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Cuban Missile Crisis: a Foreign Policy Analysis

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Cuban Missile Crisis: a Foreign Policy Analysis
Cuban Missile Crisis: A Foreign Policy Analysis

The Cuban Missile Crisis was an exceptionally significant event in history that became the closest confrontation leading to a possible nuclear war between the United States and the Soviet Union. This thirteen-day confrontation’s major occurrences will be analyzed by the rational actor model and how the leaders John F. Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev made rational decisions that led to the avoidance of nuclear annihilation. In addition to the rational actor model, the organization process model and the politics model will be presented for further comparison between the process in which major decisions are made. The major events in the Cuban Missile Crisis presented are exceedingly significant when analyzing the strategic calculated costs and benefits of the crisis that lead to a deterring end. In 1960, the Bay of Bigs Operation failed. This operation was the unsuccessful attempt of Cuban exiles trained by CIA operatives in order to invade southern Cuba in an effort to remove Fidel Castro, the Cuban leader. In 1962, the “Missile Gap” was claimed untrue by Kennedy. The missile gap was a term used in order to scare the U.S because the U.S.S.R highlighted some of their technological achievements regarding nuclear missiles. However, it was proved by the CIA that the U.S still maintained a significantly greater number of missiles than that of the Soviet Union. In July 1962, the Soviet Union placed nuclear weapons in Cuba secretly because the U.S had placed nuclear weapons in Turkey in 1961. At once, the United States sent an ultimatum to the U.S.S.R to withdraw their weapons or they will wage war against them. The United States later chose a naval blockade to send a threat to Cuba and depict their preparation to attack. The U.S.S.R had eventually backed down and removed their missiles from Cuba in the condition that the United States removed their missiles from Turkey. The rational actor model approach conceptualizes

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