Why was the us so nervous about the missiles in Cuba?

Answer 1

The Cuban Missile Crisis had to do with the fact that the United States had been taking extensive advantage of the relative inability for Soviet missiles to hit the U.S. during the early 1960's. In the United States, a lot of intelligence said that the nuclear war would be limited to maybe a few metropolitan centers in the continental United States, because Soviet missiles weren't reliable enough to reach a good distance into the continental U.S. like say, Kansas or Nebraska.

The Soviets, if they had launched from major bases they had, like Khabarovsk, or Poltava, the distance for those missiles was at least 4,500 miles; which gave the Americans a LOT of time to take cover once the missiles were discovered to have been launched.

It wasn't a big deal. However, 90 miles distance [as it was from Cuba], meant the Russians had not only the whole continental US under the eye of nuclear warheads, but the "runaway" effect that the Americans were taking advantage was gone. It would be like Al-Qaeda moving from the middle of Afghanistan, and then moving base to 100 miles south of the Mexican border. Even though the U.S. was doing it to the Soviets at the time, when the tables were turned, it created a lot of fear in the U.S. because it went from a "somebody else" problem to a "it could easily be me" problem within 24 hours.

For the Soviets, they loved the fact that they were striking fear in the U.S. and they liked the expansion of their capabilities, so when the U.S. threatened them, they used the prior missile silos they set up in Cuba to pressure the U.S. into backing down. The administration at the time did not like it, so we pressured back, with a naval blockade. At that time, once news media of the time got the go-ahead, the crisis was publicized.

Americans watched as they heard reports that U.S. warships blockaded Cuba, that the Soviets were threatening nuclear retaliation, and the nervousness escalated to where both the U.S. and the Soviet Union were deploying strategic nuclear missiles to devastate the other, including a few in Cuba. The nervousness led to an almost complete and total breakdown to nuclear blows. Although the U.S. could on the whole, still stand after the nuclear strikes; the new edge that was delivered in Cuba by the Russian missile systems caused the two parties, America and the Soviet Union to come to a compromise. The U.S. would take out missile silos within a center range of Russian cities, and the Soviets would respond in kind.

That, my friend, is the story of the Cuban missile crisis.