Brinkmanship Is Necessary

Brinkmanship by any other name is still brinkmanship. Our recent victory over the USSR at Cuba was a smashing example.

This is no less exact because in describing President Kennedy’s success, most commentators avoided calling it brinkmanship. One Washington writer headed his comment “Back From the Abyss.” The London Daily Mail’s cartoonist depicted a stern-faced Kennedy pushing a tall stack of chips across a table at a poker-faced Khrushchev, with the caption: “I’ll see you.”