Confrontations in Cuba and the Vietnam War

I chose to write about the confrontations in Cuba and the Vietnam War. The confrontation in Cuba began as the result of the Soviet Union placing nuclear missiles in Cuba. The Soviet Union was responding to President Kennedy 's rearmament program. At the time, the United States (U.S.) was the dominant superpower and the Soviet Union wanted to restore the balance of power by placing nuclear weapons within range of every major American city. Only 90 miles off the Florida coast, Cuba was the perfect location to establish a formidable threat to the U.S. (Cuban Missile Crisis, n.d.). When the U.S. obtained photo intelligence that confirmed the placement of the missiles, President Kennedy considered several options from a military attack to diplomacy. In the end, President Kennedy chose to create a naval blockade to disrupt the supply of missiles into Cuba. The blockade raised legal concerns as Cuba was not acting unlike the U.S. who already had several squadrons of nuclear missiles aimed at the Soviet Union throughout various European countries. President Kennedy risked possible retaliation from the Soviet Union in response to the blockade, so he placed some 40,000 troops in Florida to mount an attack if necessary, although their success would be difficult. The Soviet Union consented to remove their missiles from Cuba under two conditions: The U.S. had to guarantee that Cuba would not be invaded, and they had to withdraw their missiles from Turkey. The U.S. complied, and the Soviet Union withdrew their nuclear missiles from Cuba, effectively ending what had become known as the Cuban Missile Crisis. The fall of the Soviet Union would later reveal that this crisis was far more serious than originally thought, as Cuba possessed many more missiles than the U.S. knew about (The Cuban Missile Crisis, n.d.). The assassination of President Kennedy ushered in the Presidency of Lyndon B. Johnson. President Johnson vowed to continue the United States ' support of

References: A Vietnam War Timeline (n.d.). Retrieved November 26, 2005 from http://www.english.uiuc.edu /maps/vietnam/timeline.htm Cuban Missile Crisis. (n.d.). Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved November 25, 2005 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_missile_crisis Vietnam War. (n.d.). Wikipedia, the free encyclopedia. Retrieved November 26, 2005 from http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Vietnam_War