Cuba had been effectively a U.S. dependency since the Spanish-American War of 1898. American companies dominated the Cuban economy. The dictator Fulgencio Batista, in power from 1952, ran a corrupt regime backed by the U.S. In 1959 a guerrilla movement led by Fidel Castro overthrew Batista. Castro initially presented himself as a nationalist reformer, but as relations with the U.S. deteriorated (he nationalized American-owned businesses), he aligned with the Soviet Union and declared himself a Marxist-Leninist.

Bay of Pigs (April 1961)

President Kennedy authorized a CIA-organized invasion of Cuba by anti-Castro exiles. The invasion at the Bay of Pigs was a fiasco. Castro's forces crushed the invaders within three days. Kennedy was humiliated. Castro was strengthened. Castro asked for and received Soviet military protection.

The crisis

Discovery (October 14-15, 1962)

American U-2 spy plane photographs revealed that the Soviet Union was secretly installing nuclear missiles in Cuba, capable of reaching most of the continental United States. The Soviet motivation included protecting Cuba from a feared American invasion, achieving rough nuclear parity with the U.S. (which had missiles in Turkey near the Soviet border), and possibly leveraging the situation to force concessions on Berlin.

ExComm deliberations (October 16-21)

Kennedy convened a small group of advisors (ExComm) to consider American options. The hawks (most of the Joint Chiefs of Staff) urged immediate air strikes or invasion of Cuba. Moderates urged a naval blockade. Kennedy chose the blockade (called a "quarantine" because a blockade is an act of war) to give Soviet leader Khrushchev a chance to back down without forcing a military confrontation.

Public confrontation (October 22-28)

Kennedy announced the discovery and the quarantine in a televised address on October 22. American naval forces intercepted Soviet ships approaching Cuba. At UN, American ambassador Adlai Stevenson confronted his Soviet counterpart with photographic evidence. The world watched. Schoolchildren practiced duck-and-cover drills. Many families prepared for nuclear war.

Behind the scenes, Kennedy and Khrushchev exchanged letters seeking a way out. The crisis came closest to disaster when an American U-2 was shot down over Cuba and an American destroyer dropped warning depth charges near a Soviet submarine carrying a nuclear torpedo. The submarine commander considered firing the torpedo before being talked down by a fellow officer (Vasili Arkhipov). Civilizational destruction was averted by a single Soviet officer's caution.

Resolution (October 28)

Khrushchev agreed to remove the missiles in exchange for a public American pledge not to invade Cuba and a secret American agreement to remove American Jupiter missiles from Turkey. The crisis ended. Khrushchev was politically weakened by the perceived retreat and was ousted in 1964.

Consequences

• The world had come within hours of nuclear war. Both superpowers were sobered.

• A hotline was established between Moscow and Washington to allow direct leader-to-leader communication during crises • The Limited Test Ban Treaty (1963) prohibited atmospheric, underwater, and outer space nuclear testing • The crisis launched the era of nuclear arms control negotiations that would produce SALT, START, and other agreements • Cuba remained communist and Soviet-aligned. Castro's regime survived until his retirement in 2008 • The crisis demonstrated the doctrine of mutually assured destruction in practice. Once both sides realized how close they had come to catastrophe, the doctrine became more deeply institutionalized.

VII. The Vietnam War (1955-1975)

The Vietnam War was the longest and most consequential American military intervention of the Cold War. It killed approximately one to three million Vietnamese and 58,000 Americans, traumatized American politics for a generation, and ended in communist victory. Maria should understand both its origins in decolonization and its trajectory as a Cold War proxy conflict.

Background: French Indochina and the First Indochina War

Vietnam had been part of French Indochina since the mid-nineteenth century. During WWII Japanese forces occupied Indochina. The Vietnamese independence movement, the Viet Minh, was led by Ho Chi Minh, a communist nationalist who had spent decades abroad and had appealed unsuccessfully to Wilson at Versailles. The Viet Minh fought both the Japanese and the French and built a strong organizational base.

After WWII, France attempted to reassert colonial control. The First Indochina War (1946-1954) ended with French defeat at Dien Bien Phu in May 1954, where Vietnamese forces under General Vo Nguyen Giap besieged and destroyed a French army. The Geneva Accords (July 1954) ended the war and temporarily divided Vietnam at the 17th parallel, with elections to reunify the country to be held in 1956. The elections were never held, partly because the U.S. and the South Vietnamese government feared (correctly) that Ho Chi Minh would win.

Two Vietnams

• Democratic Republic of Vietnam (North Vietnam): Communist, led by Ho Chi Minh from Hanoi
• Republic of Vietnam (South Vietnam): Anti-communist, led by Ngo Dinh Diem and his successors from Saigon, backed by the U.S.

American involvement deepens

The U.S. provided advisors and aid to South Vietnam through the 1950s. The Viet Cong (also called the National Liberation Front), a southern communist insurgency supported by North Vietnam, gradually expanded its control of the countryside. The Diem government in Saigon was Catholic-dominated, corrupt, and unpopular. Diem was overthrown and killed in a U.S.-supported coup in November 1963. American involvement escalated dramatically under Presidents Kennedy, Johnson, and Nixon. By 1968 over 500,000 American troops were in Vietnam.

Gulf of Tonkin (August 1964)

After reported (and partly fabricated) attacks on American destroyers in the Gulf of Tonkin, Congress passed the Gulf of Tonkin Resolution authorizing President Lyndon Johnson to use military force as needed. Johnson used this authority to escalate the American commitment.