Daniel Kim Mrs. Faircloth APUSH 4/4/13 11.

5 DBQ JFK Brings Camelot Mystique to the White House In the early 1960s, the United States was in the thick of the Cold War; during his term, President John F. Kennedy led the nation through its share of alarm and embarrassment. President Kennedys foreign policy was ineffective in containing communisms global expansion but did facilitate some measure of US-Soviet disarmament. The failure at the Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba, the inability of the US to contain Soviet advancement into the Western Hemisphere, and the incompetence of the Kennedy administration to firmly bargain with its Soviet counterpart Khrushchev all undermined United States foreign policy. In 1961, the Kennedy administration sought to remove the communist Fidel Castro from power in Cuba; the Central Intelligence Agency trained an army of Cuban exiles and launched an invasion at the Bay of Pigs. However, because he did not want any evidence of American involvement, President Kennedy denied US air support; the Bay of Pigs invasion ended in catastrophe, with nearly all of the Cuban exiles killed or captured. Because of the failed US attempt to invade Cuba, the Soviet Union decided to install nuclear missiles inside Cuba (Doc 8). The Kennedy administrations failure to effectively deal with Cuba led to strained tensions with the USSR and even the most alarming situation of the entire Cold War: the Cuban Missile Crisis. 1962 brought more potentially-disastrous events for the United States; for the first time, the Soviets had commenced in a secret, swift, and extraordinary buildup of Communist missiles

(Doc 4) outside of their own soil and in Cuba. President Kennedy was faced with imminent ruin and was forced to bargain with Soviet Premier Nikita Khrushchev for a fair and effective disarmament treaty (Doc 5). Because of the Cuban Missile Crisis, the United States lost the military advantages it once had; to coerce the USSR to remove its Cuban missiles, it had to remove its own foreign-based weapons in Turkey. The Kennedy administration was not able to practice its own containment policy on its neighbors, allowing Soviet influence and military to spread into Cuba. Simultaneously, events in Germany threatened U.S. foreign interests. The Soviet Union began to exert its influence on East Germany, threatening to sign a treaty with it that would give the USSR control over access routes to Berlin (Doc 6). While Kennedy did engage in talks with Khrushchev, Kennedy failed to assert US interests efficaciously; the Soviets ended up gaining entry to East Berlin regardless of Kennedys somber talks. The Eastern bloc even constructed the infamous Berlin Wall, a symbol of communisms defiance of American demands. Throughout the presidency of John F. Kennedy, the US failed to assert its authority through foreign policy against the Soviet Union. From 1961 to 1963, Soviet influence rapidly expanded in Cuba and Eastern Europe (namely East Germany) while the US could not effectively respond. Missteps in the Bay of Pigs invasion led to the Cuban Missile Crisis, injuring American influence in the Western Hemisphere as well as the US foreign military advantages. The inability of Kennedy to challenge Khrushchev in Berlin resulted in heightened tensions in Europe and the building of the Berlin Wall.