Slow and steady (and taking time to be on the same page with our allies) is IMHO, a better approach than being impulsive like, well you know who. 
Exactly right. When the two nations, which between them posses over 90% of all the nuclear warheads in the world, are staring eye to eye in a serious confrontation; a deliberate, comprehensive, and cautious approach to
every aspect and consideration of the situation is paramount to avoid miscalculations which can have catastrophic results.
I know that I'm not alone in thinking back on the 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis as recent events have unfolded. There are two books of which I'm reminded. One is
Thirteen Days, Robert F. Kennedy's account of that crisis as it unfolded, which was published posthumously in 1969. The other is
The Guns of August by Barbara Tuchman, which was published in 1962, about the origins of World War I. The book was a Pulitzer Prize winning bestseller at the time.
The Guns of August was read by President Kennedy in 1962 and it had a profound effect on him. He gave copies of the book to his closest civilian and military advisors with instructions to read it. The book's depiction of the
overconfident errors in judgement and the speed at which events spun out of control, leading to a catastrophic war, was not lost on Kennedy.
Generally, I dislike most films "based on actual events" or historical docudramas because they usually stray too far from actual history for my liking. One exception is the 2000 film Thirteen Days which is not based on the RFK book by that name. It's based on the 1997 book
The Kennedy Tapes: Inside the White House During the Cuban Missile Crisis which was written after tapes were released of White House discussions recorded during the crisis. Parts of the film are verbatim recreations from the tapes. The main historical criticism of the movie was their choice of using Kennedy friend and adviser Ken O'Donnell as a plot device to thread the various other participants together, but the accuracy in other respects is so good and revealing that I don't have a problem overlooking that bit of dramatic license and contrivance.
The reason that I mention the film is that there is a 90-second clip that accurately summarizes what weighed on Kennedy's mind in making decisions about how to proceed during the crisis...
https://www.youtube.com/Thirteen Days - They Fire Their Missiles, Then We Fire OursThe world survived that confrontation in 1962. It wasn't until a few decades later that we learned just how close to the precipice we actually had been standing. It's fortunate that there was enough caution, doubt, and suspicion of overconfident advice that sanity eventually prevailed in the decisions and decision makers. May we always be so lucky.
