Cuban Missile Crisis - Political Theory Analysis Essay

Cuban Missile Crisis - Political Theory Analysis - Essay Example sed the tension between the US and the Soviet Union increased to an extent that the US Navy ships opening fire and engaging in warning shots as a way of calming down the situation. After the 1945 incident, the US was not ready to permit any nuclear war especially on their ground and it is for this reason that the Kennedy administration decided to play it cool. In October 28, 1962 14 days after the confrontation started, a resolution was reached. The US made a national promise never to attack Cuba secretly and the Cuban administration agreed to dismantle the Soviet Union missiles and ordered them back to USSR base. Moreover, the US decided secretly to dismantle all US built Jupiter IRBMs nuclear weapons that it had deployed in Turkey and Italy in preparation for a war against the Soviet Union. After having summarized this case study, we shall apply specific theories in an attempt to consider the conflict resolution process that may have led to peaceful resolution of the missile crisis considering that this was a very dangerous mission. In this paper, I am going to look at the Cuban missile crisis through the lens of three different theories. The first theory will be about the process approach based on theoretical framework as developed by Zartman and Druckman’s model. The second approach will be the Prospect theory as proposed by Haas and finally the Simple Game theory as developed by Zartman. According to Druckman, international negotiation is a process, which considers various factors such as political affiliations, economic impact, foreign policies and the side effects of the negotiation (Druckman 327). According to Druckman, the process of negotiation begins from a bottom to up process referred to as building a package. Druckman suggest that during the formation... Cuban Missile Crisis has been a subject under serious discussions and studies as many scholars aim at finding out how to apply the principles and theories of conflict resolution that led to the end of a 14-day crisis amongst the world superpowers. From this study, we learned about the process theory, which summarized that conflict resolution is a process that requires negotiation. We considered factors like the mission, aim, strategies, and reference points. We have studied also about the Druckman and Zartman contribution to the Cuban missile crisis. We have also learned about the simple game theory, which is a process that aims at maximizing the outcomes of the negotiations through several considerations. We have also learned about the prospect theory and its application to the Cuban Missile Crisis. The theory is summarized as follows. â€Å"When individuals perceive themselves to be experiencing losses at the time they make a decision, and when their probability estimates associat ed with their principal policy options are in the moderate to high range, they will tend to make excessively risky, non-value-maximizing choices†.