We've always known the dangers of governing by fear and pride and impulsivity. Now we're living them

A week after her husband's assassination, on one of her last nights in the White House, Jackie Kennedy penned a remarkable letter to Soviet premier Nikita Khrushchev. It was a fraught moment. The Russians were worried they'd be blamed for JFK's murder, and some in the CIA thought to do just that. Only a year removed from the Cuban Missile Crisis – the closest humanity has come to nuclear annihilation – the Cold War was a hair trigger from turning hot.

Jackie sent the letter, a succinct, elegant note of diplomacy, "because I know how much my husband cared about peace, and how the relation between you and him was central to this care in his mind. ... You and he were adversaries, but you were allied in a determination that the world should not be blown up."

So she implored Khrushchev to put aside impulsiveness and ego: "The danger which troubled my husband was that war might be started not so much by the big men as by the little ones. While big men know the needs for self-control and restraint – little men are sometimes moved more by fear and pride. If only in the future the big men can continue to make the little ones sit down and talk, before they start to fight."

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