Yeah, I know they would have been removed eventually.
My point was JFK’s “victory” at the Cuban Missile Crisis was not quite the “victory” it was painted to be.
Maybe not, but it certainly helped inspire Khrushchev’s ouster, implying that the various Red Army apparatchiks viewed the CMC as a loss for the USSR (heck, if Pacepa and his boss at the time are to be believed, Khrushchev was actually furious regarding how the CMC turned out). It was at most a draw, with both sides losing in one way or another.