Cuban Crisis

In the year 1962 October 14, an American U2 plane flew over Cuba. The U2 plane took pictures of secret missile sites, along with multiple long-range nuclear missiles. The United States (U.S.) accused the Union of Soviet Socialist Republic (U.S.S.R.) of supplying Cuba with long-range nuclear missiles, as well as medium-ranged R-12 missiles. Responding to the discovery of the missile sites, U.S. President John F. Kennedy, set up a Committee of the National Security Council to advise him about the situation. After a few days, President Kennedy ordered a legal naval blockade of Cuba in an attempt to stop the Russians from supplying Cuba with any more weapons. After a series of events and very tense days, an agreement seemed close but a U2 plane was shot down over Cuba. In response President Kennedy declared war on Russia. This led to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (N.A.T.O.) and U.S.S.R.'s allies to engage in a nuclear war. When the fallout had settled, the world had been changed and the remaining nations battled each other for control and for any remaining resources. The future was unclear, but it seemed that life on earth would seize to exist. This is the storyline of game published in 2005, called Cuban Missile Crisis: The Aftermath. This was a popular computer game in which President Kennedy and Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev failed to resolve the Cuban Missile Crisis and the world plunged into a nuclear war. In reality however, President Kennedy and Premier Khrushchev did manage to resolve the conflict and avert a World War Three.

In the previous paragraph, I used a possible outcome of the Cuban Missile Crisis from a video game. Luckily this outcome did not happen, instead the U.S. and U.S.S.R. made peace. Before I go deep into the subject, I will introduce you to the leaders of the countries involved in the conflict. The President of the U.S. was John F. Kennedy. He was from Boston and also had the famous Boston accent. The generals of the American side wanted war while President Kennedy wanted peace on the fact he survived World War Two (WW2). On the Russian side of the conflict we had Premier Nikita S. Khrushchev who also wanted peace because during the Great Patriotic War (WW2), Khrushchev fought at the most bloodiest and gruesome battle of the war. The battle was called The Battle of Stalingrad and during that battle there were about 1,129,619 total casualties for the Soviet Army. In fact over the course of the war, the Soviet Union lost over 26.6 million men and women. The Russian generals wanted a war between them and United States. The Premier of Cuba, Fidel Alejandro Castro Ruz opinions on the conflict were not important and not spoken of since the Cuban Missile Crisis was mainly between the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. with Cuba being a pawn.

The main factor that caused the Cuban Missile Crisis was that Russia was building nuclear missile sits in Cuba. So many people conclude that it was Russia's fault but you have to view the crisis from all the angles. So I will show you several events caused by both super powers that escalated to the Cuban Missile Crisis. In the year 1959, Fidel Castro overthrew the unjust rule of Colonel Batista. This unsettled America because shortly after overthrowing the government Fidel Castro nationalized (nationalize: to transfer a business, property, or industry from private to governmental control or ownership) all American companies. In retaliation America stopped buying Cuban sugar. This was serious a matter for the Cuban economy because sugar export was their mainstay of their economy. This caused Fidel in 1960 to ask the U.S.S.R. for help. So the U.S.S.R. agreed to buy one million tons of sugar every year. Also Cuba became a Communist country. This upset the U.S., so with urging from the generals, President Kennedy in April 1961, allowed the Central Intelligence Agency (C.I.A.) to train the Cuban Exiles. They were the Cubans who left