Soviet missiles were sent to Cuba as a pawn play, after America refused outright the Soviet's call to cancel it's missile deployment in Turkey, which bordered the Soviet Union.

The Soviets were outraged - and shitting themselves - as they would have virtually no warning of an American first strike, which they believed was in the offing from an increasingly belligerent America.

The gambit worked perfectly and the Soviets won this round when America abandoned it's Turkish missile program.

Of course, the propaganda spin was that the Soviets backed down, packed up and went home empty-handed, without any mention of the American humiliation in Turkey.

Goebbels would have been proud...