The Passage of Power (The Years of Lyndon Johnson, #4)

by Robert A. Caro

Over and over again, Kennedy delayed a decision to take a step that would require force and might be met by force—and therefore might escalate into the war that would destroy mankind. Over and over again, he tried to give Khrushchev more time to think—until on Friday night, a cable clattered over the State Department teletype, a long, rambling message from Nikita Khrushchev. It contained an offer to trade: in return for America’s pledge not to invade Cuba, the missiles and the Russian technicians and soldiers would be withdrawn. And it contained also “very personal” sentences about the Russian premier’s own fears that mankind was on the edge of the abyss of nuclear war, as well as a statement—“Mr. President, we and you ought not now to pull on the ends of the rope in which you have tied the knots of war; because the more the two of us pull, the tighter this knot will be tied.” That message “for the first time,” Robert Kennedy said, gave his brother hope that he was not the only one of the two leaders who was trying to pull mankind back from the abyss.