My colleague Peter Husey describes the Cuban Missile Crisis and lessons learned by Jack Kennedy and the administration by Khrushchev and his regime.

Never have two choices only, the end of the world or surrender.

Have a third choice. Here, Peter explains.

Cuban Missile Crisis, October, 1962, end of the world expected any weekend.

They were grim.

There was a way out.

Part of it was we got lucky is Peter.

No, I think, John, it's an extraordinary good example.

Let me tell you my kind of look at this.

Kennedy said the key of nuclear deterrence is you cannot give an opponent only two choices, one Armageddon and then the world or surrender.

So he said, you have to have them what they call an ability to step down.

And what he did was very, it was total luck.

The day we discovered the missiles in Cuba was the day we put our Minuteman ICBM on alert

for the first time ever in Malmastrum Air Force Base in Montana. I think we had four or five on

alert that day. And that is what allowed Kennedy to trade away the missiles in Turkey because

you didn't need them anymore. Those missiles in Turkey were to reach

the Soviet Union because they're much closer than putting them in North Dakota or Montana or

Wyoming, which is where they are today. So he had the ability to give Khrushchev a way of

stepping down as you were without totally losing face, as it was, they replaced him anyway in the polar borough.

Right.

Mortified by what happened.

They thought they had lost.

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