05 - Globalisation of the Cold War - The Cuban Missile Crisis

Hwa Chong Institution (College) Paper 1 Theme I: Understanding the Cold War, 1945 -1991 How was the global Cold War fought? 1 EXTENSION OF THE COLD WAR OUTSIDE EUROPE (THE CUBAN MISSILE CRISIS) _______________________________________________________________________________________________ The Cuban Missile Crisis1  In Fidel Castro, Khrushchev found a worthy heir of the Bolshevik revolutionary tradition and an example for the rest of the “third world”. Mao had never shown Kh rushchev the deference he had accorded Stalin, and was on his way to becoming an annoying - even dangerous – critic. Ho Chi Minh had an uncompleted civil war on his hands because of the settlement forced upon him in 1954, and was in no position to export revolution outside of Indochina. Nasser of Egypt had never seriously considered becoming a Marxist- Leninist and preferred keeping Egyptian communists lo cked up. Castro’s victory and subsequent turn to Moscow presented an unexpected opportunity, not unlike the one Mao had offered Stalin a decade earlier. Khrushchev’s hopes for Latin America quickly swelled to match those of his predecessor for China. 2 A Case for the Monroe Doctrine  Since the days of President James Monroe 3, the United States had regarded the Caribbean as its own backyard, a source of trade and wealth and its own security zone and dominated Latin America economically and militarily: it understood the advantages of hemispheric hegemony long before it began to think about global hegemony.4 One of the first manifestations of this doctrine was the conclusion of the Inter-American Treaty of Reciprocal Assistance, signed in September 1947 in Rio de Janeiro (hence the colloquial name "Rio 1 The Cuban Missile Crisis which lasted from 16-28 October 1962 is often considered the closest the Cold War came to escalating into a full-scale nuclear war. Len Scott and R. Gerald Hughes (ed.) The Cuban Missile Crisis: A Critical Reappraisal, p. 17. 2 John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History, pp. 176-177. 3 James Monroe (1758-1831) was the fifth President of the United States (1817-1825). The Monroe Doct rine was introduced in 1823 and stated that further efforts by European nations to take control of any independent state in North or South America would be viewed as "the manifest ation of an unfriendly disposition toward the United States." At the same time, the doctrine noted that the United States recognise and not interfere with existing European colonies nor meddle in the internal concerns of European countries. At this point in time, nearly all Latin American colonies of Spain and Portugal had achieved or were at the point of gaining independence from the Portuguese and Spanish Empires. 4 Gaddis, We Now Know, p. 177.

Hwa Chong Institution (College) Paper 1 Theme I: Understanding the Cold War, 1945 -1991 How was the global Cold War fought? 2 Treat