 where Khrushchev assumed Kennedy was bluffing. But what followed from Khrushchev's missteps was the Cuban Missile Crisis, a tense 13-day period where two nuclear superpowers brought the world to the brink of nuclear Armageddon." And then he concludes, the moral of the story, it's difficult to tell if a country is bluffing. American policymakers and analysts today should exercise caution in interpreting Russian signals.