Why would nuclear war even be an option?

It's interesting, because yes, you'd think no sane man would ever launch the nukes, but the whole balance of power depended on the credible threat that they WOULD launch the nukes. It was like a high stakes game of poker with both sides bluffing.

Also, at this point in 1962, and the reason the missiles in Cuba would have been destabilizing, is because the Soviets actually didn't have too many long range missiles. In fact, without using bombers or submarines, they actually couldn't have hit the mainland US (except for Alaska). Missiles in Cuba would have changed that and put the entire US in range of Soviet nukes, except for the deep northwest. This is why the generals were so ready to contemplate war; better to turn Cuba into a parking lot and lose a few cities in Europe than put the homeland at risk.

Of course, later on this became a moot point as both nations' arsenals included huge stockpiles of ICBMs that would have destroyed the entire world several times over, and nuclear war became a much less likely proposition.

There are other major factors that were in play: The USSR was not a democracy, so the hold on power by its leader, Nikita Khrushchev, depended on his pleasing his military leaders. So, JFK had to consider how they might respond to his possible moves. If he struck Cuba, would the USSR retaliate to the resultant deaths of Soviet soldiers by hitting vulnerable Berlin? If so, would that force our NATO alliance to try to help save our West German allies? And would a possible resultant widening armed conflict race out of control? Would the Soviets, out of fear that we might then use nuclear weapons first, try to beat us to that nightmarish step? That was the fear. And one good result of this crisis was the establishment the next year of a direct electronic communications line between the White House and the Kremlin, to reduce the odds of faulty communication leading to a nightmare.

I have seen enough to know I have seen too much. -- ALOTO