the united states had the same sort of missiles in italy and in turkey and, before this crisis had developed, president kennedy had in fact ordered them er to be er er returned to the united states, these missiles had no strategic purpose at all because a major change that had come into the strategic equation was the arrival of the intercontinental ballistic missile, and it was these missiles, really, which held the strategic balance er and were to change in fact radically both international politics and global strategy over the years to come, but i'm going to talk about that later, the point i'm making here is that er khrushchev claimed that the missiles were there in the event of an american assault on cuba, they were a deterrent weapon in exactly the same way as the defensive deterrent weapons er were d were defensive er for er the united states and for the soviet union.