Americans and Cubans Approaches to the Platt Amendment

The U.S.’s relationship with Cuba has been arduous and stained with mutual suspicion and obstinateness, and the repeated U.S. interventions. The Platt agreement and Castro’s rise to power, served to introduce the years of difficulty to come, while, the embargo the U.S. placed on Cuba, enforced the harsh feelings. The two major events that caused the most problems were the Bays of Pigs and Cuban Missile Crisis. In 1903, the U.S. published the Platt Amendment, which was a set of guidelines for Cuba to follow (Blight 165). The Platt amendment was named after Senator Orville Platt of Connecticut. The U.S. had been occupying Cuba since the Spanish American war in 1898, and Cuba wanted them out, so the U.S. set up eight rules for Cuba to agree†¦show more content†¦The U.S. and the presidency were embarrassed and Castro was made wary of future invasions because of this battle (Blight 126). This triggered a speech by Fidel Castro, on December 2, 1961, where he states that Cuba is adopting communism. As a counter, the U.S. imposed an embargo against Cuba only two months later. The Soviet Union, in 1962, was rushing to catch up with the U.S. in the arms race, (arms being a metonymy for all military weapons), but their missiles were lacking in power. If activated, they could only reach Europe and would fall short of the U.S. Unfortunately, in April the Soviet Union placed their missile on Cuba, only 90 miles from the U.S.! Coincidently, Castro was paranoid of a second attack and was looking for a defense mechanism, so he jumped at the chance to have the Soviet Union’s missiles on his island directed toward the U.S. Therefore, that summer Cuba and the Soviet Union worked together to install missiles in Cuba. On October 15, 1962, a photograph proved the existence of the missile being constructed on Cuba, and for the U.S., the nightmare began. After a week of intense debating with his closest advisors, President Kennedy made a decision. He decided to impose quarantine, of sorts, around Cuba to ensure there were no more missiles arriving. The Soviet Union demanded theShow MoreRelatedAmerica s New Sense Of World Power758 Words   |  4 PagesAbby Thompson Period 5 HOTA Paper After the years of the American Civil War, America embarked on a manifest destiny, 2.0. America decided they wanted to expand their territory across the waters. There were many approaches that were suggested by previous presidents, all with the same goal: World Dominance. The Big Stick idea was brought to light from President Theodore Roosevelt. The plan reflected many of the same impulses that were motivating domestic reforms that were taking place in America. HeRead More Cuba and Tourism Essay3446 Words   |  14 Pagesincome between Cubans and their neighbors to the north. The dollar-based society a tourist economy creates is deeply stratified, and conflicts with the ideals of the Castros socialist revolution. Yet in recent years it has proven to be a good source of hard currency for the struggling economy, and efforts are being made to expand the industry. By promoting tourism, Cuba is taking advantage of its beauty, but is opening itself to unfortunate exploitation. The Playground for North Americans In hisRead MoreThe Consequences Of The Spanish American War Essay2078 Words   |  9 Pagesthe USS Maine in Havana harbor on February 15, 1898. After weeks of fighting on both land and sea, American finally triumphed in both Cuba and the Philippines, and on December 10th, the two sides signed the Treaty of Paris. Even after the Senate ratified the Treaty of Paris in February of 1899, however, the effects of the conflict were far from over (Lawson 2-6). The consequences of the Spanish-American War caused the United States to expand its influence on an international level, creating a more externallyRead MorePresident Franklin Roosevelt And The Great Depression3901 Words   |  16 PagesRoosevelt believed that America has a significant role to play for the rest of the world, and this was not surprising considering his diplomatic political approaches. All through most part of the 1930s, the persistence of the economic woes that faced the United States, as well as the existence of an is olated streak among a good number of Americans and some significant progressive political allies, forced FDR to adjust his internationalist sails. However, the attack by Japan on Pearl Harbor broughtRead MoreMarketing Mistakes and Successes175322 Words   |  702 PagesD program to do so. With its search engine, it raised advertising to a new level: targeted advertising. In so doing, it spawned a host of millionaires from its rising stock prices and stock options and made its two founders some of the richest Americans, just under Bill Gates and Warren Buffett. How did they do it? Starbucks is also a rapidly growing new firm—not as much as Google, but still great—and a credit to founder Howard Schultz’s vision of transforming a prosaic product, coffee, into