From ’59 when Castro took power the tension built up dramatically. Between ’59 and ’61 Cuba and the US maintained a frosty relationship but there was no direct confrontation. In January ’61 America broke off diplomatic relations with Cuba. Castro thought that the USA was preparing to invade. It was clear that the Americans were no longer prepared to tolerate a Russian satellite in their own ‘sphere of influence’. Later in April 1961 Kennedy supplied arms, equipment and transport for some anti-Castro exiles to invade Cuba and overthrow him. 1400 exiles landed at the Bay of Pigs. They were met by 20,000 Cuban troops armed with tanks and modern weapons. The invasion failed disastrously. Castro captured or killed them all within days. To Cuba and the Soviet Union the failed invasion suggested that the USA was unwilling to get directly involved in Cuba. The Soviet leader Khrushchev was scornful of Kennedy’s pathetic attempt to oust Communism from Cuba. The build up in tension increased after the Bay of Pigs as it encouraged the spread of Communism. Khrushchev felt he could do more than what he did in Berlin, as he knew what kind of response he would get from Kennedy, and that had failed so it boosted Khrushchev’s confidence in what he was doing. The Soviets flooded arms into Cuba. In May 1962 the Soviet Union announced publicly for the first time that it was supplying Cuba with arms, and by September Cuba had thousands of Soviet missiles and patrol boats, tanks, radar vans, missile erectors, jet bombers, jet fighters and 5000 Soviet technicians to help maintain the weapons.
The USA did little to stop this build up of weapons, as they seemed ready to tolerate Cuba being supplied with conventional arms, but it was whether or not the Soviets would dare to put nuclear missiles on Cuba. The USA did not believe Khrushchev would put nuclear missiles onto Cuba, as the USSR had not taken this step before with any of its satellite states and they believed that the USSR would consider it too risky to do it in Cuba. On September 11 Kennedy warned the USSR that he would prevent by whatever means might be necessary’ Cuba becoming an offensive military base-by which, everyone knew, he meant nuclear missile base. The same day the USSR assured the USA it has no need and no intention, to put nuclear missiles on Cuba. With these re assurances the USA had no need to feel that Khrushchev would push any further and put nuclear missiles onto Cuba. At this point the USA had no reason to doubt him.
In October of 62 this changed. On Sunday 14 an American U2 spy plane flew over Cuba. It took amazingly detailed photographs of missile sites in Cuba. The problem is obvious. Khrushchev had first of all lied to the USA and had in fact put nuclear missiles onto Cuba. Many conclusions could be derived from this such as maybe the USSR were planning an attack on the US. It was worrying because as it says in Robert Kennedy’s book 13 days, “The photographs indicated that missiles were directed at certain cities. The estimate was that within a few minutes of their being fired 80 million Americans would be dead”
This needed an immediate response from JFK because the USA was not expecting this to happen and it seemed as if the missiles were there to form an attack on the USA. The experts said that the most developed of the sites could be ready to launch missiles within 7 days, not leaving much time for JFK to take action.
This pushed Cuba in to the middle of arms race fears and tensions as the USSRS missiles were now extremely close to the USA and a lot more threatening as the USSR had reassured they would not our nuclear missiles onto Cuba making it extremely suspicious, therefore increasing the tension.
