[ggm]

The refusal of NATO to repudiate first strike and the decision to place troops forward into the comecon borders did nothing to assuage paranoia inside the sovuet union. Do not equate missiles in Cuba with the permanent stationing of troops with tactical nukes on the landmass facing Russian satellite economies.

Many senior non US NATO staffers are believed to have agreed they'd disarm Americans who even looked like latching up the missiles btw..

Seriously: if you wanted one thing to help defuse a world looking to CBW then a president confident enough to repudiate first strike would have done it in the 1950s and 1960s (my school navy cadet handbook in the seventies explained CBW cleandown for ships in graphic detail at the back)