The United Nations, for example, played a far greater role in the crisis than either the United States or the Soviet governments were willing to acknowledge. It provided a global forum that forced the superpowers to proceed more cautiously, and to explain their policies on a world stage. And offstage, UN Secretary General U Thant played a critical role as both mediator and moderator. It is sobering to contemplate that if the United Nations had not existed, the crisis might not have ended without violence.

Martin J. Sherwin, Gambling with armageddon: Nuclear roulette from hiroshima to the cuban missile crisis, 1945-1962, New York, 2020, p. 51