Americas Cold War — Truman/Eisenhower and the Cuban Revolution (History (2028+) HL)

After World War Two, the US and the Soviet Union became rivals instead of allies. This rivalry, without direct fighting between them, is called the Cold War.

President Harry Truman decided the US had to stop communism from spreading any further. His plan became known as containment.

The big idea: Truman wanted to block communism wherever it threatened to spread — using money, alliances and pressure, not full invasions. This single idea shaped US policy in Latin America for the next 40 years.

In 1947, Truman announced the Truman Doctrine. It began with aid to Greece and Turkey, but the message was global: the US would help any government fighting communism, anywhere.

This had a direct effect on Latin America. Even though the region was not yet a major Cold War battleground, US officials started watching every Latin American government for signs of left-wing politics.

At home, this fear of communism turned into panic. Senator Joseph McCarthy claimed, from 1950, that communists had secretly infiltrated the US government, the army, and Hollywood.

This period became known as McCarthyism. People lost their jobs and reputations on rumour alone, and few dared to defend them for fear of being accused themselves.

Why this matters for Latin America: McCarthyism showed how deeply the US feared communism — even inside its own borders. That same fear is the key to understanding why the US reacted so strongly to left-wing governments in Latin America, as you'll see in Section 2.

By 1954, McCarthy had overreached, accusing the US Army itself of harbouring communists. The Senate condemned him, and his influence collapsed. But the atmosphere of suspicion he created did not disappear — it simply moved from Washington to Latin America.

Dwight Eisenhower became president in 1953. He wanted to fight the Cold War more cheaply than Truman had, without spending huge sums on soldiers and tanks.

His approach was called the New Look. It rested on two main tools: the threat of nuclear weapons, and covert action by the CIA.

Arbenz had begun redistributing unused farmland to poor Guatemalan peasants, including land owned by the United Fruit Company. US officials — some with personal ties to the company — labelled him a communist threat, though Guatemala's Communist Party was small and Arbenz was not a Soviet ally.

For your essay: Guatemala 1954 is your strongest case-study evidence for CIA intervention. Use it to argue BOTH that containment logic drove US action, AND that economic interests (United Fruit) and exaggerated fears shaped the decision too — a Paper 3 judgement should weigh both causes.

The lesson many Latin American governments took from Guatemala was blunt: reform that threatened US business interests could be met with force. That lesson mattered enormously five years later, when a much bigger revolution began in Cuba.

Cuba in the 1950s was ruled by Fulgencio Batista, a dictator backed by the US and closely tied to American businesses and organized crime running Havana's casinos.

Fidel Castro, a young lawyer, led a small band of rebels — including the Argentine revolutionary Che Guevara — in a guerrilla campaign from the mountains. On 1 January 1959, Batista fled and Castro's forces took power.

The big idea: Castro's revolution mattered far beyond Cuba. It proved a small Latin American country could overthrow a US-backed government — and that idea terrified Washington and inspired revolutionaries across the region.

At first, Castro's exact politics were unclear even to the US. But his government quickly nationalized US-owned businesses and land, and in 1960 signed a trade deal with the Soviet Union.

Regional reactions were split. Some Latin American governments — often controlled by wealthy elites — feared Cuba would export revolution to their own countries. Others, and many ordinary people across the region, admired Castro's defiance of US power.

President Eisenhower authorized the CIA to train Cuban exiles for an invasion, hoping to repeat the Guatemala playbook. But by the time the plan launched, in April 1961, John F. Kennedy was president.

Bay of Pigs, April 1961: About 1,400 CIA-trained Cuban exiles landed at the Bay of Pigs, expecting a popular uprising against Castro. It never came. Castro's forces defeated the invasion within three days, humiliating Kennedy and pushing Castro even closer to the USSR.

The failure convinced Khrushchev that Cuba needed stronger protection — and gave the Soviets a chance to place nuclear weapons close to the United States.

In October 1962, US spy planes photographed Soviet missile sites under construction in Cuba, able to strike most of the US mainland within minutes. This became the Cuban Missile Crisis, the closest the Cold War came to nuclear war.

The crisis passed without war, but it left permanent marks. Cuba stayed communist and allied with the USSR for the rest of the Cold War, and the world had seen how close nuclear disaster could come.

Diplomatically, the region split further. In 1962, most members of the OAS voted to expel Cuba. The US, worried other countries might follow Cuba's example, launched the Alliance for Progress in 1961 — a large aid program meant to improve living standards and undercut the appeal of revolution.

Two sides, one event: Some Latin American leaders saw Cuba's expulsion from the OAS as necessary to stop communism spreading. Others saw it as the US bullying the region into line — a debate you can use directly in a Paper-3 essay.