60s-other+outside+readings

KBM Based on NBC archives videos- 'Bay of Pigs Invasion' and 'JFK's Cuban Missile Address' The Bay of Pig invasion was an effort of America during the Cold War to stop the expansion of communism into Cuba. They attempted to conceal their aggressive efforts, prohibited under the Geneva Convention, by using Cuban-American soldiers to invade Cuba. The attack was unsuccessful and only increased tensions among the USSR and Cuba, dragging out the Cold War and resurrecting new fears in the country of nuclear attack. Tensions peaked during the sixties when this invasion lead Cuba to accept the USSR missiles into their country, aimed at the US. This point brought the USSR and USA closest to nuclear attack among any point throughout the Cold War. The allowance of the Bay of Pigs invasion to occur was the fault of JFK who allowed it to avoid disrespecting Eisenhower's opinions and approved missions. The Cuban missile crisis could have been avoided, although Kennedy managed to soothe those stressors as well. His action plan resulted in a quarantine of Cuba and the mindset to regard any attack on US by Cuba as attack by Russia, resulting in a retaliation on Cuba. Since Russia had supplied its fellow communist country with the offensive equipment aimed at the US, America took that as a direct threat from Russia, its Cold War enemy. America also retaliated by setting up missiles in the UK, Turkey, and Italy aimed at Russia. This stand off directly reflected the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction. The eruption of this concept calmed the nations down, assuring them that had one of them launched the missiles, the other would have as well, assuring both nations would be in havoc. Luckily, both had more of a sense of morals, causing both sides to back down and retreat the missiles. Regardless of the militaristic stance, both sides over time backed down to their humanistic states, putting forth basic beliefs and defense needs to assure the world can live in peace. Both sides were equally at faults for this crisis but fortunately the concept of Mutually Assured Destruction was able to bring both back to a sense of reality and morality.

4/3/2011