I don't mean to suggest that Castro was the only person who showed poor judgement. Placing Jupiter missiles in Turkey ratcheted up tensions and invited some ki

I don't mean to suggest that Castro was the only person who showed poor judgement. Placing Jupiter missiles in Turkey ratcheted up tensions and invited some kind of response from the USSR - it increased the chance of nuclear war to some degree and it's fair to criticize Kennedy for that. But it wasn't a step-change in the perceived balance of power. Given all the possible Soviet responses, I don't think it was reasonable for Kennedy to conclude that placing missiles in Turkey would lead to a 50-50 chance of nuclear war.