The Cuban Missile Crisis

[Anomalocaris]

That's certainly a good argument. But was that a big miscalculation on K's part? Would any US president have tolerated Soviet missiles in Cuba?

I think once one sees past customary American triumphalism and examine what each side really sought to gain and put on the table, and what the real gains and losses each side came away with, you would see Krushechev didn't miscalculate. He took a big calculated gamble for big stakes, which is the instantaneous reversal of the huge strategic nuclear advantage the US enjoyed over the USSR at the time. Even though he didn't win the hand, he managed to came out with his butt intact, with Soviet Union retaining a strategic position marginally better then what it had at the start. Normally if you take big risks for big rewards and then lose, you expect to lose much of what you started with. So Khrushchev calculated well.

No US president could have knowingly allowed the USSR set up intermediate range nuclear weapons in Cuba. In the early 1960s, the US enjoyed overwhelming nuclear superiority over the USSR. The US could level the Soviet Union with a massive fleet of manned nuclear bombers. Soviet Union had only a handful of intercontinental ballistic missiles, around 10, that could credibly get past American defences and reach American home land. At the same time, Soviet Union had crushing conventional superiority in Europe. If Soviet Union attacked Western Europe, nothing could keep soviet army from rolling over Germany and France. Only the understanding America could wipe out soviet homeland, and would do so because Soviet Union can't retaliate in kind, kept soviets out of Western Europe.

If soviet medium and intermediate range missiles were to be deployed to Cuba, suddenly Soviet Union acquires the ability to do to US homeland what US had been able to do to USSR. Suddenly the balance between American nuclear superiority and soviet conventional superiority would be shattered. Soviets would think they could invade Western Europe with impunity because America would not dare to attack the USSR with nuclear weapons, because USSR could launch crippling attacks on the US from Cuba.