The clarity of Stevenson’s response on Tuesday, and the focus of his memorandum on Wednesday, October 17, was the vital role that world opinion would play once the crisis became public. Dealing every day with 109 UN ambassadors made him particularly alert to the role that credibility played in international affairs.

Martin J. Sherwin, Gambling with armageddon: Nuclear roulette from hiroshima to the cuban missile crisis, 1945-1962, New York, 2020, p. 250