Operation Northwoods was one, in a series of proposals, by John F. Kennedy 's Joint Chiefs of Staff for the creation of a False Flag Operation against Fidel Castro 's government with the objective of destabilizing Cuba through the application of U.S. military forces. The proposal, approved under the authority of Joint Chiefs Chairman Lyman Lemnitzer, detailed several ideas to destabilize the Cuban Government to include the perception of an attack by Cuban Nationals against US forces stationed in Guantanamo. In reality, the attack would have been manufactured by covert US forces and would utilize the services of anti-Castro Cuban exiles as Cuban agitators (Davis, 2006) (Meeting with president, 1962). In 1962, the spread of Communism was
In January of 1959, Fidel Castro came to power. The United States’ attempted to overthrow Castro with the Bay of Pigs Invasion, a CIA operation to overthrow Fidel Castro by landing 1200 disgruntled Cuban exiles in the Bay of Pigs. The attempt fails miserably and is a huge embarrassment for Kennedy, who then vows to bring down Castro. After the failed Bay of Pigs Invasion, Castro looked to the Soviet Union for protection. According to document D in 1962 “The soviets began shipping 40,000 troops, 60 missiles and 158 nuclear warheads to communist Cuba.” However, U.S spy planes soon identified evidence of the nuclear missile sites being rapidly installed in Cuba. As a result, the U.S quarantined (set a zone around) Cuba where ships carrying weapons could not go. If Cuba had missiles, they could threaten other countries and make them submit to Cuba which would result in them becoming communist. Numerous Soviet transports stopped dead in the water just outside the quarantine line. In April 1963, the United States and the Soviet Union came to an agreement. Soviets withdrew their missiles from Cuba and the U.s removed their missiles from Turkey. This tactic of containment through blockades/quarantines was highly effective because as a result of the quarantine, there were no more missiles in Cuba so they could not take over other countries and spread
The Spanish American war was a war between the United States of America and Spain. It lasted 4 months in the year 1898. The purpose of the war was for Spain to loss control of Cuba, the Philippians, Guam, and Puerto Rico. It all started when Spain started to put pressure on Cuba to increase trade to the Americas so they could get the majority of trade with America. This caused Cuba to fight for independence. The United States did not like this because it started to interfere with the trading. In any event, the destruction of the Maine, by whatever exterior cause, is a patent and impressive proof of a state of things in Cuba that is intolerable.1 When the sinking of the USS Maine happened it caused the US to realize how bad the problem was in
When one looks at all the revolutions the earth there are many differences. Evry revolution is different but every revolution have one thing in common, one group of people is being oppressed by another. For this essay we are supposed to compare two different revolutions to the American Revolution. The two others I chose are the Cuban revolution and the Haitian revolution. To begin, I will look at a little back ground of each revolution and then the main cause. Once I get done with that, I will then compare the causes to each other.
Flies circle great black lumps as the moist air ravages the corpses. Dried blood soaked into the ground after faceless soldiers brutally destroyed its owners’ lives. These were the stories in the newspapers, the movies, and the films. Horrified by these crimes against humanity, the American public was spurred into action against the Spanish oppressors. the United States invaded Cuba in 1898 to pursue humanitarian efforts.
During the Cold War, the Cuban Missile Crisis took place. It was when two superpowers were close to causing a nuclear war. Its main origin was when the United States invaded Cuba, on April 10, 1961; which is also known as the Bay of Pigs invasion. After the invasion, previous Prime Minister; Fidel Castro of Cuba, was ‘paranoid’ because he felt like America was planning another attack. So in order to protect his nation, he sought military and economic help from the Soviet Union. Late president Nikita Khrushchev (from USSR), agreed to assist Castro and took immediate action. He installed missiles in Cuba, which the US thought was a threat to the security of their nation. In summary, I think that this was a defensive move by the Cubans.
The Cuban Missile Address is delivered October 22nd, 1962 in the Presidential office through a major radio and television address (Podell, Anzovin, and States United 705). Historically, it is worth mentioning that United States had attempted to overthrow Fidel Castro, who was at the time Prime Minister of the Republic of Cuba, in at least two occasions known as the Bay of Pigs Operation and Operation Mongoose, because of his communist regime and close relationship with the Soviet Union (Pious). Then, after the Bay of Pigs incident, Fidel Castro urged Nikita Khrushchev, the Secretary General of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, to send support and weapons to Cuba, because of the fear of another attack to his person/regime, Nikita did by sending missiles capable of carrying weapons of mass destruction, hence, this major crisis that lasted 14 days ending October 28, 1962 (Deinema and Leydesdorff). In addition, the target audience for this speech is the American people as President starts his speech with the phrase, “Good evening, my fellow citizens” (Kennedy); however, the secondary audience would be the Cuban people, whom he describes as captive people, the Soviet Union leaders, whom he directly addresses and even quotes, and Fidel Castro of course (Kennedy). As noted above, the cultural, socio-political context is important to understand the seriousness of this crisis and
The Bay of Pigs Invasion took place on april 17th, 1961 and it was a failed military invasion/coup of Cuba and its government by a CIA-sponsored paramilitary group known as Brigade 2506. This paramilitary group was trained and funded by the United States Central Intelligence agency (CIA). The invasion was partially caused by the Cuban Revolution of 1952 to 1959 in which dictator Fulgencio Batista, an ally of the United States, was forced into exile. On july 26th, 1959 Fidel Castro was put into power. He then cut the country 's formerly strong links with the US after expropriating the assets of US corporations and mobsters, and developing links with the Soviet Union. United States President Dwight D. Eisenhower was concerned with the way that
The Bay of Pigs was an invasion that the CIA had financed which involved training a group of Cuban refugees to land in Cuba. The primary goal of the invasion was to get rid of the communist government led by Fidel Castro. The Outcome of the invasion was unexpected, and the invasion failed miserably. The plan failed due to last minute cancellations of airstrikes, and the lack of knowledge that Castro had ordered 20,000 troops in advance to go to the attack site; this resulted in having the Cuban Air Force dominating the sky, which did not allow the U.S army to fight back. As the invasion went on, the chance of the U.S winning decreased within every hour. President Kennedy then ordered an “air-umbrella” at dawn. This plan demolished the U.S military. Because Kennedy was new in office, he wanted to do the “right thing” and make everyone proud that they voted for him. Unfortunately the CIA had created the plans before Kennedy was in office, and they did not share all of the information with him and manipulated him into approving it. The blame for this failure lies with both Kennedy and the CIA. The motivation behind the invasion was the United States’ tremendous fear of communism. “I mean, now we look back on that and it can seem sort of ridiculous that we ever had a time when we thought the Communists were going to take over the world. But that is indeed what most Americans thought at the time” (Rasenberg 1). The fear communism was more powerful than the desire to respect the sovereignty if other nations, especially one so close to America as
January of 1959, Cuba welcomed the first of the Cuban Revolution, and had become a communist country under the rule of Fidel Castro as mentioned in “Document D”. The US, against communism, became much involved in Cuba during 1962, when
He deposed of a man who was consistently backed by the national army. Ultimately, Castro won a war against an entity embellished with weapons and superior technology with only 82 men. In order to do this successfully, he utilised guerrilla warfare tactics as they best suited his resource. Fighting a war against an enemy far greater with orthodox and predictable methods would be an irrefutable disaster. Instead, small scaled yet mobile attacks on troops when they least expected proved to be an effective method of confrontation. Phase 1 of the guerrilla warfare principles emphasise on the importance of popular support, which Castro strongly related to. Additionally, the warfare encouraged troops to fight on land that is not only readily available, but an area rebels have cohesive knowledge on. Guerrilla warfare has proved to be successful method of initiating liberty on numerous occasions. It worked for Tito in Yugoslavia, the Viet Cong in Vietnam and certainly for Fidel Castro in Cuba. The country was free after four centuries of neocolonialism, and ‘Cuba Libre’ was finally
Race relations within the revolutionary Caribbean complicated the Twentieth Century, leaving questions of freedom and nationalism open to interpretation. In A Nation for All, Alejandro De La Fuente examines various meanings of race within post-Spanish Cuba, Batista’s Cuba, and socialist Cuba, and how racial tensions aligned with revolutionary ideas. Rather than simply adopting a chronological organization of events, Alejandro De La Fuente gains the reader’s attention by utilizing a thematic scheme. The idea of an inequality, masked by revolutionary, egalitarian rhetoric, remains central to each thematic division. De La Fuente’s work serves to undermine the elitist pretense of equality in Twentieth Century Cuba and expose the long-term effects
In the late 1800’s, Cuba was fighting for its independence and striving to break free from Spain’s control. On February 28, 1898, the U.S.S Maine mysteriously exploded, which was stationed on the coast of Cuba. This led to the U.S involvement in the Spanish-American War. There were many economic reasons why the U.S joined this war, however, there was nothing significant that would require their involvement. The U.S was already keeping a close eye on the battle between the other two nations; waiting for a reason to intervene. When the explosion of the U.S.S Maine occurred, it gave America the political push they needed to get involved in this war.
Firstly, Cuba and the Soviets already had a very bad relationship with the United States. Research shows that, “Another key factor in the Soviet missile scheme was the hostile relationship between the United States and Cuba.” (“Cuban Missile Crisis”) The quote makes the statement in the second sentence true. The United States did not agree on how the government in Cuba was run and tried to overthrow it before but did not win. Cuba and the Soviet Union wanted to team up on the United States to get revenge. Another reason was Cuba’s dictator Fidel Castro was not very stable as the dictator and wanted more than he actually needed. Since he was a dictator he could make anything happen. All of this research let me to conclude that the best reason for the Cuban Missile Crisis was the relationship between all of the countries and how they didn’t like each other that
In an attempt to overthrow Castro and prevent the spread of communism throughout Latin America, Kennedy was forced to implement “a watered down plan inherited from the Eisenhower administration” , which involved using CIA trained Cuban rebels to encourage an anti-Castro uprising which would then appear as an internal uprising. This resulted in what historian Theodore Draper described as a “perfect failure” On April 17th 1961, 1500 rebels landed on the Bahia de Cochinos however invaders were swiftly captured or killed and as Kennedy refused to send in USA troops and cancelled a planned air strike in order to feign lack of American involvement, the plan ended in “total humiliating defeat” . Kennedy was enraged that he had signed what he had seen as an “unworkable plan” and that he had “allowed himself to be swept along by sheer bureaucratic momentum” . Despite this he took full responsibility for the failed operation stating in a news conference on March 21st 1961, that while “victory has a hundred fathers, defeat is an orphan” . The Bay of Pigs ‘damaged US relations with foreign nations enormously” and “encouraged Khrushchev’s adventurism” resulting in increased Cold War tensions that demanded the President’s full