Realism & the Cuban Missile Crisis
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- Category: Politics: Political Science
- Date Submitted: 03/10/2011 01:13 AM
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The Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962 brought the world closer than it had ever been to nuclear war. This makes the crisis one of the most essential events in international affairs history, demonstrating a great example of the realist perspectives and other important aspects of international relations.
Primarily, the origins of the Cuban Missile Crisis can be justified by the realist perspective. In former President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s remarks to Kennedy he stated, “The failure of the Bay of Pigs will embolden the Soviets to do something that they would otherwise not do (Absher, 10).” However, not only was the US more alert as a result; so was Cuba. Cuba had evidence that the US would try to invade once more. Thus, Castro and the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev conceived the plan to strategically place nuclear missiles in Cuba to protect themselves from the US. The realist perspective, among other things, involves the pursuit of and struggle for power and, more importantly, a balance of power. The Soviet Union felt that a successful American invasion of Cuba would be extremely detrimental to the global communist movement. From the Soviet perspective this would negatively shift the balance of power out of their favor. This presents a security dilemma between two extremely powerful nations of the United States and the Soviet Union. As the Soviet Union amassed power to protect Cuba from American invasion, through placing nuclear weapons in striking range of the US, the US was in turn threatened by the unknown Soviet intentions. The United States was presented with the problem of not knowing if the expanded power of the USSR would be utilized as a defensive measure or offensive measure to gain more power. Either party could not trust the other because both were uncertain of the other’s intentions and, thus, were forced to prepare for the worst. This preparation took the form of the United States’ surveillance efforts of sending U-2 unmanned aerial vehicles...
Primarily, the origins of the Cuban Missile Crisis can be justified by the realist perspective. In former President Dwight D. Eisenhower’s remarks to Kennedy he stated, “The failure of the Bay of Pigs will embolden the Soviets to do something that they would otherwise not do (Absher, 10).” However, not only was the US more alert as a result; so was Cuba. Cuba had evidence that the US would try to invade once more. Thus, Castro and the Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev conceived the plan to strategically place nuclear missiles in Cuba to protect themselves from the US. The realist perspective, among other things, involves the pursuit of and struggle for power and, more importantly, a balance of power. The Soviet Union felt that a successful American invasion of Cuba would be extremely detrimental to the global communist movement. From the Soviet perspective this would negatively shift the balance of power out of their favor. This presents a security dilemma between two extremely powerful nations of the United States and the Soviet Union. As the Soviet Union amassed power to protect Cuba from American invasion, through placing nuclear weapons in striking range of the US, the US was in turn threatened by the unknown Soviet intentions. The United States was presented with the problem of not knowing if the expanded power of the USSR would be utilized as a defensive measure or offensive measure to gain more power. Either party could not trust the other because both were uncertain of the other’s intentions and, thus, were forced to prepare for the worst. This preparation took the form of the United States’ surveillance efforts of sending U-2 unmanned aerial vehicles...