concerning Castro's commitment to world communism and because he was convinced the United States would use its predominant military power in the region to remove Castro. However, the failure of the American-sponsored Bay of Pigs invasion by Cuban emigres in April 1961 caused him to reconsider. "Khrushchev thought Kennedy too young, intellectual, not prepared for decision making in crisis situations." The role, if any, played by this perception by Khrushchev of Kennedy in the origins of the Cuban Missile Crisis is still unclear. Garthoff said its importance "has been fairly well debunked." Kennedy did handle the Berlin crisis of 1961 in a surehanded manner, but it took him time to gain confidence as a foreign policy leader. All one can say is that his decision to back the Bay of Pigs invasion and then deny the landing force American air and naval support left the Soviets with an inconsistent impression.
After the Bay of Pigs, the United States mounted a series of actions designed to weaken the Castro regime and/or to remove him from power, including sabotage and commando raids and assassination attempts. In the spring of 1962, the American navy conducted ORTSAC amphibious exercises in the Caribbean, a mockup of a Cuban invasion. Castro, and increasingly Khrushchev, became convinced that the United States would use its own forces to oust Castro. In fact, in 1962 the United States had not made any decision to invade Cuba, but the Soviets and the Cubans, who clamored for increased Soviet military aid, clearly had reason to fear that it would. Little, if any, credence was later given to this set of Soviet motivations by American leaders. According to Garthoff, "no one in the U.S. government believed that the deployment of Soviet missiles was intended to deter a U.S. invasion of Cuba."
The defense of Cuba was, however, not the only or perhaps not even the primary impetus behind Khrushchev's fateful gamble. The Soviets could have ...