Blockade in the Cuban Missile Crisis

During fifty years of the Cold War between the United States and Cuba, the single incident which brought the world closest to nuclear conflict was the Cuban Missile Crisis of 1962. In the decades since that missile confrontation, historians and political scientists have debated whether the tactics employed by President Kennedy to resolve this dangerous crisis were the most beneficial for the United States in the long run. One of the most controversial tactics used by Kennedy was an air and naval blockade in the waters surrounding the Cuban island. In the short term, it is difficult to argue that this tactic was not the most effective means of resolving the crisis. After all, Soviet cargo ships carrying missiles and components turned back before challenging the US Navy's quarantine line, thus opening the door for the eventual dismantling of the missiles already on Cuban soil.

However, at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, many military leaders and critics outside the government pushed for direct military intervention in the form of air attacks or outright invasion. Some historians have seized upon this issue of direct military intervention to point out that in the long term, this tactic left a thorny problem in the United States' side by leaving Castro in power and free to meddle in international affairs throughout the western hemisphere for decades to come.

After careful examination of both the milita

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appropriate response under international law. By gaining the unanimous support of the OAS, the United States convinced them to pass a resolution calling for a blockade until the missiles were removed from the western hemisphere (Kennedy, 1971, 38). European allies of the US supported similar legislature before the United Nation's Security Council. These legal maneuvers made it even more difficult for the Soviet Union to justify its actions, for allies to support it, and for neutral nations to support its actions or look the other way during this crisis. Some of the best reasons for choosing the blockade were those put forth by McNamara and Robert Kennedy. It takes time for ships to sail from Russian to Cuban ports. This valuable time could be used for intense diplomatic maneuvers with the Soviet Union, for pressure to mount on the Soviet Union to turn ships back from other United Nations members as well as the Soviet Union's allies (who didn't want to be destroyed in a nuclear war any more than the Soviet Union's enemies did), and for breathing space for the Russian and American leaders to reflect on the dangerous cat and mouse game they were playing. President Kennedy's tactic of employing a blockade in order to force th
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Approximate Word count = 2765
Approximate Pages = 11 (250 words per page)

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