- “The most dangerous moment of the 45 year history of the Cold War took place in the early 1960s when we had the Cuban Missile Crisis. Where the Soviet Union threatened to move nuclear weapons into Cuba and President Kennedy recognized that that was totally unacceptable to the United States and he communicated that very forcefully to the head of the Soviet Union, and the net result was any Soviet actions that put nuclear weapons into Cuba was stopped. But if there hadn’t been a negotiation on ending that action, by the Soviet Union, you could have had a serious military exchange between the United States and the Soviet Union. Because under no circumstances could the United States have permitted the installation of long range nuclear weapons in Cuba, 90 miles from the shores of the United States and when President Kennedy forcefully challenged Mr. Khrushchev on that issue, the Soviet Union withdrew I should say the action that they contemplated at one time.”
Lesson: Crisis management requires a combination of strength and diplomacy during negotiations with an adversary.
Interviewed by George Washington University National Security Archive, Washington, D.C., February 7, 1999.
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