As seen in the video in the intro, where Kennedy gives a speech regarding the Missile Crisis, it is evident that he saw the Soviets as the main adversary. From the point of the US, the soviets were moving too close towards US soil, and they were threaten by the Soviets.
When Batista was overthrown and the Castro regime took over, the US already felt a little uncomfortable. Though secretly, the US provided support for the cuban exiles who were against Castro. However, the Bay of Pigs invasion failed and the tension between US and USSR increased. Cuba was taking on a communist hue, and the US were just following their ideology of containing communism.
Furthermore, America has missile bases in Turkey, which is close to USSR grounds.
However, form the US perspective, they were just pursuing “freedom”. They already deemed herself a global power, and that is was “acceptable to do whatever they wanted as it’s for the good of the world”. On top of that, the missiles in Turkey were obsolete and was no real threat towards the Soviets.
The US were not used to have threats against them. Whenever the USSR took action, US was always worried that something bad was going happen. The US were not used to having enemies at such close proximity, yet to say soviet missiles just off the coast of US.
