20.1 KENNEDY’S COLD WAR

1960 ELECTION• Economy was slumping, blamed on Republicans

• Kennedy v. (Vice President) Nixon

• Youth v. experience• Kennedy charmed audiences in first-ever TV debates

• Critics suspect Kennedy won (barely) with the help of Mafia connections & “vote-stuffing”

KENNEDY IN CAMELOT• The public was infatuated with the Kennedys

• Jack’s personality, Jackie’s sense of fashion, their two young children

• Referred to as “Camelot” because they almost seemed like America’s royal family

COLD WAR CONFRONTATIONS• Beefed up military spending, both for

“conventional” and nuclear war.

• 1961 Russians build the Berlin Wall, separating East (commie) and West Berlin

• Was built more for keeping in Communist citizens from escaping than for keeping us out

TROUBLE IN CUBA• 1961 Bay of Pigs invasion: Eisenhower (and

Kennedy) approved the CIA training Cuban-Americans to try to take out Fidel Castro

• Castro took over as a communist dictator in 1959• Bay of Pigs was a disaster: troops became lost,

surrounded. We looked like fools

TROUBLE IN CUBA• Cuba became very dependent on the USSR for money,

food, equipment

• Summer of 1962, USSR steps up shipments of weapons, including nuclear missiles

• Oct 1962 “Cuban Missile Crisis” our ships square off in the water between the U.S. & Cuba

• Almost came to us nuking each other (USSR included)• Closest the world has ever come to nuclear war• We installed a “hot-line” between White House and

USSR to avoid this thing in the future