• Tachanka [comrade/them]
    ·
    1 year ago

    Sort of. I assume by "US invading Cuba" you're referring to the Bay of Pigs, which was in April 1961. America had already settled on putting missiles in Turkey in October 1959 after DeGaulle had rejected America basing them in France. While they weren't deployed until later, that was still the inciting incident of the Cuban Missile Crisis. Khruschev was merely lucky that Cuba had recently become Socialist. Fidel figured having Soviet nukes in Cuba would prevent another Bay of Pigs while Khruschev figured that Soviet nukes in Cuba would counterbalance American nukes in Turkey, preventing the USA from launching a pre-emptive strike due to a perceived time advantage, since Turkey is a similar distance from Moscow that Cuba is from Washington.

    • AHopeOnceMore [he/him]B
      ·
      1 year ago

      I declare war between your tomato and my tomahto, where I say that solidarity was a bigger influence and you say it was da nukes in turkiye.

      • Tachanka [comrade/them]
        ·
        1 year ago

        sorry. wasn't trying to be argumentative. I thought you were saying bay of pigs was the beginning instead of the nukes in turkey even though that came first. i didn't think you were weighing in on socialist solidarity as a factor. But if you're asking me to weigh in on that, I don't think ideology was a very big factor since khruschev proposed removing his missiles from Cuba if America removed theirs from Turkey. That put Cuba in danger for another bay of pigs, even though it de-escalated tensions between the USA and USSR. Khruschev's main focus was counterbalancing whatever aggressive actions the US had taken first, regardless of Cuba. While khruschev did initially secretly leave a few missiles in cuba, he eventually had them removed as well. And he had the last of the cuban missiles removed before kennedy kept his end of the bargain and had the jupiter missiles removed from turkey. so khruschev was willing to trust the americans to hold up their end of the bargain, when they could have easily kept missiles in turkey and then invaded cuba again.