The United States became a defined superpower after World War II and the main opponent they faced during this tumultuous time was the Soviet Union. These two powers fought one another because of the way their societies functioned and how it threatened each other’s failures. Capitalism and communism were at each other’s heads and the US feared communism would spell their doom so they did whatever they could to prevent the spread of communism and tried their best to contain it. With the US having the position of being a superpower they focused on making sure that the USSR had no ability to influence a nation close to its American borders so the USA dwelled into Latin American nations to ensure that and with the US having the power that it does, it steamrolled any resistance that the Latin American nations could have put up. Until the figure that was Castro came into power in Cuba and was successful in turning any attempt by the USA to manipulate Cuba, into failure.
The Cuban Missile Crisis was the closest the superpowers ever were to coming into war but the fear of war devolving into nuclear destruction was too much and peace and negotiations eventually won out. But the Cuban Missile Crisis was a time of great turmoil as Cuba became a stronghold for Castro and the USSR to spread the influence of communism in Latin America and be ready to attack the borders of the United States. At this moment in time everyone in America feared the Soviet Union and what it could do with its armament of nuclear weapons, but this document proved that things weren’t going so smoothly for America’s opposition as what Castro and the Soviet Union would have liked the United States government and its people believe.
This document is a conversation between Castro and A.I. Mikoyan that describes the real relationship between Cuba and the USSR or rather how little the actual relationship really was. In it you can infer that Mikoyan sees Castro and Cuba as a means to an end to weaken the position of the United States with their superiority and the threat that Cuba could have nuclear warheads in Cuba when in reality the USSR doesn’t trust Cuba with missiles at all. Anastas Ivanovich Mikoyan was a Soviet politician with a high position in the Communist party and crucial to the USSR so the conversation between Castro and Mikoyan was important. This document reveals that Castro was frustrated with the USSR when they began pulling Soviet troops out of Cuba and the fact that the USSR never intended to hand over nuclear missiles over to Cuba as it revealed that the Soviet Union would never trust a smaller nation with such power. This reveal of the state of their relationship comes at a shock to me because I would have expected the two countries to have a better relationship over the fact that they share a common enemy in the United States and capitalism in general, but it shows that like the Soviet Union’s policies in their own country, they don’t trust anyone, and are a paranoid country. As stated in James A. Wood, “better to stay with loyal friends than experiment with change” (Problems, pg. 247). The actions of the Soviet Union here more than likely preserved the relative peace of the Cold War as Castro would abuse his power as a government that has nuclear bombs than any other dictator at the time.
Documents
https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/20666-national-security-archive-doc-11-record
Work Cited
Wood, James A. and Anna Rose Alexander, editors. Problems in Modern Latin American History: Sources and Interpretations. 5th ed. Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield, 2019.