he poorly planned, CIA-led Bay of Pigs invasion of Cuba on April 17th, 1961 failed to overthrow Castro’s regime and worsened US-Cuban/Soviet relations

to strengthen the Soviet economic system.

292HIST 212 U.S. HISTORY 1865 TO PRESENT•Indirect military involvement (supplying arms, munitions, and training) in third-world coun-tries.•Economic aid to governments or insurgent groups in third-world countries.

Third World and China

n the Soviet Union, the situation was different. The state focused on military superiority and not on the basic economic production needed to feed and clothe

290HIST 212 U.S. HISTORY 1865 TO PRESENTThe Cold War in Theme AnalysisThe Cold War Era was when the United States ex-erted its world power status, by choice, to thwart the communist threat of the USSR. The efforts of the U.S. made it into the director & protector of the free world’s policies; and other nations expected the U.S. to take this leadership role. The scope and scale of the U.S. industrial-military complex and the nation’s role in WWII put the country in the position of a leading superpower (politically, economically, and militarily). Ultimately, the Soviet Union collapsed due to the in-herent weaknesses of Soviet communism and imperi-alism, leaving the U.S. in the position of being “the” superpower in the world in the 1990s.Capitalism VS. Communism and the “Game of the Cold War” ExplainedDuring the Cold War, the concepts of communism and capitalism (in this case ideally through demo-cratic systems of government) were ideologically and practically in competition with each other. (Be able to identify both terms.) On the world scene the two major superpowers the U.S.S.R. (communist) and the U.S. (capitalist-democratic) demanded that coun-tries align themselves with the communist world or the free world respectively. Some countries aligned with either of the superpowers for ideological rea-sons, but most did so for the geog-economic benefits those alliances brought. Some countries, especially in the Middle East and Latin America, played the two superpowers off of each other in order to get the best “deal” for their national interests.Whenever political-military disputes or disarray hap-pened within or between countries around the globe, the two powers took an active interest in funding and backing their supporters or allies in those struggles (directly or indirectly)