The U.S. Attemps to Contain Cuba

In your Cold War file folder in your Google Docs account, read pages 347 to 349 of Cuban Missile Crisis.

Answer the following questions and post them to your blog. Your answers are due Tuesday prior to class.
Title: The U.S. Attempts to Contain Cuba Labels: Cuban_Missile_Crisis, Bay_of_Pigs, Khrushchev, JFK, McNamara, Cold_War

1. Why was Cuba so important to the United States?
Americans owned most of the businesses there and had a huge naval base there.

2. Why do you think the Americans chose to equip Cuban exiles rather than invading themselves?
This would have prevented any American lives from being lost and would have prevented a war between the US and Cuba.

3. Why did the invasion fail?
At the Bay of Pigs the exiles were met with 20,000 Cuban troops who were armed with tanks and modern weapons.
The invasion failed because

4. Compare Source 17 on page 345 (in the Arms Race.pdf reading) with Source 24 on page 348. Describe how the Soviet Union missiles on Cuba changed the Cold War balance of power.
Soviet missiles on Cuba gave the Soviets a prescence closer to the US. before, the US would have been able to launch missiles at the Soviets from close proximity, however the Soviets would not had been able to do the same. But with Soviet Missiles on Cuba, they could now easily launch missiles on the US from Cuba.