Why did the Soviets want to put nuclear missiles in Cuba?

Question by Be free!: Why did the Soviets want to put nuclear missiles in Cuba to protect Castro’s government?
If Khrushchev had just signed a military defense treaty with Cuba (like he did with the Eastern European countries vis-a-vis the Warsaw Pact), wouldn’t it have basically prevented any further American-backed invasions of the island?

Why send nukes instead?

Early answers:

Answer by polynesian
http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cuban_Missile_Crisis

here’s the detailed reading for you on the Cuban Missile Crisis

Answer by Slava T
There are tons of literature on the Cuban missile crisis. If you want to know the Soviet side of the story I’d recommend you memoirs by Anatoly Dobrinin, the Soviet ambassador to the States at that time.

The whole situation was not only about Cuba as such. To answer your question we have to see the context of the time. To put in a nutshell Khrushchev (who was psychologically inclined to all kinds of show-off) saw the USSR being encircled by the American nuke bases in Europe (Britain, Italy) and Turkey. Don’t forget about Francis Gary Powers incident of 1960 when his spy plane was shot down over central Russia. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Francis_Gary_Powers

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