L97 IAS 3680 Lecture Notes - Lecture 8: Cuban Missile Crisis, Fidel Castro, Cuban Revolution

• School: WUSTL
• Department: International And Area Studies
• Course: L97 IAS 3680
• Professor: Professor Knapp

Document Summary

Purpose: show how cuba became a key part of the cold war crisis (1960"s) Show how the us and ussr used cuba as a battleground for the control of the world (especially in the bay of pigs) Kennedy and the us were ultimately the winners but had issues with cuba in the long run, while the soviets and castro were the losers. Nuclear weapons became the most important issue in the cold war from this point onward. Some consider him the hardest cold warrior against communism. Used this concept to beat nixon by critiquing the eisenhower regime as being weak and soft. Jfk used the global situation to his advantage by using the missile gap (which didn"t exist) and claiming the soviets were turning out missiles in large numbers. Eisenhower had not told nixon about the u-2 program so. Nixon was left to dangle and kennedy used the issue to beat him in a very tight race for presidency.