The Cuban Crisis.

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The Cuban Crisis:

The Cuban crisis was certainly more of a success for the USA than the Bay of Pigs because of many things. It gained popularity for Kennedy both home and aboard. Kennedy was seen by the Russians to be stronger than he was originally seen, especially after the Bay of Pigs. America got a missile free Cuba and a permanent link was set up between Washington DC and Moscow. But after all that America’s policy of containment had failed a new communist state had been created inside America’s sphere of influence.

The Cuban missiles posed a serious challenge for the USA because of Cuba’s position to America, it is only 100 miles from the coast of America and with short range nuclear missiles the only area safe in America were northern part of Washington (STATE). This challenge also allowed Russia to get a fresh example of what the government were willing to do when under threat. With missiles in such a position the USA was under constant threat due to the small amount of time it would take a missile from Cuba to reach America, which gave whoever fired first an advantage.

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Kennedy had a number of options, with which he could try; “Do nothing”, “Surgical air attack”, “Diplomatic pressures”, “Invasion” or “Blockade”. All of these options had there up points and their down points, doing nothing meant Kennedy would be made to look weak in front of Russia again, but perhaps the superiority in numbers of American missiles to the Russians would stop them from doing anything. Next the surgical air attacks would get rid of the missiles, but it could not be sure all were destroyed and it could trigger a retaliation strike against America by Russia. Next Diplomatic ...

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