How Did John F. Kennedy Act Through the Cuban Missile Crisis
The Cuban missile crisis of 1962 brought the world to the brink of nuclear war. What was at stake in the crisis, and how do you assess President Kennedy’s response to Khrushchev’s provocation? Was Kennedy prudent or rash, suitably tough or needlessly belligerent?
By Jeremy Leung 299722
USA & The World 131-236
The Cuban Missile Crisis was perhaps the closest that humankind had ever become to experiencing a thermonuclear war. In October 1962, the world watched perilously, as U.S. president John F. Kennedy warned his people of the amalgamation of Soviet arms in Cuba. John F. Kennedy refused to accept “offensive” Soviet artillery in such close proximity to the U.S., but Soviet chairman Nikita Khrushchev had already planned a stealthily build-up. Kennedy henceforth demanded Khrushchev to disassemble offensive artillery and employed a strict naval quarantine, an action that Khrushchev initially refused and deemed “illegal”. For several days, as two of the world’s superpower’s refused to meet an agreement, the world faced the daunting and horrifying prospect of a nuclear war. Eventually, Khrushchev had accepted a peaceful resolution, as he withdrew Soviet offensive arms in return for a promise that the U.S. would not invade Cuba. With the Soviet exodus from Cuba, President Kennedy’s popularity had risen sharply as journalists labelled him the “architect of a great diplomatic victory.”[1] Kennedy’s ability to remain calm under the pressure of a potential nuclear war had won praise from his colleagues and the American public, who rewarded him with re-election. In a diametrically opposed view, conservatives assert his actions were not decisive enough in securing America’s national security. This essay will seek to analyse both the praise and the criticism in evaluating John F. Kennedy’s actions through the peaceful resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
For many Americans, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and in particular the build-up of Soviet arms within Cuba
By Jeremy Leung 299722
USA & The World 131-236
The Cuban Missile Crisis was perhaps the closest that humankind had ever become to experiencing a thermonuclear war. In October 1962, the world watched perilously, as U.S. president John F. Kennedy warned his people of the amalgamation of Soviet arms in Cuba. John F. Kennedy refused to accept “offensive” Soviet artillery in such close proximity to the U.S., but Soviet chairman Nikita Khrushchev had already planned a stealthily build-up. Kennedy henceforth demanded Khrushchev to disassemble offensive artillery and employed a strict naval quarantine, an action that Khrushchev initially refused and deemed “illegal”. For several days, as two of the world’s superpower’s refused to meet an agreement, the world faced the daunting and horrifying prospect of a nuclear war. Eventually, Khrushchev had accepted a peaceful resolution, as he withdrew Soviet offensive arms in return for a promise that the U.S. would not invade Cuba. With the Soviet exodus from Cuba, President Kennedy’s popularity had risen sharply as journalists labelled him the “architect of a great diplomatic victory.”[1] Kennedy’s ability to remain calm under the pressure of a potential nuclear war had won praise from his colleagues and the American public, who rewarded him with re-election. In a diametrically opposed view, conservatives assert his actions were not decisive enough in securing America’s national security. This essay will seek to analyse both the praise and the criticism in evaluating John F. Kennedy’s actions through the peaceful resolution of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
For many Americans, the Cuban Missile Crisis, and in particular the build-up of Soviet arms within Cuba
Bibliography: Bundy, McGeorge. Danger and Survival: Choices about the bomb in the first fifty years. New York: Random House, 1988 Bundy, McGeorge Kennedy, Robert. Thirteen Days: A Memoir of the Cuban Missile Crisis. New York: W. W. Norton, 1969 Lowenthal, David Sorensen, Theodore. Kennedy. New York: MacMillan, 1969. Sorensen, Theodore. The Kennedy Legacy. New York: Harper and Row, 1965 Secondary Resources Divine, Robert A. The Cuban Missile Crisis. Chicago: Quadrangle Books, 1971. Garthoff, Raymond. “The Meaning of the Missiles”. Washington Quarterly 5 (1982), 78 Horelick, Arnold Medland, William. The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962: Needless or Necessary. New York: Praeger Publishers,, 1988. Scott, Len. The Cuban Missile Crisis and the Threat of Nuclear War. London: Continuum Books, 2007. ----------------------- [1]Robert Divine, The Cuban Missile Crisis, (Toronto: Burns and MacEachern1971), 4. [4] Len Scott, The Cuban Missile Crisis and the Threat of Nuclear War: (London: Continuum Books, 2007), 48. [5] Robert McNamara, Blundering into Diaster: Surviving the First Century of the Nuclear Age (London: Bloomsbury, 1987), 11. [6] Robert Kennedy, Thirteen Days, The Cuban Missile Crisis (London: Pan Books, 1969), 27. [7] McGeorge Bundy, Danger and Survival: Choices about the Bomb in the first fifty years (New York: Random House, 1988), 391. [12] Don Munton and David A. Welch, The Cuban Missile Crisis (Oxford University Press: New York, 2007), 1. [13] William J. Medland The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962: Needless or Necessary (Praeger Publishers: New York, 1988), 4. [23] Theodore C. Sorensen, The Kennedy Legacy (New York: Macmillan, 1969), 274. [25] McGeorge, Bundy, “The Presidency and the Peace,” Foreign Affairs 42 (April 1964): 353-365 [26] Ibid., 359