China & Russia

[Anomalocaris]

Cuban missile crisis was hardly a prestige issue.    At stake there is whether the U.S. will gets to continue to unilaterally enjoy the geographic advantage, gained through assiduous diplomacy, dirty tricks, as well as economic give and take, of surrounding the adversary at close range with bases from which a nuclear attack on the adversary could be launched,  thus putting adversary at the grave disadvantage of having build a vast and vastly expensive air defence force which then has to be dispersed to all four corners of its territoryn.     If Soviet missiles in Cuba were to stay, that would mean the Soviet Union sudden wiped out at comparatively little cost the hitherto unilateral and dearly bought U.S. advantage ,  and gained the Soviet Union a near parity in the ability to suddenly launch an nearly unanswerable nuclear attack on the core of the adversary, that requires disproportionately costly homeland defensive investment to counter.

As it turns out, this advantage that the U.S. enjoyed was soon to be side steped by the advant of large fleet of MIRV equipped ICBMs,  but in 1963 it was not yet clear the entire favorable balance the Cuban blockade was intended safeguard would be rendered obsolete in 5 years.