"borne out in recent opinion polls, and in parallels made to the Cuban missile crisis "

No one is making 'parallels'. If the Cuban missile crisis is mentioned at all it's to point out that the two situations are different.
And you left out the biggest difference. The Russian and U.S. confrontation could have resulted in the end of civilization as each side had thousands of warheads. 
If today's conflict is limited to the U.S. and North Korea there's no contest.  
If China were to get involved then it's time to worry but they have hundreds of warheads to America's thousands. And they probably wouldn't sacrifice their entire country for the sake of North Korea.