 Good morning and good afternoon and good evening to everybody. Welcome to book club with Jeffrey sacks. I'm Jeffrey sacks university professor at Columbia University and president of the United Nations Sustainable Development Solutions Network and I'm Absolutely thrilled with the conversation ahead with the Martin Sherwin Will turn to Martin and listen to his wisdom in just a moment Let me say a word about the book club we'll be speaking this year with world-leading thinkers and especially world-leading historians About our world about where we have come from to arrive at where we are today and where we need to go it is a Famous aphorism, of course of george santiana That those who cannot remember the past are condemned to repeat it What we learned from great historians though is Not the difficulty of remembering the past but of knowing it in the first place because what Marty Sherwin's fantastic book and the other great books that we're going to be discussing this year's show is that We've never really understood our own past even the most critical moments of our past and when we do understand the more clearly they bring into focus incredibly our challenges and our difficulties of Keeping a balance in this world and finding a way forward I could not be more excited to start the book club with the professor Martin Sherwin Who is a university professor at george mason university Professor emeritus of tufts university and the world's leading historian of The cold war and the nuclear arms race and The topic of today's book at the center The greatest crisis of the nuclear age the cuban missile crisis We're discussing Marty's new book gambling with armageddon It's a fantastic book. It's a thrilling read Marty You just it's gripping in every page and startling in the details Your mind exploding each each moment my god could this be real So I I want us to discuss that and to share that feeling with the all of the people listening But if I may I want to start with a quotation of john f kennedy A year before the cuban missile crisis. It's in your book It's in his speech to the un general assembly in 1961 he says Quote every man woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of damocles Hanging by the slenderest of threads Capable of being cut at any moment by accident or miscalculation or by madness And what strikes me about that quotation is first of all Kennedy got it. Uh, he knew how extraordinarily dangerous the world was How survival was hanging by a thread He said it. He knew it. He felt it And yet he walked right into the nearest disaster That humanity has ever experienced And that is a profound mystery Because this was not an impestuous Person in irrational leader. We know some of those This was a person who Understood and intuited as he said in his inaugural address for the world is very different now Uh, we have holding our hands the power to destroy all lights. So he was completely sensitive to this And yet it almost happened And as your book describes it almost happened Beyond his control though. He was president of the united states so Can we open with that? Because that is the big theme of your book and it's stunning Well, thank you, Jeffrey. Uh, I'm Delighted to be here and I appreciate Your enthusiastic embrace of gambling with armageddon. Um, and I really appreciate your beginning with that quotation because uh, Khrushchev Who didn't speak in such elegant language, uh Would have said the same thing in one way or another and, uh You're absolutely right about kennedy having this understanding of The danger of nuclear weapons and the threat to humanity that they posed Uh, khrushchev shared that nevertheless And this is the key Nevertheless understanding those Those dangers completely They both embrace nuclear weapons as An instrument of diplomacy to advance their um, their agendas uh, and that goes way back to uh, the beginning of the nuclear age and that's why um, I Although I started to write a book about the cuban missile crisis Which is generally understood to be the 13 days in october from october 16th to october 29th uh, and sometimes defined Uh as starting with the castros revolution uh, I realized that The nuclear temptation Is embedded in uh, the whole history of The nuclear arms race beginning with irishima marty it it it it's so it's so poignant and one uh remark of khrushchev completely points this out also I may get it a little bit wrong, but at one point when khrushchev first proposes in uh Either late 61 or early 62 to put the missiles into cuba I don't know. I don't remember whether it was grameco or who it was said to him, but that's war and he said, of course We don't want war so He made the action of putting the missiles in not To go to war not even to risk or is the farthest thing from his mind Which is an incredible thing. It was done as you say diplomatically Craziness, but it was done. Yes. Yes, and it's still being done I mean, why do we have six thousand? or so nuclear weapons today on alert status Uh, it's absolutely crazy Uh, I mean think well we can think about it later when we get you know to the present, but uh With irishima and nagasaki the idea that this fantastically powerful weapon could be used to advance the uh agendas uh first of the united states then of the soviet union uh, then of britain and you know and so on and so forth uh Became a temptation that uh the leaders of the united states and the soviet union simply could not resist and um Uh, this is the framework uh that uh is That we constructed Uh that will eventually lead to our doom If we don't do something very radical about our nuclear uh Hang up. I guess you'd call it Addiction is the better word. Yeah Addiction it is an excellent word and and actually if we could go back We'll get to the cuban missile crisis shortly, but I do want to go back to the start and also to mention of course you are the politzer prize winning co-author of A related fantastic book that should be read together with the gambling with armageddon And that is american chromethias About j robert oppenheimer the american physicist who Leads the development of the atomic weapons and in that book You start at the at the very start when the idea of a nuclear weapon is at at the beginning and The physicists are right to franklin rusevelt that america should have it before uh Germany gets it The project is started with the oppenheimer's scientific Direction, and then I want to bring you start our discussion about that to Germany's defeat in may 1945 And the weapon is not yet final And some of the scientists are saying, okay, germany is no longer a threat. Let's stop Before we actually even Finish the atomic weapon at that moment oppenheimer says no, no, no, we've been hired to do our job. Let's finish Could you just pick up the story at that point because that is the start of the the atomic age? right the There's a wonderful interview in a film called The day after trinity Robert oppenheimer in the atomic bomb Documentary film an interview with the robert oppenheimer's brother frank oppenheimer who was also a physicist And was also at los alamos in the last year or so of of the war And he's asked why uh The Project continued why he frank continued who was a very progressive progressive fellow And he thinks about it for a few seconds and he says The science got a hold of us or words to that words to that effect They had started something And they had to finish it Now that was definitely one reason uh another reason was uh oppenheimer's idea that This incredible weapon was going to change How the world Interacted how nations behaved with each other the threat of Destroying humanity He believed Would be so overwhelmingly obvious And so clearly requiring an international arrangement that Made sure that nuclear weapons did not uh Proliferate uh that it was important to demonstrate The uh the power of this thing so nations would say oh my god Uh, we need to get together. We need to change the way we think uh And that was this this did not prove to be very accurate. No. No, it was incredibly naive uh, but when you you know list all of the Uh the reasons for that thinking You know, there were good re you know, there there's no there's no one, you know nuclear, uh uh Lobby, uh, it's it's all brand new It's going to be delivered to the world suddenly. I mean how How can sensible leaders not uh Join together To avoid a nuclear arms race that can destroy the world Exactly. Well, the answer to that is our history. Unfortunately. Well, you you've written that history and you've written about and Actually, I'd say you're the leading historian of why The bomb was used initially after Germany's defeat and then Japan on the verge of surrender Truman goes ahead and uses The nuclear bomb not even just once but twice uh Hiroshima and Nagasaki Uh, we could spend hours on this and I would love to but uh Could we spend just a couple of minutes about that decision? It was it's depressing reading frankly, uh, but I wonder if you could Help us to understand and uh for me Reading about Truman in both the Oppenheimer book and in gambling with Armageddon. It was really depressing because I had liked Truman But not not not so much. I would say at this moment So maybe maybe you could describe the uh the decision Well, you know Truman was in a um, uh An awful box. Uh, he was dropped into that box Suddenly totally ignorant. Uh, he had been vice president for I think it was 82 days He had met with Roosevelt only once. He didn't know anything about the atomic bomb. He didn't know anything about foreign policy in general um, and uh, he brought in an advisor James Burns uh, and to make a very long story short Burns was a real hawk and Burns's view which we have documented Again in interviews that are available on tape was It was my belief Burns and I'm quoting Burns that we should Uh end the war as before the Russians came in and Burns promoted the idea of using uh nuclear weapons And Truman went along with that Uh, and we had two different kinds of bombs vanilla and chocolate uh, a um, uh Uh a gun type bomb of uh uranium and the plutonium bomb That was used on Nagasaki And both bombs both bombs were used um The important thing for the Cuban missile crisis and for the story that I'm trying to explain is that that weapon That use the use of that weapon Had a profound impact on Stalin uh David Holloway Wonderful historian of uh, soviet nuclear Culture and politics and uh diplomacy wrote a book Stalin and the bomb And it's quite clear in that book that Stalin saw Hiroshima and Nagasaki as events that were designed to frighten him and Not not not all wrong Yes, not all wrong and uh, he uh Immediately said we just have to have a nuclear weapon So Oppenheimer's idea that by using nuclear weapons, we would uh Alert the world to this terrible threat Had exactly the opposite effect And you take it from there And to try to sum up a lot of what happened I think after uh Hiroshima and Nagasaki The nuclear weapons played a role A significant role in American foreign policy during the Truman administration But it was a backdrop role Truman always believed that He needed to have nuclear weapons because the soviets were gonna have nuclear weapons And we needed to have better ones and more of them But we keep them In the background. They're in the bullpen so to speak Eisenhower comes into office But before we get to Eisenhower, can I ask you about one thing that I've always Wondered about which is a nsc 68 the national security doctrine Written by Paul Knitze, I believe and that's 1950 Which is an incredibly hawkish statement where america Foreign policy becomes based on the idea that the soviet union is going to take over the world unless the u.s stops it Uh It seems a self propelling part of this story But becomes the core of u.s foreign policy I wonder if you could explain the mindset a little bit And knitze continues in this leadership role also for kennedy as well, of course Yes, so, um the uh Essentially the cold war is evolving from 1946 Through 1949 50 and so on Uh, what happens in 1949 1949 is a critical year The chinese communists take over china In the summer of 1949 What else happens in 1949? The soviets explode Their first nuclear weapon august 29th 1949 the united states picks up Evidence of this and uh panic sets in Knitze who has been a hawk For the last few years becomes takes over from george kennan as head of the policy planning staff of the state department and uh rights nsc you know 68 and uh He argues in effect that the united states needs to Uh, I think it's more or less quadruple Its size of its forces and rely on nuclear weapons Uh truman just looks at the price tag for this and says interesting And puts it on the shelf But what happens a few months later in june 1950? The north koreans attack south korea nsc 68 comes off the shelf. Okay, and becomes A foundational document as you said For the structure of the co-war that will follow So let's let let's go to eisenhower who becomes president on uh early 1953, uh, I guess january 20th 1953 He is a balanced level-headed shrewd capable bureaucratic manager And yet ends up dramatically accelerating the nuclear arms race, which Uh one wouldn't necessarily have guessed x anti that eisenhower would do because he seems Actually the the consummate rational manager in a way Based on the world war two experience But he becomes the agent of another acceleration of the nuclear arms race Why yes, yes, well, I think the first thing You we have to say um We have to emphasize because she said it is that based on world war two experience Dwight eisenhower spent his entire life before the presidency In the military, uh, he led the victory in europe uh he In the summer of 1945 uh Was against using the atomic bomb Uh, he said that to truman and possibly, uh, I mean he said that to snipson the secretary of the fence Uh at the potsam conference and he may have said it to the president also uh But in 1953 he comes into office And for all the reasons that you described in terms of his personality Said what am I facing? I have the korean war. I have, uh uh To deal with the soviet union and the one thing we didn't know about eisenhower Is what an anti-communist ideologue he was I mean, and I I quoted in somewhere in gambling that in 1946 he wrote in his diary We are in something to the effect. We are engaged in a race to the death with You know with communism and uh 1946 I'm you know in his diary, you know A race to the death of me. We've just been allies for the last, uh You know five four years five years, uh, so eisenhower looks around and Well, we have superiority in nuclear weapons. The nuclear temptation is there Uh, eisenhower turns to the nuclear weapon and he says We are going to develop a policy of massive retaliation Uh brinksmanship and all of those things that got blamed on delis But in fact delis was the mouthpiece. There's almost a puppet You know for for eisenhower who was the puppet master behind uh this foreign policy that Moved nuclear weapons from the background From the bullpen To the foreground And when eisenhower came into office, there were about 1200 nuclear weapons in the american arsenal When he left the office, there were over 22 000 Nuclear weapons in the american arsenal uh The cold war and the nuclear arms race as we know it Was structured By the eisenhower administration and it became a blueprint for christjeff One of the things that is also puzzling for me uh Stalin dies in 1953 krushtjeff gives the Famous uh speech to the 20th party congress As you point out, uh, I think it's delis who Dismisses this historic moment as saying well, that's the rantings of a Of a drunkard Alan delis allen oh on dollar says that okay the brother uh the Had a was was he deputy head of the cia at that point or head of the cia head of the cia so here Stalin's dead and there's clearly outreach from the soviet union to do something different In including the the agreement in austria in 1954 to withdraw from austria so How much more clear could it be even eisenhower makes some Initial peace gesture, but it ends up It ends up not having the effect why? Well, you know uh That's the 64 thousand dollar question Not just for that moment in history But for so many moments in history where that sort of um inability for two sides who want something uh Cannot figure out how to get it because they were afraid if side a Makes an offer that looks soft side b will say a is softening So we can be tougher and that's what's going on with the united states and the soviet union Through most of the uh cold war, but certainly in the 1950s where ignorance Was the foundation of policy Ignorance was the foundation of us soviet relations during the fifties khrushchev was terrified That the americans were going to attack the soviet union The americans were beating the drums that the soviet union was going to take over europe and attack the united states uh And it was it was just you know Flailing in the dark Even though both nations Or the leaders of both nations at least were Seeking some kind of stability Both arrangements in europe and Certainly with respect to the nuclear uh to nuclear weapons but The more they worried about it The more they got deeper into uh The nuclear soup So to speak and and isn't it the case also that uh, you know when each side says the other wants the Worst part of the problem is that there are some on each side that do want the worst. Yes, and and on the u.s. Side Uh The idea of a first strike against the soviet union wasn't a fantasy only of the soviet union That's right. It was a fantasy of some us of kurtis lemay maybe or others. Yes. Yes Kurtis lemay became head of the strategic air command after He uh was very successful in europe during the burliner airlift 1948 And during the 1950s, uh, he developed this most extraordinarily efficient and dangerous uh You know service as the strategic air command Was uh, you know the nightmare of christ jeff's every uh, every thought about the united states and these um ideas of striking the soviet union uh in order to uh You have prevent a war. You know start a war to prevent a war Uh, you know, they were all over the newspapers. I remember when I was in uh, I was the air intelligence officer in my squadron from 1961 to uh through the cuban missile crisis and uh I remember reading uh, all of these confidential, uh Articles that would be sent to people like me You know about the likelihood that we are going to have a war with the soviet union It was more than likelihood. It was you know, I remember one article. I just talked about the inevitability uh of it uh, so, you know The mindset is incredible and that brings us. Let's let's uh jump up to uh, the immediate antecedents of Of the crisis, uh, how we got to October 1962 But and I'd like to start with the john f kennedy who's a great hero of mine and I've Love love so many things that he did but But he definitely played a role in stumbling into this crisis and in several ways One of which is during the 1960 campaign. He ran to the right of the right. It seems calling a Claiming a missile gap with the soviet union that eisenhower had been soft On weaponry and so forth. So he set himself up as I'm really going to take charge of an aggressive nuclear arsenal That's correct. All right. He ran to the right of nexon. Um, he uh, criticized the eisenhower administration for uh Allowing castro to stay in power Uh, and he uh talked about a missile gap Uh, turned out there was a missile gap, but it was the other way around the united states was way ahead of the soviet union and um He as you said boxed himself in completely one of the most interesting stories Part of the story of the cuban missile crisis is the relationship to the bay of pigs uh, the eisenhower administration Had secretly begun training anti-castro cubans to invade cuba Excuse me to invade cuba And this was handed off to the kennedy and Kennedy looked at this and he said oh my god, this is um Uh, this looks This looks stupid, you know, basically but How can I not do? What I said eisenhower should do when eisenhower was getting ready to do it Uh You know i'm stuck. Yeah, he had boxed himself into the corner totally And and then uh presided over this disaster And one of the things that always struck me of the uh utter disaster of the bay of pigs was uh partly the context that A few months earlier before kennedy became president, uh the u2 My plane of gerry powers had been shot down over the soviet union eisenhower said it was a a weather reconnaissance Ship thinking that no way had the plane or the pilot survived So eisenhower blatantly Lied and vulgarly lied and then they produced gerry powers alive the pilot and the plane wreckage And said you've lied everything and then what's what struck me about the cuban missile crisis in addition to How stupid the idea of this invasion of the of cuba was When it happened cast krushev sent a letter to kennedy, of course saying there are Pirates in your government that are launching this illegal operation And kennedy writes back, but we have nothing to do with this. You know, this is completely hands off and krushev writes back to kennedy saying Don't ever lie to me this way again, basically paraphrasing But it strikes me that american presidents lied so vulgarly twice To krushev in a matter of months This was our diplomacy say anything And the other side knew and so it must have been even more of the Of the salt in the wound I for krushev that I can't even deal with these people I Between these two events. I don't know if does that resonate what I'm saying Because it always struck me the It is a big problem of international affairs in general, but the amount of lying is so pervasive We lose track of how to reach agreements because of that um That's uh, that's true um, and one of the iron age of that is that kennedy was Hoping from the time he got into office to Create a relationship with krushev that Was reliable and in order to do that instead of Handling everything through the normal channels He set up back channels Back channel correspondence, uh, he had his brother bobby Deal with a soviet gru agent Bolshekov And he thought he was getting The uh, the straight skinny so to speak, you know the back channel Is the honest channel the public channel. We have to say what we have to say well krushev took advantage of this and And then lied, you know to kennedy, uh, and When he decided to put the missiles into cuba, which was about The spring of 1962 uh He just kept saying these are defensive weapons Well, you know, he had a point that we had said that all of The missiles that eisenhower had sent to europe the jupiters that were in turkey The jupiters that were in italy the thorns that were in britain All of those were for defense those We we we're not going to start a war We're just those missiles are there to prevent the soviets from starting a war Well, krushev said well, that's what i'm doing I'm putting the same kind of missiles in cuba in order to prevent the united states from invading My new best friend's territory And uh, and also, uh, it'll help balance the You know the nuclear arms race and uh It's it's striking in in uh in the book How little kennedy was really even aware of the jupiter missiles. Uh, he needed to be briefed on them. He didn't really know Why are they there? What are they doing? How many? Some something so salient in the adversaries mind Was not even very conscious in his mind even though it was at the complete center of these issues You know, that is a very good point that you make the imbalance between how One side views a particular issue And the other side views it so differently um That's true of berlin too Which becomes central to the cuban missile the cuban missile crisis and Uh, the point that you make about a kennedy not understanding Uh, or not really being on top of the jupiters Comes out of the secret recordings of the, uh XCOM meetings xcom was the executive committee of the national security council that, um Were the advisors that kennedy brought together after he was told about Uh, the discovery of the soviet missiles in cuba on octobus 16th um It is fantastic to watch kennedy's mind The way he thinks about things That are it's so different from the rest of his advisors And this is an absolutely unique, you know, document. We have secret recordings Uh of the most A dangerous crisis in human history Uh, and we know exactly what these guys were all saying Yeah, and this this for all of the people listening you've got to read this book to see That both the drama Uh the The shape of the conversations the Incredible luck that we got out of this in one piece, but it's a such a power of your book marty and another Incredible power of the book Because you go hour by hour literally during this period is not only what happens in xcom in this Executive committee of the national security council But then how the discussions there are reinterpreted In the defense department in the state Everybody freelances And when somebody doesn't hear what they want to hear they go back and they tell their colleagues Something different from what was just agreed typically to the chiefs of staff who Just can't they just want to know the moment that they're going to be let loose to start the war Uh, and lemay, you know, it should have been of course 10 years ago for him that we do this attack But the way that they report these meetings back to their colleagues Also, I found completely stunning how hard it is To keep and administer, you know to keep a group together on a common theme Of course under pressure with so much complexity, but uh, maybe you could reflect on that Well, you know it was one of the real surprises for me I I had the transcripts and the recordings of The xcom meetings the meetings of kennedy's advisors and very briefly It included bobby kennedy robert macna mara secretary of the fenced dean rust secretary of state George ball under secretary of state And so on and so forth about 16 16 people say you have 16 people sitting around the table talking for three hours to three hours There's a lot going on i mean and um, uh general max welter the chairman of the joint chiefs Is a member of the xcom too and then I discovered that we had some remnants of The meetings of the joint chiefs and Much of these these minutes Contained what max welter are reported Went on in the meeting Now most of the time he you know, he got it right, but what was really interesting was How many Times He would report something That was actually different that was set on the tape Now I never thought for a moment and there was no indication that he distorted anything purposefully It's just that you're sitting in a meeting for three hours And you're taking some notes and you have a point of view and you're contributing your point of view and And you're going you're going back to your colleagues Uh, you know an hour later and you say well, here's a quick summary and here are the important points as I see it well, what you see is You know what is most in your mind and uh, you know, I You you remember best What you believe right And and sometimes what you believe is what the others believe too, but there were times when it's the opposite It's also fascinating by the way The microphone picks up side conversations Kind of parting remarks. And so there are so many dynamics going on in the room over these days Uh, not only the organized discussion, but uh, all of the stray remarks showing the mindset Well, we can't summarize Hundreds of pages that's riveting and you must read it. I'm telling everybody. Please because it's so important to understand this Now let's uh understand, uh, basically, uh, just in a couple of minutes What what happened and I think one of the great Insights of the many many many insights of this Book is the role of adlai stevensson unbelievable. I don't think it's ever been told before But it is completely riveting Well, uh, one one of the really interesting things, uh Uh, that happens during the cuban missile crisis in all kinds of different ways Is the role that luck plays? Just You know circumstance It happens that on october 16th When kennedy is informed early in the morning by mcgeorge bundy that the soviets missiles have been discovered Adlai stevensson was the american ambassador to the united nations Is in washington And he's arranged for a lunch with the president after he does his business at the state department After lunch kennedy takes him up to uh the family quarters and shows him the photographs that He saw that morning And he met the first meeting of the xcom is over Everybody has agreed We're gonna have to bomb or invade cuba and by the way marty on all on the mistaken impressions of every detail whether the weapons are already installed how many troops there are Every military assumption wrong by the way. I think it's just worth underscoring Yes. Yes. Um, you know, they uh, the cia reports there are about 10 000 soviet troops there. They're actually 42 000 Uh, they do not know that the soviets have tactical nuclear weapons Uh, if we had invaded it would have been a disaster that would have led to a worse disaster You know war in any case stevensson looks at this Stuff and uh, he's just as appalled as kennedy was and kennedy says to him Uh, well, we're gonna have to bomb or invade to get rid of you know those weapons and stevensson says whoa No, we don't Uh, we can negotiate our way out of this And we know what stevensson said because the next day he wrote a memo summarizing their whole meeting and uh, it is uh I think pretty certain That stevensson laid out the blueprint Uh in this memorandum For how to end the crisis without a war Uh, and he got no credit for that whatsoever Quite the contrary Contrary uh, kennedy tried, you know at the end of uh, the crisis kennedy Has a friend of his who's a journalist, uh, Bartlett Uh Encourages him to write an article about the cuban missile crisis And when he reads a draft of the article, he pencils into the margin stevensson wanted a munich And uh, he just stabbed stevensson in the back Uh, so, you know Kennedy is a very complicated guy This is what I mean about uh About the problem of remembering history from knowing history Because you show what really is what we remember is what we've been told not not not what really is And it does uh come through kennedy's uh Rationality uh, stevensson's decency and diplomacy and utaunt The secretary in general of the un and also playing a very constructive role And khrushchev, I would say the four of them together uh Bring about this near miraculous solution against the advice of almost everybody else that would have ended The world most likely By trading the the missiles by peaceful solution One question I have about this from a historical point of view that I can't understand at all How Was the trade of the Turkish Missiles and the cupan missiles kept Why did the soviets keep it secret? Why did khrushchev keep it secret? To the point of losing his premiership losing his power And it was kept secret from the american people for a decade So we thought we had gone eyeball to eyeball and it was tough diplomacy that did it We're I mean tough toughness that did it where it was diplomacy That's the real lesson But we weren't even told that it's diplomacy Right So I just to try to you know, so frame the story for our listeners uh Near the end of the crisis in effect khrushchev and kennedy and utaunt uh formed Essentially a team to try and solve, you know, this crisis giving everybody a little of what they needed uh kennedy had made it clear that he was willing to make a pledge the united states would not invade cuba Okay, khrushchev seemed to accept that then he came back with another demand That he made public that uh the jupiter missiles in turkey 130 miles from the soviet union Had to be removed in exchange for his removing the missiles from cuba The all of kennedy's advisors were absolutely against this They felt khrushchev was holding a gun to their head Kennedy said to them We are not going to have a very good war If people understand there's all we had to do is take these junk missiles Out of and they were junk, uh, you know by 1962 junk missiles out of turkey in exchange for cuba No, we can't do it. We can't do it. You know, the advisor said, you know, it'll harm our credibility and kennedy was absolutely isolated from this So he came up with the idea that he would send his brother to the soviet ambassador in washington do brennan and basically bobby told do brennan That those missiles would be out of there in three months But they cannot in any way ever be associated with the idea that this was a trade we'll deny it, you know, so on and so forth and we'll leave the missiles there, too um so Why did khrushchev keep that secret? Uh, this was a feather in his cap exactly He kept the secret because He had looked he looked forward to a uh To repairing the relationship with kennedy that his Lying to kennedy about putting the missiles in cuba had destroyed and This was the the foundation in effect of a new trusting relationship Oh That makes so much sense and i i had not made that link in my own mind Yeah, and and then kennedy's assassinated and uh, but but but before that, uh, I think it's crucial to Reflect on one of the I think the most powerful Conclusion after this peaceful diplomacy Was the ability of khrushchev and kennedy the following year to come to the partial nuclear test ban treaty and I always regard that as a miracle of good sense and rationality that after The almost destruction of the world The the two adversaries essentially made peace the following year And these two who had come to see themselves as partners Were determined to get this right And they did And at least some argue that kennedy's assassination was the payback of hard liners for that although there's many other reasons why hard liners and right wing nuts may have been engaged but But They learned something from this of profound significance and redirected the world Yes, I think the Cuban missile crisis was The fulcrum around which the cold war churned The first 17 years of the nuclear age from Hiroshima to the cuban missile crisis was the period of time where uh The curtis let's call it the curtis general curtis lemay attitude could Could be presented upfront As an american potential policy afterwards Everybody look excuse me learned you have to be much more careful You know you cannot You know threatened nuclear war and expect to be able to sidestep it You know with ease The nuclear Deterrent structure that is set up is actually very dangerous And at one point in the book I point out that the real problem is that nuclear weapons Are very good for initiating the kinds of crises. They're designed to prevent And they're no good for preventing Or resolving the crisis once they have created it Uh, so what the heck are these weapons for? I mean, what you know, it's it's no more Uh, uh, it's sort of complicated in a sense in a fundamental sense Then why are they there for the same reasons mountains are there? They're there You know, I mean, you know right now Uh, those things are there And how do you get rid of them? Uh, then that's the challenge of our future. How do we replace? uh, the Imagine security That nuclear weapons provide nuclear weapons states uh with A security That will Serve the same purpose Without providing the horrendous danger of destroying civilization You know to go back to Hiroshima on april 25th 1945 secretary of state Um, uh, excuse me secretary of war. Henry L. Stimpson went to the new president truman with a memorandum And in that memorandum it he said we are about to build a new weapon That can destroy civilization Uh He made it very clear. Yeah, right even before nuclear weapons existed these weapons can destroy civilization And then he goes on to say in the memorandum That the united states given its leadership in this is morally responsible for any Destruction of civilization that may occur in the future Uh, we have to live up to that moral responsibility Marty, I Not only I'm sure that all of us listening to you Agree with you, but I think that the first way to do this is to understand what you have shown and to read your books and to Understand the profound lessons of them We have in front of us in the world The un treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons Most of the world recognizes that this makes no sense, but the nuclear powers including the united states have not signed on Most of the world has signed on but not the united states yet And the lessons that you have that these weapons serve nothing but to Keep us under that sort of Damocles that president kennedy talked about now. It's a 60 years Now since he said those words Remains absolutely true We're profoundly indebted to you Uh, your wisdom in gambling with armageddon are featured book today The opening of the book club your related books All of them path breaking books on Robert Oppenheimer on a world destroyed Hiroshima and its legacies teach the basic Essential survival value of cooperation you point out the risks of ignorance You point out the inability of two sides that want to make agreements to find that but you also point out the life saving Success when diplomacy is allowed it to do Marty, thank you so much for educating humanity. Thank you so much for joining today Let me thank everybody that has joined on today With the book club that I'm thrilled that we're going to be having this adventure with the great great writers and historians As marty sure went today our next Book club is on february 24th We're going to be speaking with richard rothstein Who is the author of the color of law a piercing and scintillating account of the Racism built into american policy for so long obviously another legacy that we are grappling with today It's also a fantastic book and i look forward to being together with you on february 24th Once again on behalf of all of us marty congratulations on this wonderful World important accomplishment and thank you so much for being with us today. Thank you jeffrey. Bye. Bye. Bye