Cuban Missile Crisis that the US Navy may not have known about. Khrushchev knew he was losing control. President Kennedy had been told in early 1961 that a nuclear war would likely kill a third of humanity, with most or all of those deaths concentrated in the US, the USSR, Europe and China; Khrushchev may well have received similar reports from his military. With this background, when Khrushchev heard Kennedy's threats relayed by Robert Kennedy to Soviet Ambassador Dobrynin, he immediately drafted his acceptance of Kennedy's latest terms from his dacha without involving the Politburo, as he had previously, and had them immediately
Brinkmanship Considering this, Brinkmanship during the Cuban Missile Crisis was successful, as war was avoided. The crisis, however, was a peculiar case of brinkmanship since the two opposing powers had near equal power during the crisis. Thus, in order to avoid war, both powers backed down and compromised, the Soviets removing their weapons from Cuba and the Americans secretly agreeing to remove missiles from Turkey. The US was building up its missiles, with President Eisenhower issuing the National Defense Education Act in 1958, which was an attempt to close the missile gap with the Soviets. It gave funds to U.S. schools