroe Doctrine. The Monroe Document states that no other non North or South American country shall try to colonize or take over a country in North and South America because that is America's sphere of influence. The United States also had gained the support of the OAS, (Organization of American States) to set up the naval quarantine with the approval of the OAS. In the idea of not negotiating under a threat the United States did a so-so job at doing this. The United States did stand still on the issue that the missiles in Cuba were a direct threat to the United States and to that of all of the Americas. But, the United States lost power on the issue of giving in to Soviet demands to get rid of the US missiles in Turkey for exchange the USSR would remove the missiles from Cuba. The missiles in Turkey had been already rendered obsolete Jupiter missiles and there were already plans to take them out and replace them with Polaris missiles fired from submarines in the Mediterranean. I personally believe though that this was a loss for the US because the removal of these Jupiter missiles was sped up because of the U.S giving in to soviet negotiations. With respect to National security the US lost some aspect of providing national defense when it agreed that it would not invade Cuba, with this the US is allowing a communist country to go as they pleased 90miles from Florida. But, in return the biggest gain for National Security was that the missiles were no longer in Cuba, which was the main goal of the US going into this crisis. In international relations the US lost face with it trade of removal of the missiles on Cuba for the removal of the missiles in Turkey that were set up by the US for NATO countries as the US steps to help protect NATO nations from countries in the Warsaw pact. In response to international relations the US gained the support of many different nations after the U2 photos showing the missiles on Cuba were released to the public and they were able to see that in fact that there were missiles in Cuba supplied from the Soviets.

The Soviets took much of the losses for this maneuver in placing the missiles. The Soviets did gain from this crisis the removal of the Jupiter nuclear missiles in nearby Turkey. Soviets also had the American government agree to not invade Cuba for any reason which was one of the reasons that the Soviets placed the "defensive" missiles on the island of Cuba in the first place. Freedom of the Seas was argued by the Soviets but in the end the US got around the issue by using the OAS to agree on the idea of a naval quarantine as in the best interest for the OAS nations. Had the OAS not approve the naval quarantine the US still would have been able to establish the quarantine with an interpretation of a part of the UN charter which states that in self-defense such quarantine could be used. In Soviet response to the gains in National Defense was that the missiles in Turkey had been taken out. Soviets lost National Defense with having to remove their missiles from Cuba; this is considered a loss because soviet defense with the placement of those missiles could respond much faster to a first strike by the US. The Soviet lost in International relations by knowing installed