The Bay of Pigs was the trigger event of the Cuban Missile Crisis as it is the incident that officially destroyed the bond between Cuba and America. Once Fidel Castro had come to power, America became worried about this communist leader. They decided to stop trading sugar with Cuba which meant that Cuba had no main source of money. The Cubans were forced to look for assistance and this fell to the other great superpower, Russia. This is the point at which Russia became involved with Cuba. By stopping trade with Cuba, America had given Russia an opportunity to establish a presence in Cuba.
In 1961 the Bay of Pigs invasion took place. Americans had planned to land from boats on the island of Cuba, but due to the ill-planning of the mission the boats were unable to dock correctly and Cuba had an easy victory. Fidel Castro remained as leader of Cuba as America had failed to overthrow him. This event was particularly significant in that for the second time America had forced Cuba to turn to another country for help, and as before, when Cuba needed money for trading they turned to the Soviet Union. Fidel Castro knew that some sort of defence was needed for his survival in Cuba.
This led to the soviets having an extremely good reason to put weapons on Cuba as Russia could now use the protection of Cuba as an international excuse after the Bay of Pigs which had made America look bad. The real reason that Russia wanted to help Cuba was so that they could build nuclear missile bases near America. This is due to another indirect but significant cause of the missile crisis, the arms race. The nuclear arms race had started years before due to the competition between the two superpowers. Both countries wanted to be more advanced in technology and weapon so as if warfare was to occur they would be in the strongest position. It was also only because the countries possessed nuclear weapons that the missile crisis could have occurred, without the technology there would have been no weapons powerful enough to do enough damage to either country. Not only did they want to be the most advanced with weapons, but both countries wanted more bases to launch from.
There were two other indirect reasons that led to the Cuban missile crisis, both caused by the fight between communism and capitalism. The first was the Berlin wall being built to separate East and West Berliners. At the time Khrushchev built the Berlin wall, Kennedy was in power and did nothing to stop this. He appeared weak to Khrushchev because of this. Khrushchev’s beliefs were backed up by the Bay of Pigs invasion when Kennedy failed in such a simple event, therefore giving Khrushchev the belief that he could get away with anything. He gained more confidence to help Castro and Defend Cuba by building nuclear bases.
The second cause of the Cuban missile crisis was the U-2 crisis in Russia/. An American spy plane was shot down. America also lied to the Soviet Union about the mission that the plane had been on. The Soviet Union used this event to explain to the world why they needed to put weapons on Cuba. It was for defence as no-one had any idea of what the Americans were doing, they had lied about the U-2 crisis and the Soviet Union said they felt Russia needed to be defended, as America could be seen to be planning an attack.
The main reason that the cold relationship between the two great superpowers came to ahead in Cuba was because of the history there. Americans had kept the unwanted leader General Batista in power for too long. The main reason for the missile crisis happening was the fight between communism and capitalism. This was what had triggered everything else such as the nuclear arms race, Berlin Wall and U-2 crisis to happen each then contributing to the nuclear missile crisis. The Bay of Pigs although extremely important to the crisis was only the trigger cause which gave Russia reason to get involved in Cuba.
