Cuban Missile Crisis Part 1

Here is an essay I just wrote about the Cuban Missile Crisis for AP United States History. I posted it because I wanted you guys to see an example of my current writing.

Imagine in twenty minutes, a town like Cedar Rapids, Iowa, once filled with fun loving friends and family could be wiped out by a nuclear attack. This impending threat caused uneasy feelings leading the United States into a sense of panic during the Cuban Missile Crises. In a matter of seconds any city in the United States could be obliterated. Soviet missile bases were only fifty miles off the coast of Florida in Cuba. After the United States Bay of Pigs invasion on Cuba failed miserably, Fidel Castro wanted some protection in case of another attack. The Cuban Missile Crisis is an important event, changing the way Americans looked at the sky. Since nuclear energy was discovered, President Kennedy explored many different avenues to avoid a nuclear war. Even with the failure of the Bay of Pigs invasion and the Soviets setting up “Nukes” in Cuba, these events led to a more secure and safer America.

There are many people to blame for the Cuban Missile Crisis including, Castro, President Kennedy, and the CIA. It started with the CIA’s failure with the Bay of Pigs invasion. The Cuban Missile Crisis never would have happened if nuclear power was not invented. Nuclear energy was also known as atomic energy which was created by changes in the nucleus of atoms. Around the 1900’s, scientists first noticed most of the mass of every atom came from the nucleus. Many people at this time found this hard to believe. Still, scientists went on to demonstrate the nuclei were held together by an extremely strong force. This created a large amount of energy. The “next step was to make nuclei let go of that energy.” The first time this nuclear energy was tested was in Alamogordo, New Mexico on July 16, 1945. In World War II was the initial time people used this new fearful force in combat.

Kennedy and his group of advisers wanted to avoid a nuclear war that would lead to thousands of casualties. They then decided to either set up a naval blockade or invasion. Kennedy announced he was “setting up a naval blockade of Cuba until the weapons were removed.” To avoid casualties he decided on going with the blockade. Since a blockade was a national law of war, Kennedy referred to the blockade as a quarantine zone. “Kennedy warned if Khrushchev fired missiles from Cuba, the result would be a full retaliatory response upon the Soviet Union.” Both the United States and Cuba wanted to avoid conflict. The Soviets knocking on the United States door with nuclear weapons was hard to believe.

Word Count: 466