I'm going to sound like an apologist, but the Cold War nuclear miltary-political calculus was very different pre-ICMB+MAD on both sides of the Soviet-US split.
SLBMs were just being developed in the early 60s, and so Cuban-based missiles represented a novel, more credible first-strike threat given distance (~20 minutes flight time).
SLBMs were just being developed in the early 60s, and so Cuban-based missiles represented a novel, more credible first-strike threat given distance (~20 minutes flight time).