"Partly to offset America's nuclear superiority, but primarily to deter another U.S.-backed invasion of Cuba, Krushchev decided in early 1962 to deploy on that island nation thirty-six medium-range ballistic missiles (with a range of 2,200 nautical miles). Since the United States had deployed Jupiter IRBMs in Turkey, the Soviet leader had no qualms about trying to do the same thing in Cuba. "It was high time," he recalled thinking in his own memoir, "America learned what it feels like to have her own land and her own people threatened.""