American policy on nuclear war. Good evening. Im tony clark from the carter president ial library. Im really glad that you all are here tonight. I was excited to get our author tonight because with his topic, the bomb, because it brought back memories for me. Back when i was a high school, i was a debater. One of the years the topic was about Nuclear Weapons, and we also read herman khans unthermal nuclear war. It was a big deal at the time. And so now to go back and listen to what has happened to Nuclear Weapons from truman to trump is, is really, really remarkable. Our author grew up in the midwest in kansas, went to Oberlin College thinking he was going to be a lut major lit major, but watergate changed him to political science. And then he went on to graduate school at mit, and it was International Relations and Nuclear Strategy. Then he moved to washington as a defense policy adviser for the house of representatives. But, you know, government work being what it is, he decided that wasnt for him. So after a couple of years he left and wrote his really widelyacclaimed book the wizards of armageddon an inside history of Nuclear Strategy. He then spent time, he joined the boston globe because they were looking for experts in defense and that sort of thing and stayed with the boston globe for 20 years. He was bureau chief in moscow, bureau chief in new york city. By the end of 2002 he quit and then started writing stories, war stories for slate. Hes written four previous books before tonights book, but im really excited to have as our guest tonight fred kaplan and his book, the bomb. Please join me in welcoming himment. [applause]. Intellectuals who invented concepts of Nuclear Deterrence and nuclear war fighting, i thought i wouldnt write anymore about nuclear war, the cold war was over, i expect very few in his audience have thought much until a couple years ago about Nuclear Weapons or nuclear war for 30 years. Some of you who are younger might never have thought of it at all until a couple years ago. What happened a couple years ago was in 2017 donald trump came out of his golf club in new jersey and said if north korea keeps making threatening noises and launching missile tests i will rain down fire and fury that has never seen before. He didnt say if north korea attacks us or invades south korea, he said if they develop the capability to attack us and that is a completely different thing. Everybody started getting very nervous about nuclear war all of a sudden and it struck me now it might be time to go back and take a look at the history. As much time is past from hiroshima to the wizards of armageddon, between the wizards of armageddon and now which says something how old i am. As you look back to the archives it is kind of interesting. The wizards of armageddon, nothing had been declassified. What johnson or kennedy thought or said but now a lot of things have been declassified even up to reagan, quite a bit of research in the Carter Library and interviewed a lot of people which i tend to do. This book focuses on the decisionmakers. The farm is the protagonist. The looming force over everything and the subtitle, the bomb president s, generak, and the secet history of nuclear war, how various president s and their advisors have confronted crises and there have been more than most people think in which the use of Nuclear Weapons has been seriously contemplated and how they dealt with these issues and what they came up with. I will give a brief history of that. How did this start . It started toward the end of world war ii when general curtis lame, commander of the 21st Bomber Command at the time, firebombing every city in japan with immense destruction was asked by the head of the Army Air Force is in spring of 1945, when is the war in the pacific and to be over . The nazis had surrendered but the japanese were fighting on. He kicked the problem to his staff and they did calculations, how much more how many more square miles of territory there was to firebomb, how long it would take the bombers to get there and he said the war will be over by september 1st because that is when we will have bombed every square mile of japan. This was his philosophy of war. Bomb everything. What happened in the meantime was august 6th and august 9th two atom bombs dropped and that ended the war and after that lame became the head of Strategic Air command in omaha which controlled the Nuclear Weapons and the bombers who dropped Nuclear Bombs and lemay translated this bomb everything philosophy to this new and much more destructive bomb and he was a cultlike figure, very charismatic, real disciplinarian, smoked a cigar and by the end of the 50s, the first integrated war plan called the single integrated Operational Plan and the plan was, this was the war plan of the United States. If the soviet union attacks west germany or occupied west berlin even if they didnt use Nuclear Weapons and at the time they didnt have them. Even if they just crossed with troops the United States would unleash its entire Nuclear Arsenal against every target in the soviet union, satellite nations of Eastern Europe and china even of china had no involvement in the war and estimated this was going to kill 285 million people. This wasnt just lemays plan. This was approved by the joint chiefs of staff, by president eisenhower. Eisenhower, who was a cheapskate want to spend a lot of money on conventional arms. It was believed the soviets might make little incursions all over the place so he came up with a philosophy called massive retaliation, that anywhere the russians ago we respond in a manner a own choosing, it was stated policy in classified documents that any Armed Conflict between the United States and the soviet union would begin with the use of us Nuclear Weapons, that was the policy. Eisenhower was not a bloodthirsty maniac but eisenhower thought any war with the soviet union would go nuclear. It was inevitable and therefore realized what had to be done was to deter a war from happening in the first place and the way to do that was to tell the soviets in no Uncertain Terms that we will destroy your entire country if you do this and that would deter things. Then something happened to nearly 60s, the soviets developed their own Nuclear Arsenal. That weapons that could strike us. This became a policy of suicide. Of the soviets invaded western europe or grabbed west berlin and we responded by blowing up the soviet union they could blow up us and that is when it was decided we should have some conventional weapons so we dont have to go nuclear right away but also thought about limited nuclear war. Maybe if a war starts maybe we can just launch some weapons at their military forces and tell them if you strike back against us we will take the weapons we have left and hit your cities. The people who came up with the idea had serious doubts whether this was plausible. They thought, if they had to bet on it they would bet that it would all go sky high from the outset that they figured if theres a small chance this might be controlled lets go for it. And so president kennedy comes into office with the situation. The war plan was still, the blowup everything, in berlin the russians are threatening by the end of the year, taking over berlin. Most of you realize that some of you do not, berlin, west berlin, it was 100 miles inside east germany, a small enclave of freedom and democracy and there is no way of the russians decided to occupy west berlin, no way we could fight them with conventional weapons so the plan again was to unleash everything. There were discussions and these have been declassified. They werent when i wrote my first book, some of them on tape, some of them transcript, discussing this and the idea was okay, what if they do this . They came up with four phases, the russians come into west berlin, phase i was lets send out a patrol. Phase 2, lets send out a battalion. Phase 3 was we will do some intimidation, flies and airplanes over places, bottlenecks and memberships, do economic sanctions, have the United Nations passed a resolution condemning this and then phase 4 was nuclear, there were three divisions, for a, we should off one Nuclear Weapon is a demonstration of our resolve and they will back off. 4 be was we use tactical Nuclear Weapons, we blowup a whole battalion of their troops with Nuclear Weapons. 4 c was all out war and there were questions like can we just go with 4 a with a chance that he would escalate to 4 see right away . Kennedy, there were people among kennedys advises thought we can only go to Nuclear Weapons. We shouldnt bother to build conventional weapons because that might convince khrushchev that we are not willing to use Nuclear Weapons, evolving of deterrence and our credibility and power to convince them that we are willing to use Nuclear Weapons. This was the essence of our defense policy at the time. Kennedy decided this was insane, this was going to be catastrophic so he decided to do something clever in the short run. When kennedy was elected president it was widely believed there was a missile gap, russians were way ahead of us in missiles. By the time kennedy entered office we started putting photo reconnaissance satellites over the soviet union and turned out there was no missile gap. The soviet union which was believed to have 200, 300 missiles turned out to have 4 and they didnt have much of anything else either. So kennedy had his deputy secretary of defense give a speech he had been intending to give it the Business Roundtable in virginia and the idea of the speech would be to announce there is no missile gap and khrushchev had been exploiting this. He boasted we are churning out icbms like sausages. The purpose of this speech was to tell khrushchev we know you are bluffing. Heres how many weapons we have, heres how many weapons you have. Even if you launched the first strike we would have overwhelming superiority against you and as a result shifted two things, first he did a test of the 50 Megaton Hydrogen bomb which didnt have much emissary purpose but he did it and second he realized oh my god, the bluff has been blown. He really believe that the United States was planning to launch the first strike on the soviet union and now he knew the kennedy knew that he had nothing to fire back so what does he do . He puts mediumrange missiles in cuba. A couple dozen mediumrange missiles in cuba would be like having some intercontinental missiles in russia but then we discovered because are you 2 aircraft were better than khrushchevs people thought they were and third, there is a real pivot. Think about the cuban missile crisis, there still a lot of myths, this was in 1962. Still a lot of nonsense being written about the cuban missile crisis which strikes me as very odd because kennedy secretly taped all 13 days of the meetings he had with all of his advisers, you can go listen to these tapes, you can order them from the kennedy library, you can read the transcript of these tapes. The myth is we went eyeball to eyeball with the russians and they blinked. There is another method on the friday night, the night before the crisis ended khrushchev came up with a deal, we will take our missiles out of cuba if you promise never to invade cuba because kennedy had been plotting to assassinate castro as we know now, but on saturday he comes up with another deal, khrushchev says actually we will take our missiles out of cuba if you take your similar missiles out of turkey. The myth has been that kennedy took the friday night proposal and ignored the saturday morning proposal. Thats not at all what happened. The proposal comes in saturday morning and finish of it made that public and kennedy says and it is on the tapes this seems like a fair trade. Any man at the un would take this deal, it is a trade. Everybody roundtable goes nuts, not just the generals, everybody, bobby kennedy, secretary of defense robert mcnamara, National Security adviser, they are, all of them say this will end nato. This will humiliate the turks, this will destroy our credibility. The plan was that we are going to start launching air attacks on missiles in cuba on monday, two days later and kennedy says then we are going to invade cuba three days after that. Kennedy says, you know, seems to be looking ahead at what we are looking at, 500 air sorties a day followed by an invitation, then the russians are bound to grab berlin and blood will start to flow and it is known this deal is on the table this is not going to be a good war. At the end of the meeting kennedy call 7 people into his office and tells them hes taking the deal, and sending bobby to ambassador andropov to take the deal on the condition they never reveal it and he told these 7 people dont ever talk about this ever. And he perpetuated, perpetrated the myth that he ignored saturday and went to friday because this was the cold war. And it looked like he had made a deal with chris of this would be appeasement and he would be in deep trouble. One of the 7 people he did not tell was Vice PresidentLyndon Johnson ran into the war and vietnam and other crises thinking going eyeball to eyeball, you dont back down, dont proceed diplomacy and george bundy in his posthumous memoir regretted, said was a tragedy that we continued this lie for so many years because it led to false lessons and further tragedies. After the cuban missile crisis kennedy is sitting looking at the Defense Budget with mcnamara and general maxwell taylor, especially on Nuclear Weapons and kennedy says i dont know why we are spending so much money on Nuclear Weapons, seems to me 40 missiles getting to 40 soviet cities, when the russians had 24 missiles in cuba i would have been deterred by that. As the conversation went on he said deterrence fails, i wouldnt want to attack those cities. I would want to go after their missiles and that will take more than 40 weapons and kennedy in that moment summarized the enduring dilemma of Nuclear Strategy which is of all you want to do is declare and say im going to blow everything up, youre going to be did if you do anything bad, deterrence what if deterrence fails . Wouldnt you try to do something that brought it to a conclusion that didnt involve destroying all of humanity . Kennedy wasnt comfortable with this dilemma so he said we have to end the cold war. That is the real problem and he gave a speech at American University in june of 1963 basically a beautiful speech, look it up calling for the end of the cold war. Khrushchev was eager to listen to this. The soviet press reprinted the speech in its entirety. They turned off the jammers from voice of america so the soviet people could hear this, khrushchev embraced it as he told one of the ambassadors from the us the greatest speech by an american president since franklin roosevelt. Things were started to happen, they cite a test ban treaty, and there would be other things, then khrushchev was ousted after kennedy was assassinated, replaced by hawks and 1964 is really worthy arms race begins. During this arms race over the next 25 years, various president s looking at this war plan and being horrified by it tried to institute things in the war plan for limited options, trying to make things limited, but one thing i discovered looking at the archival material which i hadnt done before is secretaries of defense would sign statements outlining 5 or a dozen different options that would escalate slowly the level of Nuclear Attacks, people in omaha paid no attention to this. They kept the way was. They would always get written into the garden Something Like to the extent feasible or to the extent it does not compromise military objectives and they decided that it wasnt feasible and it did compromise military objectives so this plan just kept remaining the allout plan the administration starting with reagan and ending with george h w bush, i should Say Something about reagan because reagan turns out to be more interesting character and i covered as a reporter, turns out much more interesting in a good way and a weird way than anybody new at the time. First of all turns out reagan was a secret nuclear abolitionist. That is why he was so keen on the star wars defense, the shield that was shoot down every missile coming its way and therefore render Nuclear Weapons impotent and obsolete. He was one of 2 or 3 people who believed that was what that program was about. Hes doing incredibly provocative things in his first year, the cia is doing incredibly provocative things, the nsa and then he gets wind that the russians are taking this seriously, they really think we are planning to launch a first strike and are taking steps accordingly, reagan is horrified and says thats not what he meant so he seeks out, we need to talk to them, there are transcripts of meetings, we need to dial this back, we need to reach out to these people. By the time that happens gorbachev is the head of the soviet union they meet for the first time in 1985 in geneva and it is very tense so they decide to take a walk by the lake, duck into a cabin where fires blaze, just the two of them an