Cuban Missle Crisis and Crisis Management

This research examines the crisis management practiced by the Kennedy Administration during the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962. While the emphasis in this research is on the Administration's crisis management, it is also necessary to consider the issue of Soviet missiles in Cuba for reasons other than the obvious: the issue created the situation wherein crisis management was required. Among some analysts and historians, however, there are doubts that the presence of the Soviet missiles in Cuba increased significantly the Soviet threat to United States (US) national security (Fitzsimmons, 1969; Walton, 1972). Many of these analysts and historians tend to think that the Kennedy Administration felt compelled to treat the issue as a crisis, and to appear, at least to come out of it a winner, because of the severe loss of credibility suffered by the Administration--both domestically and internationally--as a consequence of the Bay of Pigs fiasco (Medland, 1988). Thus, the management of the crisis involving Soviet missiles in Cuba must be examined both narrowly in the context of the missile issue per se, and more broadly with respect to both (1) the range of international issues in which the Kennedy Administration was involved, and (2) domestic political imperatives faced by the Administration in the fall of 1962.

First and foremost was the issue of Soviet missiles in Cuba. On Monday, 15 October, Central Intelligence Agency (CIA) photo-analysis of U

Related Essays

Cuban Literature .... should plunge us into a world defined by the always shifting definitions of the world of magical realism, for Garcia's books are essentially Cuban, and the .... (1778 7 )

Cuban History .... Revolution, 1868-1898, and Alejandro de la Fuente's "Race and Equality in Cuba, 1899-1981," provide a complete picture of one issue essential to Cuban history. .... (1542 6 )

Dreaming In Cuban Cristina Garcia is a Cuban-born American writer. Her voice is important in Latin American literature because she writes about the .... (1361 5 )

Success of Cuban Revolution The Cuban revolution was only in part a peasant revolution; however, it is unlikely that revolution would have succeeded if it had not received substantial .... (1026 4 )

Cuban and Hatian Immigration .... Miami, Fla., is also aware that, beginning in the 1960s with the significant emigration numbers from Cuba and continuing since the 1980s with Cuban and Haitian .... (2035 8 )

Cuban Magic Realism .... should plunge us into a world defined by the always shifting definitions of the world of magical realism, for Garcia's books are essentially Cuban, and the .... (1778 7 )

o thwart Soviet plans. 7. Turkey. With respect to Turkey, the Soviets wanted the Americans to abandon their Strategic Air Command (SAC) bases in that country (Detzer, 1979). From the Soviet perspective, the American bases in Turkey were analogous to Soviet missiles in Cuba. In one sense, the Kennedy Administration felt that, should it appear to defer to the Soviets in the Cuban missile crisis, its international standing would suffer, and its hand would be weakened with respect to all of the international issues with which it was dealing (Pachter, 1963). In another sense, the Administration was intent on resisting, at least formally, any linkage of the various issues involving the Americans and the Soviets, wherein Allied or American prerogatives could be bargained away (Detzer, 1979). The Americans were particularly concerned with any attempts to link the Cuban missile issue with either Allied prerogatives in Berlin, or the presence of American bases in Turkey (Detzer, 1979). THE AMERICAN PLAYERS AND THEIR POSITIONS Within the Kennedy Administration, the men involved in managing the Cuban missile crisis initially began to refer to the group as the Action Committee (Pachter, 1963). When the mandate for crisis manage

Category: Government - C