This bumper sticker makes reference to the Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962, when a standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union over Soviet attempts to construct missile installations in Cuba threatened to push the two powers into war. Although Soviet premier Nikita Kruschev's announcement on 29 October 1962 that his country would dismantle those sites and remove their weapons from Cuba played a key role in defusing the crisis, the lag between announcing and executing the plan provided fodder for criticism by some right wing commentators who felt the US had taken an insufficiently strong approach to the crisis by failing to preemptively destroy the missiles in a military engagement. During the still-tense days following Kruschev's announcement, the phrase "Those Missiles Are Still in Cuba" became shorthand for distrust of both the Soviet Union and the US government, raising both the specter of communism and questioning the government's ability to effectively deal with it.