linguistic:translation, structural:reformatting, stylistic:tone
US leadership

The worldwide US Forces DEFCON 3 status was returned to DEFCON 4 on 20 November 1962. General Curtis LeMay told the President that the resolution of the crisis was the "greatest defeat in our history"; his was a minority position. He had pressed for an immediate invasion of Cuba as soon as the crisis began and still favored invading Cuba even after the Soviets had withdrawn their missiles. Twenty-five years later, LeMay still believed that "We could have gotten not only the missiles out of Cuba, we could have gotten the Communists out of Cuba at that time."

By 1962, President Kennedy had faced four crisis situations: the failure of the Bay of Pigs Invasion, settlement negotiations between the pro-Western government of Laos and the Pathet Lao communist movement ("Kennedy sidestepped Laos, whose rugged terrain was no battleground for American soldiers."), the construction of the Berlin Wall, and the Cuban Missile Crisis. Kennedy believed that yet another failure to gain control and stop communist expansion would irreparably damage US credibility. He was determined to "draw a line in the sand" and prevent a communist victory in Vietnam. He told James Reston of The New York Times immediately after his Vienna summit meeting with Khrushchev, "Now we have a problem making our power credible and Vietnam looks like the place."

At least four contingency strikes were armed and launched from Florida against Cuban airfields and suspected missile sites in 1963 and 1964, although all were diverted to the Pinecastle Range Complex after the planes passed Andros island. Critics, including Seymour Melman and Seymour Hersh, suggested that the Cuban Missile Crisis encouraged the United States' use of military means, such as the case in the later Vietnam War. Similarly, Lorraine Bayard de Volo has suggested that the masculine brinksmanship of the Cuban Missile Crisis has become a "touchstone of toughness by which presidents are measured". Actions in 1962 would go on to have a significant influence on the future policy decisions of those who occupied the White House, leading to foreign policy decisions such as President Lyndon B. Johnson's escalation of the war in Vietnam three years following the crisis.