Please please help me with my history homework!?

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_missile_crisis#...

This is a question why has a lot of historiography, but I'll provide with with a scholarly article.

EDIT:

Okay, a good scholarly article you can get your hands on is "Domestic Politics and the Cuban Missile Crisis: The Traditional and Revisionist Interpretations Reevaluated" by Richard Ned Lebow.

The article is 21 pages long but it details the two schools of thoughts about why the crisis began and why it was resolved. With that you should be able to answer your question with a bit more ease.

The crux of the assignment is really you determining what position you will take. Now what i will be saying is not to that either Kennedy or Khrushchev deserve all the credit. No, quite the contrary, I will be giving credit where it is due.

Anyway, Traditionalists maintain that Kennedy responded to the Missile Crisis because he wanted to show the world that America was not going to be pushed around. This reasoning is based on the assumption that the Soviet Union was based on an ideology hungry for world dominance (if I may vulgarize it this way).

Revisionists on the other hand argued that the crisis was caused not only in response to the American Jupiter Missiles in Turkey but also that it was a way for Khrushchev to hide Soviet inferiority.

Thus, you need to find out what were the Soviets motives If the Russians wanted to get concessions and received them, then yes, Khrushchev does deserve credit. However, if you decide to go with the traditionalist approach as see this as a Soviet aggression with no other purpose then to win the Cold War, then Kennedy deserves more credit.

It is important though, again we have to give credit where it is due, that we remember that both parties were afraid of war. Kennedy, though taking a firm stance of non tolerance did not want to fight the Soviets head on. For the Soviets, they were just as affraid of war, this was a huge gamble for them. Additionally, they were weary that Fidel Castro would actually use them. In fact there is an argument to be made that it was Fidel Castro was the wild one (while the world saw this as a fight between two giants, Castro saw the crisis as a way to reaffirm Cuba's sovereignty. Also he actually WANTED to use the missiles. Thus, the Soviets had to keep him in-check and calm him down so that he would not press the little red button and cause World War III).

I do not agree with the statement at all. At the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis, I was serving with BAOR (British Army of the Rhine) in Germany - we were on full alert (24 hour standby to go to war). I was then working for a signals intelligence unit and what we were getting from the intercept of Russian radio traffic was they too were on full alert - some of them were evening sending messages to each other about going to Cuba - yup, it was that close.

http://www.theguardian.com/commentisfree/2012/oct/...

LONDON UK 060314.2051GMT

wrong victory for JFK