Alright so you read the article. You read that the US put nuclear missiles next to Russia, missiles that were visible to the entire world including Russia, abov

Alright so you read the article. You read that the US put nuclear missiles next to Russia, missiles that were visible to the entire world including Russia, aboveground, missiles which are vulnerable and can be destroyed in a first-strike, missiles that are therefore useless as a deterrent, and only useful as a first-strike weapon. Combined with ridiculous levels of paranoia and threats against the USSR and Cuba, and the invasion of Cuba, assassination attacks and constant provocations, and that this fuelled the Soviet's interest in positioning something similar in Cuba, and Cuba's interest in having some kind of deterrence to the multiple acts of aggression including a full-scale invasion. You already read that the USSR suggested and agreed to a peaceful missile trade that eventually happened, and that this was a reasonable course of action from the get-go, without the necessity of a confrontation which was fuelled by JFK's actions in the first place. And you also read that instead they forced a confrontation regardless, a confrontation that put half the world on the brink of destruction. How can you still not think Kennedy caused the confrontation/crisis? Not only did he cause it, but he also made sure not to avoid such a risky confrontation when it wasn't strategically necessary. As for 'Kennedy shouldn't have opposed that', the article touches on it when it quotes Kennedy as saying he shouldn't have said the soviets couldn't have those missiles a few weeks earlier, and infers he now has to stick with it for domestic consumption because he'd be flip-flopping, not good after already being humiliated on Cuba, after running a campaign partially driven by hawkish views on Cuba. So Kennedy agrees with you that it makes no sense, and the article touches on the fact the Soviet position made sense, and that the European position disagreed with Kennedy, and that his own staff told him the threat wasn't significant, and the article also touches on the fact the Kennedies wanted to keep this a secret because it was a political, not a strategic move, and so part of his staff was kept in the dark (even the VC), part of the white house lied to congress, they pressured the Soviets to keep it in the dark and even went so far as to retrieve a letter that would expose it all if it was ever leaked, that tells you a lot.