The "thirteen days" of the Cuban Missile Crisis were, at that point, the closest the superpowers came to war. It is impossible to know how serious it would have been. This is largely due to the serendipity, patience and understanding of leaders. The lessons of this standoff were not lost on either side. There were several key effects of this confrontation: • The creation of the Direct Communication Link (DCL) • A dramatic decrease in tension between the two superpowers • An almost equally dramatic increase in tension in Sino-Soviet and Sino-American relations • There were also internal implications for both parties. After narrowly avoiding annihilation, the leaders of both countries agreed to establish a permanent teleprinter link between their two nations. During the crisis, Kennedy and Khrushchev were forced to communicate with each other through awkward diplomatic channels. The rapid minute-by-minute changes in posture and intentions could not be articulated quickly enough to ensure there were no misunderstandings. The need for more efficient communication between the superpowers to avoid the prospect of accidental war was cited in the 1954 Soviet request for a direct link. There are numerous references in the transcripts to leaders accidentally discovering seemingly vital information from newspapers. On October 16, Secretary of State Rusk asked Kennedy, “Did you see the [New York] Times story yesterday morning that high-ranking Soviet officials were saying, 'Shall we trade Cuba for Berlin?'” This reliance on second-hand printed news it had serious consequences. implications in a situation where events were changing rapidly and the effects of these events were unprecedented. Accordingly, the two powers agreed to see... halfway through the document... of the first meeting of the Executive Committee, October 16, 1962, 11:50-12:57, in Laurence Chang and Peter Kornbluh (eds.) , The Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962: A National Security Archive Documents Reader, 99. Ronald E. Powaski, March to Armageddon: The United States and the Nuclear Arms Race, 1939 to the Present, (Oxford: OUP, 1987), 106. John Lewis Gaddis, Containment Strategies: A Critical Assessment of American National Security Policy During the Cold War, (Oxford: OUP, 1982), 206.Rosemary Foot, The Practice of Power: US Relations with China since 1949, ( Oxford University Press: Oxford, 1995), 98.Rosemary Foot, The Practice of Power: US Relations with China since 1949, (Oxford University Press: Oxford, 1995), 96. Ronald E. Powaski, The March to Armageddon: The States States and the Nuclear Arms Race, 1939 to the Present (Oxford: OUP, 1987), 107.