 Greetings from the National Archives. I'm David Ferriero, archivist of the United States, and it's my pleasure to welcome you to today's virtual author lecture with Sir Hee Plohe, author of Nuclear Folly. In October 1962, the world came the closest it's ever come to nuclear Armageddon. The discovery of Soviet missiles being installed in Cuba triggered the most dangerous encounter of the Cold War rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union. After 13 anxious days, the two nations reached a resolution both aware of the danger of mutual destruction. But it wasn't just a showdown between two rivals. It was a global crisis. Sir Hee Plohe offers an international perspective on the crisis in his new book Nuclear Folly, one based on a range of archival documents, including White House recordings in the John F. Kennedy Presidential Library, and previously classified KGB records in Moscow. Sir Hee Plohe is the Myhalo Rushevsky Professor of Ukrainian History and the director of the Ukrainian Research Institute at Harvard University. A leading authority on Eastern Europe and Russia, he's published extensively on the international history of the Cold War. His award-winning books include The Last Empire, The Gates of Europe, and Chernobyl. Our moderator for today's discussion is Michael Dobbs. Dobbs was born and educated in Britain, but is now a US citizen. He was a longtime reporter for the Washington Post covering the collapse of communism as a foreign correspondent. He has written seven books, including One Minute to Midnight on the Cuban Missile Crisis, which was a New York Times bestseller. His latest book, King Richard, Nixon, and Watergate, An American Tragedy, will be published in May. Now let's hear from Sir Hee Plohe and Michael Dobbs. Thank you for joining us today. Well, thank you very much for that introduction. Congratulations, Sir Hee, on joining the growing group of Cuban Missile Crisis historians and on an excellent book about the crisis. I think the qualities of a good book for me or good nonfiction book are, first of all, that it's readable and it appeals to the general public. And secondly, that it adds something to our knowledge that can also appeal to experts. And your book certainly does that. So the archivist said that this is the most dangerous period in history, the closest we ever got to nuclear Armageddon. Assuming you agree with that, why can you set the stage? Why did this happen in 1962? The US had exploded the first atomic bomb in 1945. The Soviets responded in 1949 under Stalin and Truman. But it takes another 13 years for this nuclear competition to come to a head. Why is that? Thanks. Thank you to the National Archives for having this event and discussion. And Michael, thanks a lot for agreeing to moderate it and to be a co-discussing here. I really was very much influenced by your own research on the Cuban Missile Crisis. And I remember when we discussed your book, when it appeared or was about to appear. And probably you were one of the first people who told me that actually Ukraine is part of the story. That some people from your interview lived in Ukraine. And the KGB materials that were mentioned here really come from Ukraine. So for me, it's really going back to this first conversation. And I'm really very happy to be here in this discussion today. The question about timing, 1962, indeed it's long after both superpowers acquired not just atomic capabilities, but also tested their hydrogen bombs. What is specific and what is interesting about early 1960s is that this is the period when, for the first time, the Soviet leaders, and Khrushchev in particular, decided that they could be or try to be on par in terms of the nuclear capabilities to the United States of America. President Kennedy campaigned and took advantage of this misunderstanding, where the claim was that there was a missile gap between the United States and the Soviet Union. The missile gap was there, but not in favor of Moscow. It was in favor of Washington. And Khrushchev wanted to deal with that issue, regressed this disbalance. He didn't have enough strategic intercontinental ballistic missiles, but he had enough of medium range and intermediate ones. And he decided to put them on Cuba in that way, being able to reach the American territory. So that is one of the reasons why it happened in 1962 and, let's say, not earlier in 1955 or 1956. So the reason was that Khrushchev believed that he could really do something about that disbalance. Yeah, so there was a nuclear imbalance in 1962, and Khrushchev wanted to redress it. But do you think he had other motivations? I mean, what about the defense of the Cuban Revolution, which Castro certainly considered to be under threat from the United States and Khrushchev as well, presumably? Absolutely. Absolutely. I was trying to keep my answers really short, relatively short. But thanks for asking this follow-up question. This ideological component, component associated with Cuba, was an important part of the story. Khrushchev was concerned that he would lose Cuba, the first, as he believed, communist revolution in the Western hemisphere, through the attack from the United States. And after the Bay of Pigs debacle that happened in April of 1961, he believed that it's just a matter of time before Kennedy finally would put his act together and there would be an invasion. His other concern was that if he doesn't help Castro, he can lose not Cuba to the United States, but he can lose Cuba and Castro to China. Because again, Castro was trying to build also bridges with Beijing at that time. And so there was this threat coming from Beijing and Washington at the same time as far as Khrushchev was concerned. And he decided to kill one bird with two birds or maybe three birds with one stone. And that stone were the nuclear missiles. Yeah. I also think Khrushchev was a very emotional type of leader. And he saw that the US was deploying similar missiles to Turkey. And as he put it, one of the quotes I love from Khrushchev, he said he decided to put a hedgehog down Uncle Sam's pants. So how much did his kind of personality influence the development of the crisis, do you think? He was a very adventurous type in general. He was taking risk when he came for the first and last visit to the United States in 1959. He was flying on yet untested Soviet airplane because that was the biggest airplane in the world at that time. But he was prepared to take this risk. And the same third degree is tourist Cuba. There's one caveat. He really believed that if he swallowed the pill of the American missiles next door in Turkey, that Kennedy would actually do the same. That the United States would not look at that as something completely extraordinary. And that was his biggest. There were a number of miscalculations and mistakes and misjudgments that he made during the Cuban Missile Crisis. But that was his biggest one. He didn't realize that the American public, the American political elite would not accept the deployment of the Soviet missiles 90 miles away from the American shores. OK, so we talked about Khrushchev's miscalculations. What about Kennedy's? Was Kennedy purely in the right here, or did he mess things up as well? Well, Kennedy had a lot of blind spots himself. And one thing that he never, basically he grasped it eventually, but it took him a while to understand that there was no connection in his mind between the American missiles in Turkey and Khrushchev's desire to put Soviet missiles in Cuba. He was asking his advisor, saying, what motivates him? Why he is doing that? And it would look like we would put our missiles in Turkey. He says, almost forgetting that there were American missiles in Turkey. So that was an ability to read Khrushchev and Khrushchev's motivations. And on the top of that, Kennedy found himself really in a situation where he believed he was a hostage of the particular political environment in the United States. He was caught on tapes, on his own tapes, more than once, saying that, well, the missiles make no really difference. The Soviet missiles don't make much difference in terms of the balance between the two states. McNamara was saying the same. And then Kennedy said, well, last week when we were asked what you would do if there were missiles there, we said that we would react. The right answer last week was, we don't care. So, again, he acted under this enormous political pressure. And the most clear example of that is that it takes him one week to figure out what the policy should be vis-à-vis the missiles. Now, why it is one week, why not two weeks? Why not two days or 24 hours? The point was that he believed that within one week and his advisors agreed with him, the information about the spotting of those missiles on the island, they'd been leaked to the American media. So that defined his horizon, his time frame. He was not concerned about what the Soviets would do during that one week of his deliberations. Actually, one week that the Soviets needed actually to complete the construction of some of their missile sites and get missiles ready to fire. So by the time Kennedy goes on TV and addresses the mission, there are already at least a couple of the Soviet missiles that are prepared to fire. Again, the nuclear warheads are not delivered yet to the sites, but that is the matter, really, of hours and days. OK, so let's back up a bit. I mean, you, as the archivist mentioned originally from Ukraine, and I heard you once say that you actually lived close to where the missiles were constructed. Tell us about that missile and why it was important. Well, I lived as a student. And then as a young professor in the city that used to be called Gnipropetrovs. Today, it's Gniprov. And it wasn't the street where the main entrance was to the largest missile factory in Europe. That's where the every single ballistic missile that was delivered to Cuba were built. There were two type of missiles, the medium range ones, which were called R-12. And they were delivered to Cuba. And then there were R-14 built at the same factory that were en route when the blockade was announced. So they never made to Cuba. And again, for me, it was a very interesting story. So when I went to the now open KGB archives in Ukraine to look for any traces of the Cuban missile crisis, I also looked at the materials, KGB materials dealing with that particular factory and development and building of those missiles. Khrushchev is quite well known for those who read about the period for saying that the Soviet Union was producing missiles like sausages. So it's interesting that he made that statement, which was not factually true at all, made that statement after visiting that Nipropetrovsk factory that again, I lived close to. OK, so Khrushchev sent these R-12, R-14 missiles. And he also sent actually tactical nuclear weapons, which we didn't learn about until many years later. And he sent an army of 43,000 men across the ocean, observed by US reconnaissance planes. I mean, it's an amazing story. This sort of rather primitive country manages to smuggle 43,000 men into Cuba with nuclear weapons without the United States really knowing, understanding what is going on. But I'd like you to read a paragraph from your book, which drawing on the archives that you consulted, which describes the feelings of the Soviet officers during this moment as reported by the KGB. It's on page 92. So if you'd just like to read that paragraph. Sure, absolutely. I'm happy to do that. So it starts with a quote. And quote comes from a KGB report. It's offensive that our fate was decided somewhere over a glass of vodka. And we have to pay the bill by heading off to Cuba, which is of no use to anybody. And of course, wrote an officer to his wife before departure, a Soviet army officer. Not only had he criticized the government and questioned its policies, but he had also divulged a secret about his destination. The letter was intercepted by the KGB and brought to the attention of the officer's senior commanders. But they decided to send him to Cuba anyway. And again, I quote from a KGB document, in the hope that after appropriate explanatory work, he will understand the needs to help the young Cuban Republic. End of the quote. Captain Cizov, this is a KGB officer who was traveling to Cuba on the ship Nikolai Burdenko, was even more outspoken. Again, there is a quote. We are being taken for slaughter. He told the fellow officer who turned out to be a KGB informer. I am ready to lose my party court as long as I get back to the union, continued Cizov, who was, sorry, he wasn't a KGB officer, was a deputy head of his unit's party cell. And then continuation of the quote. The best thing to do on an encounter in Americans is to surrender and be taken prisoner. End of the quote. Okay, so you found these reports in an archive in the Ukraine, not in Moscow. Tell us how that happened. Why were they in this archive in the Ukraine? Well, it turned out, again, I didn't know that before I started that research, that approximately 75 to 80% of all missiles that were moved to Cuba were moved from the military districts in Ukraine. And approximately 80% also of the personnel was moved from Ukraine. It was done through the Black Sea ports in the Crimea and also Odessa, Nikolayev. And each of those ships that were bringing either missiles, equipment or personnel to Cuba had a KGB officer. KGB officers then upon return were filing reports on the expedition. They were reporting on the attitude of the personnel, of the army personnel, of the Navy man, on the encounters with the American ships and surveillance of the ships by the American airplanes. Some of those ships would make more than one trip to Cuba and back during the crisis. So it's really a unique source of the documents, very specific type of documents that we didn't have before. We knew certain things from the memoirs of the Soviet officers and you did an excellent job in your book, tapping into those sources. But now we also have reporting that was happening at that time. And again, it sheds a new light on the entire story. So it turns out that quite a few of the people who went over that were not really happy about this mission and they thought it's pretty useless to, you know, send all this equipment to Cuba, a place like Cuba. Actually, this sort of prefigures the collapse of the Soviet Union when there was a great deal of discontent about all the money that was being wasted on the fraternal countries. And this contrasts with a kind of nostalgia for the good old days that we hear now from a lot of Soviet vets. But do you think these people that are quoted in the KGB reports are representative of the opinions of the rest of the 43,000 soldiers who went there or are they just a small minority? Well, it's really very difficult to judge that on the basis of KGB reports in general. They are quite formulaic. They certainly go about and look at the examples where there is some form of disloyalty and potential quote unquote betrayal of the motherland. And the report on that, that is their job. But what we know from other sources or suggest that this wasn't a small group of people that those were thoughts and attitudes that were relatively widespread. We have a number of commanders that refused to go to Cuba. For example, the first regiment, missile regiment that was delivered that came to Cuba, that the commander was, his name was Lieutenant Colonel Ivan Sidarov. Well, he was already appointed at the last moment when the original commander of the regiment refused to go sighting all sorts of reasons including family reasons. We have other examples as well. We also know that the commanders would send to Cuba troublemakers, people who didn't want to be around. Which increased the percentage of people who questioned Soviet policies. On the other hand, we have an example where the, sometimes unhappy, not for ideological reasons, but for many of them, the term of their service was extended and recently I was in touch with one of the American military who was at that time in reserve and he was telling me that that was also a major concern among the American servicemen. So certain concerns were shared by the two sides. I'd say there's a difference between the ordinary Russian soldier or Ukrainian soldier and the elite who were in the nuclear forces. I mean, the Soviet Union sent, I mean, in addition to tens of thousands of just ordinary soldiers, they sent elite people to Cuba, including well-known mathematicians, rocket experts and so on. Do you see this difference between the two groups? Well, what we see is that the KGB reports on this critical attitude, both when it comes to the officers, like the captains is all that I just quoted and just recruits and officers who, again, the soldiers who are there just for the three year period. In terms of the top commanders, my sources actually don't have much information on that. Now from their memoirs that they were extremely critical of two things. First of their own commanders who came to Cuba and assured them that one could, that camouflage and hide missiles in Cuba and eventually turned out that it wasn't possible to do. Marshal Biruzov, the commander of the Soviet rocket forces was the one who assured Khrushchev that that was possible. He was telling the leader what the leader wanted to hear and then the Soviet brass was really very unhappy about that. And then the second situation where they were extremely unhappy was the way how the withdrawal from Cuba was exercised. And we know that from the KGB sources that in particular that I consulted because they were exposed to what I call the strip search of the ships when they were ordered to open their twin backs to show their missiles that they were bringing back to the Soviet Union. And some of the KGB sources say that the captain of the ship once he received the order was prepared to do that. When the commander of the military contingent on the ship would refuse to do that. And there were conflicts between those later when Khrushchev was removed from power two years after the crisis the Soviet minister of defense, Marshal Malinowski who was very supportive everything that his leader was doing at that time. When the leader was removed and the coup was backed by the military Malinowski told his general staff officers that never in the history of either Russian army or the Soviet army the soldiers and the officers suffered that kind of humiliation that took place during this withdrawal from Cuba. So not withdrawal per se but the way how it was conducted. And the reason why those ships were searched while already in the sea in the ocean was because Khrushchev never was able to convince Castro to go along with the deal that he struck with Kennedy Castro just refused to go along. Right. Okay, we better turn back to the famous 13 days but we're going to, I'm going to wrap this up in a few minutes but if any of our viewers have questions then please feel free to submit them and we'll spend the last few minutes trying to respond to reader's questions. What do you think was the most dangerous aspect of the crisis? I mean, was it, you know, this conflict between Kennedy and Khrushchev or do you think it was something else? The problem of miscommunication and escalation happening quite by accident? Well, in a situation like the one that developed during the Cuban Missile Crisis anything could again, either miscalculation at the top level, decision made by Kennedy or Khrushchev or the decision made by the officer on the ground could eventually meet to the war. So I'm not prepared to prioritize one over another but what I can say is that in the mainstream narrative of the Cuban Missile Crisis too much attention is paid to the agony of the decision making in White House. And it's not like that is not important but that was not the only thing that was happening at that time. And again, your book is one of the first books who tries to broad the scope and to bring in people on the ground and also bring in the Soviet side of the story. And for me, if thinking relatively, in broad terms about what were the most the most problematic issues during the crisis was the first one was the miscommunication and misunderstanding on the top level, just inability of the leaders to understand the logic of the actions of the other side. The second issue was the inability to communicate in timely manner. It was taking up to 24 hours to the letter to the official letter of the leader to be sent from Kremlin to White House and vice versa. That's why Khrushchev Edant was saving time by transmitting through Radio Moscow his responses to Kennedy. So that was another issue. And the third was losing control on the ground. And that what happened on both sides. Again, on the Soviet side, the best example would be the two military commanders to generals ordering to shoot down the American U-2 airplane over Cuba despite very clear orders from Moscow not to shoot unless you are attacked. And those generals made their decision at the time not consulting even with their top commander on Cuba who was at that time, he was a sick man. He was taken rest after the sleepless night. So really, really Khrushchev lost control over his troops. And there was a case again, very well described in your book about the U-2 plane going into the Soviet airspace, possibly sending the Soviets a signal that this is the last reconnaissance flight before an attack on the Soviet Union, nuclear attack on the Soviet Union itself. So, and both Kennedy and McNamara were terrified when they learned about that or the consequences of that could be. So again, the command and control issue was a major, major, major problem at the time. Okay, it's interesting in a sentence you wrote at the beginning of the epilogue. John Kennedy and Nikita Khrushchev managed to avoid nuclear war after making almost every mistake conceivable and every step imaginable to cause it. Very briefly, because we need to come on to the, I want to talk about the present day situation but what do you mean by that sentence? Every mistake conceivable but in the end they managed to avoid nuclear war. So you see them as somehow being allied together in that, even though they did not know it. Absolutely. In terms of their misunderstandings, miscalculations and losing control, I already addressed that to a degree. There is much more about that in the book because I at least intended that that would be one of the main contributions of the book to the big and very rich and very good historiography of the crisis. But the question that I asked myself after that was, okay, if they made all those mistakes, what at the end saved the world from the third nuclear war? And the explanation, the best explanation that I was able to come up with was that despite all the differences between these two leaders, there was something that united them. That something was their fear of the nuclear war. They lived, that was the generation that lived through the Second World War, the generation that on their eyes, on their memory, Hiroshima and Nagasaki took place. The Kastel Bravo test, which went wrong. The Tsar Bomba explosion of 1961. So they knew what nuclear weapons can bring. And at the end, they did their best to stop, whatever the price was, political price for them, to stop the crisis from escalating into the nuclear war. And it's exactly that kind of fair, a positive fair that they shared that I think is really very important factor in the story. I dedicate this book to those who had the courage to step back. And ironically, this is the very same people who created this crisis. Right. Who do you think was the winner in the end? Was it, Kristjof was deposed a couple of years later. Kennedy had to give up any idea of overthrowing Castro, but Castro is still there, or the Castro family is still there all these years later. Even though Castro was furious with Kristjof. It is a great, great question. And on the one hand, if you look at that objective in terms of what happened at the end, the biggest winner and I am taking that line from you is of course, Castro. His regime and revolution was saved. The irony is that he felt to be betrayed and defeated. And that's because again, he was, he called himself a communist, but really he was the leader of this anti-imperial revolution for him to be ignored when the negotiation was taking place between Moscow and Washington and to be dictated on what the agreements was, was a major defeat. The second person in terms of winners would come in the second place would be Kristjof. Clearly saved Cuba for communism, whatever that means. And he got rid of the American missiles in Turkey. But the world looked at Kristjof as a loser. And eventually he was kicked out from office in 1964, partially because his own underlings believed that this nuclear brinkmanship, that was a step too far that he brought the world to the brink of nuclear inhalation. And then the person, President Kennedy, who is believed to be the winner by the world. I don't call him basically a loser in any way. I don't think, I think at the end of the day, he handled the crisis really very well, but he would be the distant third in terms of the winners. This is, but there is no irony in his win. He was recognized by the country, by the United States, and his win was recognized by the world. And that win changed dramatically relations between him and Kristjof. Even if before the Cuban Missile Crisis, it's Kristjof who is on the offensive, who is driving the agenda. After the crisis, the situation changes. It's Kennedy who is in control, who is a senior member in that door that keeps talking, keeps negotiating and eventually negotiates the first arms control agreement partial to the last time in 1963. Well, we could say we all won because there wasn't a nuclear war. And that was the main thing that was gained from the Missile Crisis. The two sides came very close, but thankfully they pulled back. Now we have a few questions here. Can you speak about the Bay of Pigs? But perhaps you could just briefly say how the Bay of Pigs related to the Missile Crisis rather than the Bay of Pigs itself. I mean, what was one event related to the other event? I honestly believe that there would be no Cuban Missile Crisis without the Bay of Pigs. And the reason for that belief is really twofold. The first thing is that Kristjof decided that in Kennedy he really faced a very weak and indecisive president that he couldn't really believe that Kennedy would not follow through with the support for the invasion. And that convinced Kristjof that he could push Kennedy around and that he could actually place the missiles in Cuba. I don't think that he would dare to do that without the Bay of Pigs. Another important factor is that the Bay of Pigs really terrified Castro, who emerged victorious. He repelled the invasion, the aggression, but he was absolutely convinced that another better prepared, more determined invasion was coming. Immediately after the Bay of Pigs, he declared himself to be a communist, establishing this link and connection, ideological connection with Kristjof and using it to demand protection. And eventually, again, this concern of Kristjof that he can lose Castro was another contributing factor to his decision to deliver missiles to Cuba. So in both cases, the roots of that Kristjof's decisions are in the Bay of Pigs invasion. And it's outcome. So I really start my book with discussing that situation, making that argument, maybe not as explicitly as I am doing that now. And then another story that I think was very important for the Cuban Missile Crisis is the Berlin and Berlin Wall and what happened in there. Okay. I mean, talking about Berlin, would France and West Germany have been among the first Soviet targets if they decided to start a war, someone else asks? Well, one of the chapters in my book, the title is The Hostage of Berlin and the chapter is about Kennedy. Berlin was on Kennedy's mind all the time. Here during the first week of the crisis, he advocated strike against the Soviet installations and missile installations and not blockade because when blockade, they called it quarantine, not to trigger in legal terms the war because blockade is an act of war. So the quarantine, when his aides suggested to him that his immediate response was, well, if we do that, if you do the blockade of Cuba, the Soviets will do the blockade of Berlin. And what is next? Next, I'm sending the planes there and the next they're shooting the planes. What I'm doing after that. So really at some point, at least Kennedy was much more concerned about the possibility of nuclear war over Berlin than the possibility of the nuclear war over Cuba. And that was at the time of the Cuban Missile Crisis. So again, the confrontation around Berlin in Central Europe was extremely important part of that story. Yeah, but the question is, if the Soviets had decided to start a war, would France and Germany have been among their first targets, do you think? Or would it? Okay, well, this is a good question. And I would say that most likely, yes. And my guess is based not so much on some particular inside knowledge of the Soviet thinking at that time, but given the kind of missiles that they had, and those were medium range and intermediate, and they could get up to Madrid. So France and Britain certainly would be targets and to London as well. They had only seven or six at that time, ballistic missiles that could theoretically reach the United States. So I'm pretty sure that in case of the nuclear confrontation, the Soviet response, heavy response would be again, attack of the US NATO allies. Turkey as well, given of course, the Jupiter missiles were there. Okay, someone else asks, what were the reactions from other Warsaw Pact countries to the Soviet withdrawal from Cuba? E.g. Poland and Czechoslovakia and the other Soviet plot countries? Well, one thing that we know that it depended really on the relations that the East European countries had with the Soviet Union. The Romanians for one were quite critical. I quote in my book, memoirs of the Romanian security chief who was, the Romanian leaders were talking about extremely hectic behavior on part of Khrushchev. They were of course building bridges at that time with China. So they were quite critical. In terms of the rest, everyone was terrified, like we're terrified the closest advisors and members of Khrushchev's political role, but they kept silent, that they really couldn't say to Khrushchev, they couldn't say to the Soviets, they couldn't say publicly what they felt about that, but the attitude was very, very critical. We have the reports of the Czechoslovak delegation and other delegations who visit Moscow soon after the resolution of the crisis. And what they report on is actually Khrushchev's spending almost hours trying to sell to them the Cuban crisis and resolution of the Cuban crisis as a great success for communism and his personal great success. And that is very clear that he felt that he had to get engaged in that exercise that the attitude was critical. Okay, so hey, we need to wrap up now, but I have one last question for you. This was said to be the most dangerous moment in history. What do you think of the situation we're living in today? Is it a more or less dangerous world than it was back in 1962, if you could be quite succinct about that? I sort of thought about that and I discussed that to a degree possible in the introduction and conclusions. My feeling is that we are really in a world which resembles very much the pre-1962 world. What do I mean by saying that? Pre-1962, this is the world of this kind of a wild nuclear arms race, uncontrolled nuclear arms race, which creates the crisis crucial trying to address this balance between Churchill referred to that as balance of terror. So the balance of terror was not there, crucial was trying to create that balance. And then after the Cuban Missile Crisis, the first treaties are signed and that is the partial test ban treaty then before the end of the decade, before the end of the 1960s, there is a non-colliferation treaty and then salt one, salt two and finally agreements between Reagan and Bush on the one hand and Gorbachev at the very end of the war. Now we live in the world where every last every single agreement, arms control agreement with the exception of the partial ban treaty which became complete ban treaty. All of those treaties are gone. The last one signed by Gorbachev and Reagan in 1987 on the intermediate missiles expired in 2019, expired because two sides the United States and Russia left it. There are a number of other agreements, but generally we are back in the new nuclear arms race which is not regulated. That means we are in pre-Cuba, Cuba situation and another Cuban Missile Crisis can unfortunately unfortunately. And not only with the Soviet Union but with North Korea, possibly Iran, many other countries, China of course. I mean, there are many more countries that have become nuclear that are now nuclear than they were back in 1962 which was relatively simple. Absolutely, absolutely. More drivers on that nuclear driveway than it was the case in 1960 or 1960. Right. Well, thank you, Sahi for sharing these, your very interesting book with us and I think all authors about the Cuban Missile Crisis can agree that there are lots of lessons to be learned from it. So I urge people to go out and buy this book and read it and you'll find many interesting parallels and lessons for today. Thank you very much, Sahi. And thank you. Thank you very much Michael and thank you very much to the National Archives for hosting this event.