As an anxious nation held its breath, Kennedy opted for a more prudent response. He declared an air and naval “quarantine” of Cuba to prevent Soviet ships from delivering more weapons, while pursuing a secret diplomatic channel to Moscow. Eventually, Kennedy quietly reached a deal with Nikita Khrushchev to remove the Soviet missiles from Cuba in return for an American pledge not to invade Cuba and to remove obsolescent Jupiter missiles from Turkey.95 On October 28, 1962, Khrushchev announced he was withdrawing the Soviet missiles from Cuba. The world exhaled. A nuclear war had been averted.
