Canada in the Cold War in power believed that as long as the US president retained absolute control of the nuclear weapons, Canadian forces could be ordered to undertake nuclear missions for the US without Canadian consent. During the Cuban Missile Crisis, Canada was expected to fall in line with American foreign policy, in that Canada's military forces were expected to go on immediate war alert status. Diefenbaker however, refused to do so emphasizing the need for United Nations intervention. It would only be after a tense phone call between President John F. Kennedy and Diefenbaker that Canada's armed forces would begin preparations for "immediate
Cuban Missile Crisis whether Savitsky himself finally concluded that the only reasonable choice left open to him was to come to the surface. During the conference, McNamara stated that nuclear war had come much closer than people had thought. Thomas Blanton, director of the National Security Archive, said, "A guy called Vasili Arkhipov saved the world." Fifty years after the crisis, Graham T. Allison wrote: BBC journalist Joe Matthews published the story, on October 13, 2012, behind the 100 tactical nuclear warheads mentioned by Graham Allison in the excerpt above. Khrushchev feared that Castro's hurt pride and widespread Cuban indignation over the concessions