Leadership during the crisis. Foreign leaders who influenced events during the cold war years as well as the continuing threat of nuclear war. The Georgia Historical Society hosted the interview and provided the video. We are here to talk about the called war at 75. It marks the 75th anniversary of the beginning of the cold war immediately after world war ii in 1945. You attended georgia tech. Greta van susteren graduated from emory university. Served in the coast guard. Came back to georgia, practiced law. Served in the Georgia House of representatives. You were elected to the United States senate in 1972 and served for 24 years until you left in 1996 including eight of those years as chair of the Senate Armed Services committee. Since retiring from the senate you cofounded with ted turner and know cochair the Nuclear Threat initiatives. As i mentioneder with here to talk about the events of the cold war as you experienced them. Lets start with you. The scariest moment of the cold war was the cuban missile crisis in october, 1962. Where were you in october of 1962 . Talk to us about your experience with the cuban missile crisis. Stan, i was 24 years old. And i had been a staff lawyer on the Armed Services committee three and a half or four months. My boss was named jon jay courtney. He had been there a long time. A great man with terrific legalable, great judgment a lot of experience. He came in before he was due to get on an airplane with the air force and go on a nato trip with about ten or 12 other members, Staff Members of the Armed Services committee in the house and senate as well as the appropriation committee. So this was a group of 45, 50yearold senior experienced people. Bottom line, he came in and said, sam, i have got a marriage in the family. My family says i have got to go. I cant go on the nato trip, would you like to make my place . I had never been out of the country. I said yes, sir, i would be glad to do it. So we left and had a three week trip to nato. And right in the middle of the trip with the air force, cuban missile crisis broke out. I had just received my top secret clearance right before i left. You were 24 years old at this time . Just turned 24 years old. Right out of law school. So we were actually briefed by the air force with photographs and all the classified information sort of every step of the way once the cuban missile crisis broke out. And it turned out that we would at the afc air force base which was the had he of the u. S. Air force europe on the night when it really looked like we were going to war. I happened to be they rotated people who sat by the top general. I happened to be sitting by the Top Air Force general in europe that night at dinner. And he had a whole big computer back of him with all sorts of communication going on. During the course of the dinner he told me he had 20, 30 seconds once he got the signal to basically turn loose his aircraft to go after the soviet union because we thought we were going to war. He had about 30 seconds to give his orders to his men. And he had them sitting the pilots sitting by the planes. These were Quick Reaction aircraft, oneway mission, one bomb, toward moscow. They had to bail out on the way back because these were fighting planes. The fact that they were basically the first to arrive, so to speak, they would get there long before our strategic bombers if war broke out and it became nuclear, which in all likelihood it would have. Meant that that base was the prime target it would have been the first hit. They were the first to go. That brought home a sense of reality in me about the dangers of nuclear war that had an effect on the rest of my life. I remember jokingly but not completely telling the general i said i am delighted you turned your glass over with the wine and that you are not having any drinks tonight. Because he had an awesome responsibility. So it brought home to me two things how close we came to war, and how much subjective judgment was involved in the kennedy decisions and the crew chef decisions to avoid war. And second, how little warning time we had. And back in those days, there was more warning and decision time for leaders than there is now. Because the airplanes flew much lower. And they had failsafe. You could call them back. But today we have missiles that are much faster. So the decision time for our leaders today, people dont think about it, much shorter, both for the russian president as well as the u. S. President. Thats a problem that i still work on and am concerned about because having very little decision time in a moment of great crisis is extremely dangerous for the world. And thats to me one of the prime goals we should have today, which is to give both u. S. And russian leaders more time so that we do not move into a war, nuclear war, by blunder. A lot of lessons came out of that trip in 1962, and it really did affect an awful lot of what i did in the Armed Services committee and still do today in terms of working on reducing nuclear risk. Was that trip instrumental in the decision that you would eventually make to run for the u. S. Senate . How did it shape the rest of your life. Well, it had a lot to do with what i did once i got elected. Of course the Nuclear Issues are never what you campaign on because thats not something people really like to think about. Still dont. Dont blame them. But it did have an awful lot to do with my agenda once elected. In terms of running for the senate, my ambitious was to be a member of the house of representatives because thats where i had served as a young lawyer. I saw carl vinson as chairman of the committee. He was in the peak of his power. And so the house was where i was really aiming. But the Congressional District didnt become available for me in middle georgia. We were on the wrong end of the least populated area of a district that went eastwest. Basically i planned to run for the house. Didnt work out. And i ran for the senate after senator rosen dyed on a long shot. I got lucky. The senate of the United States was beyond my ambition at that stage but being in the congress was very much something i was interested in. You have said, talking about the risk of nuclear war during the cold war, quote, we were very lucky. There were a number of times that i know about and probably more that i dont know about where only by the grace of god woe avoided going to war. Did you ever experience anything like the cuban missile crisis again many the paper people dont know about . Looking back on it, i have determined a lot of times where accidents could have happened. But in the cuban missile crisis, the difference was it was public. Everybody knew it when it was happening. Now when you look back, there were near accidents a number of times during the cold war. We inadvertently dropped a nuclear bomb right off the Atlantic Coast not too many miles from savanna gentleman, gentleman, that never was retrieved. So we had all sorts of accidents. I think we had great professional military people. So did the russians. They could have had a accident, a blunder just as well as we could. And so i do think we were very professional in both the u. S. And the soviet militaries. They were careful and so forth. So they get a lot of credit for that. We were also lucky by the grace of god we never had a war by accident. That is still a major concern. With the compressed warning time now, and with cyber telling both adversaries, to the extent we are still an adversary with russia, we still have a huge amount of Nuclear Arsenals in both inventories deployed. And we have a shorter decision time than we did during the cuban missile crisis. And when you introduce sidebarer and possible interference in command and control and Warning Systems i still very much worry about compressed decision time. And if i had my way today and i have told president obama this. I told President Trump this. And i have told president putin this, that if i had my way the leaders would call in their military and say, look, we have mutual exsteng interest to give each other more warning time. And go off and find ways to give us if i have got four minutes now, hypothetically, give us ten minutes. And if weve got ten minutes, give us 20. And if weve got 20, give us an hour. And then a day, and then a week. And then you make Nuclear Weapons less relevant. Thats the course we have to have to get the weapons down in inventories, not simply a matter of reducing numbers. It has to do with survivability, being able to a first strike and retaliate. To reduce the error. It is a pole tech knick matter. It is important for the public to realize that for instance it is in the u. S. Interest for the russian Warning Systems to work correctly today. It is not in our interest to interfere with these Warning Systems which could set off a nuclear war by accident. The chances of a nuclear war by accident calculation are greater than a deliberate premedicate tated attack. And those that wrote history like Graham Allison found out later interviewing american leaders that during that cuban missile crisis, the chances of a blunder were very, very high. There were certain authorities that had been delegated to the soviet commanders at sea and on ground in cuba that we didnt know about at that time. So we came very close during that period of time to a deliberate war, but a war that could have still been start that nobody wanted. And today it is this is all still relevant. We should find ways to make the world safer and to reduce nuclear risk. So this, from 1962 to the year 2020, there is still a lot of similarities. Can you talk to me about your 1974 visit to the u. S. Tactical Nuclear Weapons storage base in germany . You did an inspection, and everything you were told was great. And you said a sergeant slipped you a note and said see me afterwards. Thats right. Had been shot boy a burglar. Nothing to do with the assassination. In 73, right after i got to the senate. He kind of relied on me from 74 on, when he came back, to take trips and to come back and report. So he had assigned a top staff person to me by the name of Frank Sullivan who was very knowledgeable. We were touring a Tactical Nuclear weapon base in nato in germany. We had hundreds of them. Thousands, actually. So did the soviets. That he is are shortrange systems hare used on the battlefield. So we were touring that base. And of course it was highly sensitive in terms of security. And it was post vietnam. It was right during the winding down of vietnam. So you had a me moralized american military. The army, it had all sorts of problems then. Vietnam had been a bad experience, there was drugs, there was alcohol, there was so forth. We were touring this Tactical Nuclear base and of course we got what i call the dog and pony show, top generals telling you everything is fine and security. As we were Walking Around a top sergeant handed me a note that said in effect senator this is all b. S. , if you will join my buddies and me in the barracks we will tell you whats really going on. He said like 5 00. Clearly he didnt want any military officers there. There was a lot of sprain between enlisted and officers at that same because of vietnam. So my great staff person Frank Sullivan and i went and we heard a litany of horrors. The electronic fences were not working properly. The dogs were not really patrolling the perimeter. There was alcohol problems among the guards. There was narcotics problems. Bottom line is, the police that would have German Police that would have come to be the first rescuers if there was say ten or 15 people that broke into the base and tried to seize those weapons not necessarily to set them off but to change the whole political equation because you had the mine hof gang there, terrorism going on. People were being knee capped. Huge animosity of a lot of the young people toward america because of vietnam. So it was a bad situation. I remember i was so alarmed about the state of those tactical Nuclear Weapons, the security of those weapons that when i went back to washington, Andrews Air Force base, Jim Schlesinger was secretary of defense, and i had sent word in advance, im coming straight to your office when i get back. I didnt even go home or to my office. I went straight over and sort of dumped it all in his lap and told him we have a bad security problem. Of course he set about doing a lot of changes to do something about it. So protecting those weapons not because necessarily some group was going the seize them and use them that would be a little more complicated. But because it would have tremendously disrupted the whole political relationship if even for ten hours a group of terrorists had controlled a Tactical Nuclear weapon base which was entirely possible because it was in a pretty remote area. But i learned from that, yes, listen to the generals and the admirals because they see it from a broad point of view and we have got tremendous military leadership. Did then and still do. But you also need to listen to the sergeant and the enlists out there on the front line because they can tell you whats really going on. And they will beurally frank about telling what you the problems are. You were serving in the u. S. Senate during watergate and when president Richard Nixon resigned in 1974. Was there ever any concern among congressman or among any National Security people in the transition to power . We had never had a president resign before. With the turmoil that was going on in the white house was there ever any concern about Nuclear Weapons. Well, thereof. But when you talk about chaos and turmoil i know people think today how can it be more chaotic, divided country and we do have a lot of problems today. Back then if you lock back i was elected in 1972. By 1976, in four years i served with three president s and four Vice President s in the fouryear period. So we had a lot of turmoil going on. And there was a lot of tension when president nixon was under tremendous investigation, a lot of pressure. And according to all the reports, i didnt know it at the time but he was engaged much more heavily in alcohol than would have been the case normally. My understanding is, and i talked to him about it personally because he was a friend of mine, but he never responded. I asked him the question two or three times and secretary of defense Jim Schlesinger was reported to have said to the military commanders and he never verified it directly although a wing and a nod told me a little bit. He said, if you get a call from the president , check with either me or the secretary of state first before you carry out any serious orders involving Nuclear Weapons. So, yes, we had some Serious Problems then. And it raises the question, both in russia and the nooids and to some extent china also, do you want one person as the Sole Authority to be able to launch a nuclear war and destroy Gods University . Do you really want one person to make that decision . My answer after a long number of years is no. But to move beyond Sole Authority and to continue to have the kind of deterrence you need is a very tricky proposition and would require the congress to organize itself in a very different way than it is organized today because somebody has got to be able to make a rapid decision, whether it is a group of people or one person. That decision has to be very rapid if you are going to continue deterrence. So, stan, this is a live question today. There is a debate with the virus going on and so forth. Nobody is paying attention at this stage, but there is serious debate about whether we ought to continue in perpetuity as long as we have this huge arsenal of Nuclear Weapons, Sole Authority, meaning the president can make that decision alone. You not only have Sole Authority, and most people in the country dont know that, but you also have very compressed decision time. And i think all of us whether it is the russian president or u. S. President f a general walks in and says we think we are under attack, we may be hit in the next 15 minutes, we have got to launch your weapons now or we lose them when this happens, you would like for the leader to have time to consult, time to think, time to perhaps if he had had a couple of glasses of wine for dinner to have a black cup of coffee. I think we would all like that. Thats why the nexus between Sole Authority and decision time comes in. But you have to be very careful about how you set up any authority beyond simply the president because of that compressed time frame. Historically, the United States was the First Nuclear country we developed the atomic bomb in 1945, the soviets in 1949. And of course the technology moves on beyond the atomic weapons. How many nations today are knew leer powe Nuclear Powers . Terms of actually having Nuclear Weapons there are Nine Countries. There have been several countriesaed including india and pakistan and quote reportedly israel. And of course the french and you have the british and you have the chinese and you have the u. S. And you have the russians. But one of the bits of good news people dont realize is after the soviet union broke up, three countries gave up all their Nuclear Witnesses because belarus, kazakhstan and ukraine all inherited a part of the soviet arsenal that was on their territory. But after a lot of work in the Clinton Administration and people didnt realize that was going on we and russia working together got three of those countries to give up their Nuclear Weapons. It is an interesting story there. One of the ways that we attracted particularly ukraine and kazakhstan to get rid of their Nuclear Materials is the material, the highly enriched uranium in the weapons is worth something because you break it down and you can burn it as a civil fuel for civil power plants. At one point we made a deal with russia and those other two countries that they would bring their weapons back to russia, russia would dismantle them. Then we would work with russia to convert it to nuclear fuel. And we bought it for our Nuclear Power plants. 20 of the electricity in this country 19 point something is still electricity is still Nuclear Power. So during a period from about 94 to about 2001, we bought enough fuel from those weapons that had been dismantled and the highly enriched your rainian made into fuel we bought enough of that fuel for 50 of our fuel supply for our Nuclear Power plants. So if you do the arithmetic, 20 of lk electricity comes from nuclear, 50 of the fuel. 10 of all the electricity in america, light bulbs, awful it came from materials from weapons that were pointed at us during the cold war. That was a big big move in the 90s that mott many people paid attention to. The nonlugar program sort of helped do that with the funding to get that started and with the funding to help those countries that inherited those weapons as well as russia get control of their nuclear their chemical and their biological weapon programs after 1991, the cold war. And that basically resulted in a dismantling of thousands of nuclear war heads, destructions of many bombers, submarines, missiles, missile silos and so forth. And particularly in the countries that decided not to keep Nuclear Weapons, belarus, kazakhstan and ukraine. And of course russia kept a lot of their weapons. But they also got rid of really thousands of Nuclear Weapons during that period of time. As did the United States. So now with all the continuing problems we have with Nuclear Weapons, we have a vastly smaller inventory, we and russia, than we did during the peak of the cold war because we have gotten rid of a lot of the most destabilizing weapons which are the theater short range Nuclear Weapons that were stationed in europe by the soviets and by the United States. We still have too many of them. But those are the most destabilizing weapons because you deploy them near the front lines which means there is a war. All of a sudden a commander has got to make a decision. Do you get permission and use them, permission from the president or do you let them get overrun and captured . So tactical battlefield Nuclear Weapon are the most destabilizing because you have got the use them or lose them if there is any kind of conventional war. Now we are seeing that nightmare unfold in pakistan. Pakistan andania, with pakistan having their own tactical Nuclear Weapons. So they are kind of repeating one of the most dangerous phase of the cold war that the United States and soviets went through. We havent cured our problem but we have much less danger of that today than we did when we had thousands of those weapons deployed in the front lines of the battlefield and decision had to be made very quickly to use them or lose them. So that phase of the cold war, probably a good thing in many ways, the American People never full rerealized but we were postured in nato for a long time, we and our european allies, germany in particular, to basically use Nuclear Weapons very quickly and to ask the president i dont think any president knew how quickly they were going to be asked for authority by the battlefield commanders because we dismantled a lot of our military after world war two. Soviets kept theirs. Threat advantage with Ground Forces with artillery and tanks. Therefore sort the first offset to that was the deployment of thousands of battlefield Nuclear Weapons on the u. S. Side. All of that is part of the cold war history but still relevant today both because there are residual weapons there, particularly the soviets or russians still have those weapon in the russian part of europe. History is repeating itself with india and pakistan, which may be one of the more dangerous places in the world where you have two weapon states with a tremendous amount of tension. Senator, you mentioned that you served in rapid succession in the 1970s with three president s. You served overall with six during the terms and administrations of six president s, nixon, ford, carter, reagan, george h. W. Bush, and bill clinton. You said that when you were running for senator, you didnt really talk about Nuclear Weapons because it wasnt a Kitchen Table issue, so to speak, for voters. For those who didnt grow up during the cold war, who were born long after, did it enter president ial politics . I know that then, as now, we talk about who is tough on terrorism. And i know that democrats and republicans accuse the other of being soft on communism or who is going to be tougher on russia. But did president s was it part of the campaign that they wouldnt hesitate . You mentioned some president s didnt know how quickly they would be called on. Was it an issue for american president s to say i wont hesitate to use Nuclear Weapons . Did any president s say i have a moral problem . It came to the forefront in terms of the public back when johnson was running against Barry Goldwater. There was an advertisement because the case was trying to be made that Barry Goldwater was ready, fire, aim type said he was going to lob one into the mens room at the kremlin, right. Thats right. Yeah. Goldwater used colorful language. I loved the guy, by the way. But that was an issue in that campaign and it probably had a real affect. I have talked to a number of leaders and i wouldnt identify any president s in crowd that seriously would think very, very probably long and hard before they would actually give an order to release Nuclear Weapons. And that includes some top people in the military command. So it is a moral question, but every military commander is charged with the responsibility of carrying out orders from the commander in chief. But those orders have to be moral orders. How do you determine that . Do you have ten new york lawyers come in in the middle of a crisis and say this is legal and moral . No. So it gets down to judgment. Generally speaking, the rule and i think we all have to assume this in russia and the United States and france and Great Britain and kmoip and india and pakistan, when the military gets an order they generally speaking are going to carry it out. In some ways deterrence depends on that, because if there was doubt that a president would use Nuclear Weapons then what is deterrence . Deterrence has to be, if you are hit with Nuclear Weapons, then you will retaliate. The problem today that i think we could cut some of the risk, certainly not all of it, if we made the position known in america that we will not use Nuclear Weapons first, we would only use them in response now to do that you have to be able to survive a nuclear attack. Our submarines give us that ability because they at this stage they are not detectable. So survivability is very person. Because if you are not going to use Nuclear Weapons first, you have to be able to absorb that attack and then be able to retaliate. Deterrence psychologically depends on that. The same applies to russia. If the russians if the russian president decides that they cannot survive a nuclear attack, then if he gets a warning, then he is not going to wait until basically hes hit. He would probably launch on warning. Probl problem . The warning could be false, particularly in a cyber world where you are interference in command and control possibly by each third countries. So we have moved into a new era nuclearly with technology, with cyber. And i dont think that has been realized. And i think the president of russia and president of the United States, that we have existential interests in each others warnings systems working properly. And we have i think we have an existential interest, they do also, in giving a president more decision time. We kind of walked we at nti now, flashing forward to today. We have developed a little game sort of a war game called hair trigger. And it walks through the kind of Decision Making a president would have to make. And it puts whoever is playing the game in the position of making decisions that could lead to nuclear war or could help prevent nuclear war. So thats kind the game that unfortunately is still relevant. I think the world certify this, but indicate, you know, 100 Million People would die of starvation over the next ten years because of the effect on the atmosphere. So theres a world stake in all of this. Einstein supposedly said when the Nuclear Weapon first tested, he said basically weve changed everything now, this changes everything except mans thinking. He also a quote attributed to him, its pretty darn descriptive, said, i know not which weapons will be used in world war iii, but i know world war iv will be fought with sticks and stones. This is good Gods University were talking about and should not be taken lightly by decisionmakers. But also i think the public has to become more knowledgeable and involved in this, not just in the u. S. , but in russia and china and Great Britain and france and pakistan and india because at some point deterrents will work until it doesnt work. Give you, you know, comparison, epidemiologists have been telling us were going to have a pandemic for the last 15 years. Our organization, nti, is involved in the biological side too, which is another whole set of problems. But people didnt pay a lot of attention. Public Health Facilities access to medicine by a huge part of our population. We didnt take care of those things and we didnt have an epidemic until we had one. Well, anyone that thinks deterrents has really looked at this and thinks deterrents is going to deter nuclear use forever, i think, is postlating a best case, which is highly unlikely. So we have to begin to rope off the existential interest we have with countries like russia and china, and we have to have disagreements in a lot of other areas but still come back and say we got to deal with each other. We have mutual interest of survivability, not just in the nuclear area, but in the bio area, the pandemic area, and increasingly longer term in the climate term. We have to deal with this. The way i describe it on these existential interests, were in a race between cooperation and catastrophe, and were not in my view coming to grips with that. When i say we i mean not just the United States, i mean russia and china. We have to work it together and we have to work it even when our value systems are not the same, even when we dont agree on human rights, even when we have different geographic enters and trade disputes, we still have to work these existential problems together. To me thats the message that has not gotten through in any country. We got to figure out a way to do that. We being the leadership in this country but at the same time kbhoorjit doesnt do much good for one country to say we have to do this, otherwise these are enormously difficult problems, but when you consider the stakes and the stakes are gods universe, its worthy of our full focus. One of the things we havent talked about is china. I know you made a trip to china in 1975. Ive read your journal that you kept that was published in the atlanta newspapers at that time. Your impression then and now of the country that some people would say has replaced russia as the great enemy. The political and governance, political, and military. And from a Nuclear Point of view, russia is still the greatest threat by far. China has a couple hundred war heads, nobody knows exactly. Theyre not transparent. But nothing like the russians. China economically is a fully matured competitor. A juggernaut. In terms of the economic side. They are a very strong country economically and they are a very strong country in terms of their education quest and they are also their ambitions and trade position in the world. They also are a very strong regional power. If you put the United States navy in the middle of the ocean against the chinese navy, no contest. But thats not what would occur. It would occur close to their shores, and chinas policy is to build up enough of military arsenal, missiles and so forth, to prevent the United States from intervening in a regional conflict, for instance, taiwan. So we do have tensions with china. But we also, if you look at our children and grandchildren, we have to find ways to work with them. Just like we have to find ways to work with russians. We cant wait until we agree on the value system. Were not going to agree with them on human rights. We have to, again, for instance, if were going to make progress on climate and the Global Warming and the carbon problem, we got to deal with china. So were going to have to become more sophisticated on Foreign Policy where both Political Parties and the general public understand weve got to work with these countries on existentialtype interest. I hate to reuse that word. Lets call it survivabletype challenges. The only time i heard the word species ending used in a war game was not on a nuclear war game, it was on a biological war game. Species, ending, thats chilly to me. So we got to find ways to work with china. First time i went to china, 75, chairman mao, premier were still alive. We didnt meet with them. We met with a leader we had never heard of. We probably shouldve. But we had vice premier don ping. Probably hes had as much influence on developments in the world as any one human being. Tremendous. A change in china since 1975. When i went there, bicycles everywhere, no cars. Women basically in drabtype, colorless clothes, people on the streets everywhere walking. Today you go to china, everybody who goes there says, you know, what happened to the china of the 70s and 60s . Its a changed situation. To be clear, china still communist . They are communism with a market approach. They have one political party, certainly they dont have pluralism. Certainly they dont have anything like our value system, our human rights system. Certainly they dont have the kind of freedoms we do in this country. But they do believe in Market Forces and incentives. And that was a change that don chau ping made. In 1975 i was there on a trip with ten senators. He was asked the question, we read mr. Vice premier that you have a billion people and we read another article saying you have 1. 5 bully people. How many people are in china . He spit his tobacco out and said always believe in the lower number. Lower number . Why . He said because we have villages that store grain and theyre able to retain grain for their own village based on the population. The rest of it they send to the state, to the government. So what do they do when the censustaker comes around and determines how many people are there, which determines how much grain they retain in the village, they have all the little children run front of the census taker so children get counted three or four times, so they maximize the population. In china in 1975, that was sort of violating every code of chairman mao, which is all for one, were in it together, everyone is patriotic, except full of propaganda. Everything was change of name maos thoughts, little redbook. Ping said we got to develop this incentive system. We have one. The chinese believe in incentives, but the system doesnt allow it. That was a signal that he was going to change fundamentally china, because he did. He created an incentive system within the communist system. Thats hard to do. But basically he did it. They still have an autocratic government, would i call it pure communism, for each according to his need, for each according to his capability . I dont call it that. I think its an incentive system and an autocratic society. Do we agree with it . No. But are there a lot of countries in the world that are looking to china as a model now . Yes. So they are a fullfledged competitor. We got to take them seriously. We got to deal with them fully on issues where we dont agree, but we have mutual interest and work with them. The future of our children and grandchildren and the future of the chinese young people depend on wise leadership that can identify the mutual interest and find ways to reduce the tensions and the dangers of those interests where were fundamentally apart. So gorbachev came to power in 1995, makes reforms in the soviet union, the soviet union as an empire crumbles by 1991. Eastern europe is free of soviet control. Was there any fear as the soviet union as an empire began to crumble that the Nuclear Weapons were going to fall into the wrong hands . I want you to tell the story about asking gorbachev during that coup that happened if he retained control of soviet Nuclear Weapons. He didnt answer the question. One of my soviet, i. E. , russian friends got called back when gorbachev was taken captive, the coup attempt. A couple days later, gorbachev was released. I was still in budapest. My friend who later became the deputy minister of defense in russia, hes still there in russia today, still a friend. He called me and said, youve got to come to russia, sam. You got to call me and come to russia immediately. Things are really changing. That was after gorbachev was released. Long story short, i got an immediate visa that he arranged. I got on a train and went to frankfort and then flew to russia. It was still the soviet union then. I spent the next five days being introduced to the new leaders. These were the yeltsin people because the coup against gorbachev resulted in a shift in policy. Yeltsin was the president of russia, and everybody then was talking russia, not soviet union, russia this and russia that. So things were changing dramatically. One of the most interesting sessions, i sat there with all the leaders of the soviet republicans with gorbachev presiding where they were debating the breakup of the soviet union. And i concluded during that fiveday visit that this empire was coming apart and it was the only time in history that an empire had come apart without any kind of war at all. There was no military victory as such, but the Economic System had collapsed. Their system was internally the system wouldnt work. So they were coming apart, but the thing that was so dangerous was they were possessing, like, 30,000 Nuclear Weapons. They had 40,000 tons of chemical weapons. They had a weaponization of germs, biological program. They even, we believe, weaponized smallpox. So all of that was happening and that long story short, i concluded we, the United States, had to help them get control of their Nuclear Weapon, biological, and chemical weapons. By them, i didnt mean just russia but kazakhstan, belarus, they had thousands of Nuclear Weapons. And the scientists and they knew how to make the Nuclear Weapons but didnt know how they were going to field their families. This was literally a world crisis. So i came back, make a long story very short, senator loouger joined, very influential and respected. We introduced what was called the nonlugar bill later. First time we tried it before senator lugar joined in in september, i had to pull it back on the Armed Services committee, even though i was chairman, outrage broke out. How could you help people who were our enemy all these years. It was an assault from left and right. Three months later, we had met with a lot of senators. We had gotten people that may be the situation, how danger it was to come in and meet. We had small group meetings. December of 1991 as an amendment to an appropriation bill, not the bill i controlled in the Armed Services committee. We passed the nonlugar legislation with 500 million i think it became 400 million to help them get control of their own chemical, biological, and Nuclear Weapons safely and to help scientists who knew how to make a weapon and would be very valuable to another number of countries in the world that wanted to make their own Nuclear Weapons or chemical or biological, but didnt know how to feed their families. And so we were able to pass that legislation in december 91 in the house and senate. The Bush Administration was kind of cool to it but the president didnt threaten to veto it. We talked to the secretary of state and secretary of defense. And gradually they came around. And so we had the executive branch and congress basically in a position to try to greatly reduce the risk that was a terrible risk at that stage about what would happen with what became known as loose nukes where there was all sorts of incentive for people that had access to the weapons and materials who were just as much about the materials because with todays knowledge, a terrorist group basically if they get Nuclear Weapon materials, the right kind of uranium, they would be able to make a crude weapon, not necessarily one to put on a missile. So preventing catastrophic terrorism became a huge fact at that stage where this Nuclear Material at that stage and some 40 countries around world. Only Nine Countries had Nuclear Weapons, but, like, 40 to 45 countries at that stage had weapons usable material, which if put together, with the right scientists and terrorist group could be made into a crude weapon and take out a city or a port or airport, change the world economically and psychologically. So that program was passed in 91. It started really being implemented vigorously in the Clinton Administration where bill perry became secretary of defense and bill perry made this his number one priority and had a team of terrific people around him. We basically with a lot of work with former enemies, we were able to over a 10year period really destroy thousands i think it was 8,000 or 9,000 Nuclear Warheads that they were willing to get rid of, it wasnt forced. Russia retained a good portion of their Nuclear Weapons. Kazakhstan, belarus, and ukraine gave up large numbers of weapons. Also missile silos, mills, bombers, submarines that were chopped up with the help of the socalled nonlugar funding. That went on intentionally for a decade it was a program that i think the money was well spent. Most people agree with that. Just for fun, all the people that you met through your career in the senate, your time traveling abroad, all of the officials that you met in terms of the cold war, whats the one cold war personality who most impressed you for good or ill in all the time you were in Public Service . Let me just turn the question a little bit, spin it a little bit different. Who did i meet that had the most influence on effecting world events during this period of time . And i would say gorbachev has to be on that list because in my view, any predecessor, i think, the system at some point was going to collapse. But humanity is blessed was blessed by the fact gorbachev was in the leadership. Any of his predecessors in my view, we would have had a blood bath. It would not have been a peaceful collapse of an empire. So gorbachev didnt save the system, but he saved humanity from probably the worst atrocities in history, it could have been. The other person i certainly did not agree with him on many things, but Dearborn Chau ping changed the world when he changed china. He created an incentive system in china and awakened the sleeping giant. Third i would put the series of president s we had from truman all the way through h. W. Bush when the cold war ended. Truman made some very gutsy decisions. H. W. Bush at the end made a lot of good decisions in terms of germany and german reunification. He got rid of a huge number of excesses, dangerous, risky Nuclear Weapons. And of course, state of georgia, jimmy carter. He put pressure on the soviet system and, indeed, all autocratic systems, not with military power per se, but with his emphasize on values and human rights and integrity and dignity and respect for human beings. That is the ultimate way you put pressure on regimes, and i think carter doesnt get the credit he deserves. And of course reagan made tremendous contribution through his not only his strong stand and firm stand against communism, but his recognition that gorbachev was a different kind of leader. Most people in both parties didnt realize it when reagan realized it. And reagan and gorbachev made one of the most profound statements in terms of nuclear risk and lessons of the world ca war when they said nuclear war couldnt be won and therefore must not be fought. Right now i wish that President Trump and president putin would say the same thing. Does it get rid of Nuclear Weapons . No. Does it make a huge psychological difference in the minds of people, including military leaders . Yes. So that would be my series of impactful i put all the president s together because they all had a different perspective, but we stuck to the nato alliance, we stuck to the leadership. We had sustainable policy for all of those years. We did not have preemptive wars, which some urged when we had nuclear advantage, and we gave the system time to work out. But then don chau ping changed world, gorbachev in my view helped save the world from catastrophe. Thats the way i link it right now. I would add two more people in the middle east. I would add president sadat who had a vision about peace in the middle east, and i think his influence was enormous. And also rabin in israel. He was willing to reach out. Leadership in that area of the world is still very important and we havent had nearly enough enlightened leadership in the middle east. Senator, the colder war as we mentioned, has been over 30 years. As we stand here now 75 years after it first began, what lessons did we learn from it . Are we safer now than we were at the height of the cold war . Whats the great legacy and lesson from the cold war that senator nunn takes . There are many. But let me just name a few. One is that we do still have Nuclear Posture thats extremely dangerous. I think theres less chance now of a deliberate nuclear war. It would be Something Like a premeditated attack. I think theres actually more chance, more risk of a blunder, and i say that because decision time has been compressed for the leaders. They dont have time to make up their mind whether to launch in case they get a warning from a general that they may be under attack, which might be a false warning. The cyber world made everything more dangerous, third parties, other states could attack Warning Systems, mistakes, blunders. So i worry more about a nuclear war by blunder than i did in the old days. The question of Lessons Learned, we made a lot of mistakes, we being the world, after world war i. And world war ii came about, in part, in large part, because of all the mistakes made after world war i. The remarkable leadership after world war ii moving into the cold war period, we decided we were going to bring japan and germany back into the world of civilized, peaceful nations, marshal plan saved those countries as well as Eastern Europe. Remarkable affect generosity, one of the most unusual moments in history, actually. Leadership in creating nato, leadership in take advantage the soviet union, not going to nuclear war when we had even an advantage, but buying time. Time means a lot in changing people and changing policies and reducing tensions. And then we had a remarkable leadership of american president s from truman all the way through president h. W. Bush, including reagan, including all the president s, democratic president s and republican president s. Remarkable continuity, standing with our allies, which is still relevant today, helping defend europe, deterring the soviet union, containing not going to war, unless we were pushed to the brink, which fortunately we were not. We went through vietnam and korea, hot wars during the cold war. We still decided wisely not to use Nuclear Weapons. So all sorts of lessons from the cold war a basic lesson is one in economics. The soviet union did not get defeated militarily, so when people talk about winning, it won in the military sense, economic sense, they could not work in the long term because it did not have private enterprise incentives. It didnt even have the blend that china has between an autocratic system and an incentive system, which they seemtomade work pretty darn well. So lots of Lessons Learned in economics and military and human behavior. And the residual is that today, after the collapse of the soviet union and the cold war, if somebody asked me were we closer to the world war i model or we were closer to world war ii, and i would say somewhere in between because even though some truth to the fact, quote, we won, the Economic System and political system governance system of the west, quote, won. The military contained we won in the sense we did not have a hot war. That was what containment by george kinnen was about. We did not win in the sense that the russians thought they were defeated. In fact, the russians that were sort of the leaders of the yeltsin movement felt that they were themselves were the ones who broke away from the soviet union. They were the ones who broke up the empire. We saw it differently, but they felt that russia itself had led the way in getting rid of the system that did not work. So we went through that period of time where there was a psychological window enormously important to the future of russia. We did some things inadvertently that were a mistake, and i thought so at the time. I did not think we shouldve extend nato immediately after the collapse of the soviet union. I felt we should help extend the economic side, reaching out to Eastern Europe through the european union, but not as a soviet military was collapsing move american presence into areas that were right next to near their border, america presence or nato. So we made some mistakes after the cold war. So in between the lessons of world war i, which give us very poor marks and lessons of world war ii, which i think were unique in the history of the world in terms of a pluses and postcold war, somewhere in between. We got a lot of work to do so that our children and grandchildren can live in a world that does not have the perils of those things hanging over us. Id close with a thought that we really are in a race between cooperation and catastrophe on what i call the issues of survival. Its going to take wise leadership both in america as well as in countries that are adversaries such as russia from time to time, also including china. And i think that another lesson we learned is that acting through alliances with the u. S. Leading is the most powerful way to make our presence known and to really have a tremendous influence on values in the world. Finally, i would say that we influence countries abroad by our example as much as we do by our economic and military power. And the example of america working together, rallying together, coming together after elections, putting our country in front of our Political Parties, which were not doing very well these days, that in the final analysis as well as standing for human rights and values and Human Dignity is enormously important for the future. Thats where our strength is. We may defend ourselves with our military, but in terms of rejecting influence in the world, we do it through our governance at home and our example. And we should never forget that. Senator nunn, thank you for coming for it Georgia Historical Society and participating in this program today. Thank you very much, stan. Thank you for the role this society plays in our state. Its a tremendous organization. And i think it has a tremendous effect on our children, our grandchildren, and letting people understand history and learn from the lessons of history so that we do not repeat the mistakes and build on the basic opportunities in front of us. To mark the 400th anniversary of the pilgrims arriving in plymouth, massachusetts, American History tv features several programs looking back to the year 1620. We talked to robert stone, director of the virtual may flower project which recreates the ship and the harbor from which it set sail. Heres a preview. What was plymouth like in 1620 . What type of town was it . It was smelly, it was dirty, it was suffering from cholera. There is a feeling that some of the water that was taken on board from plymouth onto may flower was cholera infected and theres a story they may called into a fishing territory before they sailed across the atlantic. So the big controversy, was plymouth the final departing point or new lynn . Some rivalry in that part of the world. It was very unsanitary. A lot of gullies taking waste away from the buildings. Apparently mayflower sailed on a sunny day, but you can bet your Bottom Dollar that the actual harbor itself would have been very smelly, very dirty, a lot of steam coming off the water. So in general, not very nice. And a lot of trade, a lot of trade obviously in fish. It was a huge fishing port. And wine, wool, coal was being delivered into plymouth from different parts of england in that time. Treasure, obviously, some of the spoils from galions that were attacked and all the onboard treasure was taken. So quite a hustling, bustling little town, but dirty, filthy nonetheless. American history tv is on social media. Follow us at cspan history. Sunday on the presidency Ronald Reagan president ial library Duke Blackwood takes us on a virtual tour of the facility. The Museum Showcases the legacy of the nations 40th president. Heres a preview. One of my personal favorite displays in the museum is the president s personal diary. What i find interesting is that almost every day of his presidency he actually wrote in this diary. Theres five volumes. And the reason they did that is when they left the gubernatorial mansion, they didnt remember a lot of this stuff. So they said, okay, were going to write this down. It was never meant to be published. It was just his notes, thoughts, and feelings. But theres one entry that is dated the day of his assassination attempt, which i think is extremely poignant, but it gives you an insight into Ronald Reagan, the man. Remember, this was not necessarily going to be published. So im going to read this short passage. Getting shot hurts. Still my fear was growing because no matter how hard i tried to breathe, it seemed i was getting less and less air. I focused on the tiled ceiling and prayed. But i realized i couldnt ask for gods help while at the same time i felt hatred from the mixedup young man who had shot me. Isnt that the meaning of the lost sheep . We are all gods children, and, therefore, equally beloved by him. I gran to pray for his soul and he would find his way back to the fold. I dont know about you, but thats pretty impressive. The guy tried to kill him and thats what the president was writing. Thats wonderful. The way we have the presentation, you can actually electronically go through each of the pages. Watch the full Program Sunday at 8 00 p. M. Eastern, 5 00 p. M. Pacific here on American History tv. Up next, a conversation with james baker about leadership and his career. He served as secretary of state for president george h. W. Bush and as Ronald Reagans white house chief of staff and treasury secretary. Hes interviewed by attorney and historian talmage boston, Baylor University law school hosted the conversation and provided the video. Hello. My name is brad tobin, the dean at baylor law school. Th