The 75th anniversary of the cold war. With me today is dr. William hitchcock, the professor of history at the university of virginia. Dr. Hitchcock is the author of several books on the cold war, most recently the age of Eisenhower America and the world in the 1950s. Published in 2018 by simon and schuster. Will, welcome and ask for joining us. William thank you, good to be with you. Looking forward to a conversation. Sean lets get to it. In surveying the 45 years of the cold war and its impact, one could argue that it fundamentally changed the constitutional framework of the American Government, that it was this period that saw the greater concentration of power in the president at the expense of the congress, that more than ever in our history because of the challenges of the cold war our National Course is now set by the personality of the president. Would you agree with that . William well, yes, i would agree with that. And i think its been characteristic of the presidency over the last half century or more that it has significantly grown in scope and in power and the cold war had a great deal to do with that. You know, its funny. I think back to the Second World War. That must have been the moment when the American Government became enormous, right . Well, in some way it is military did. But think about the Roosevelt White house was tiny. The executive office was actually very small. So theres roosevelt with literally half a dozen advisers, a couple of leading military officials, George Marshall and others, planning a global war with a tiny array of personnel and bureaucracy. When truman became president upon roosevelts death, he is suddenly facing a global strategic challenge dealing with the cold war, winding down the Second World War, all these problems that are besetting the United States, and he has no levers to pull. It is the proverbial thing, like, who is really in charge . And truman says, well, im in charge, but im not sure what levers or buttons to push. And it is he and his advisers to begin to grapple with the problem of building up an infrastructure so they can organize intelligence, so they can organize the relationship between the individual military services, which competed terribly with each other, which had terrible relations. So hes trying to figure out whats the appropriate infrastructure for Civil Military relations, what is the role of the intelligence community. We had the National Security act that creates the c. I. A. These are the stepping stones. But even so, truman will wage the cold war in the first couple of years, and indeed the korean war, and he still has a relatively small bureaucracy. And of course, it keeps on going. In the cold war, eisenhowers white house was still pretty small, but he organized it around the National Security council. He used that instrument of power very effectively. And it would grow and grow. The vietnam war had a huge impact on expanding it. But you mentioned congress and the one hitch in your assessment is that in the week of the in the wake of the vietnam war and in the wake of the nixon period, congress does try to reassert control over the executive. And the war powers act and the Church Committee hearings that investigate all kinds of abuses of the cia, which come on in the 1970s, in the mid1970s, is an effort to try to claw back a little bit of that power that had been really surrendered by congress because of the cold war consensus. The congress now is thinking, wait, the cold war consensus got us into vietnam. We need that power back. But guess what . It doesnt hang on to that power. And we see this in the 1980s and indeed up through the post cold war period into the 9 11 period. The American Public and the congress typically, and i think its very frequent that they defer to the role of the president in setting foreign policy, National Security policy. And i think we would all in theory like to have a little more balance, a little more give and take in which Congress Plays its supervisory role a bit more aggressively. But often, youll have the same party in the congress and in the white house, in which case they dont want to run afoul of each other. So then your question is absolutely right. The course has been to strengthen the role of the presidency, to the detriment of the supervisory role of the congress. Sean and you mentioned some of the agencies that grew up after world war ii. I think the second big thing you can say about the cold war is that because of the conflict the intelligence establishment, the c. I. A. , the National Security council, the pentagon have far more money and power, far less oversight than any other Bureaucratic Agency perhaps, and that they have played an outsized role since 1945 in directing American Foreign policy, much of it perhaps without the publics knowledge. And so, i would ask if you think thats true, but also what role did president eisenhower play in that . Hes the first two term president of the cold war. Cast a long shadow, as you know,. Your great book, which our audience can see behind you, you sort of recast, you ask people to think differently about the eisenhower presidency. So talk about that. William sure. Well, on the question of the c. I. A. , eisenhower i think is one of the things he carries over from the Second World War era is the belief that youve got to use whatever tools you have at your disposal to wage war against the bad guys. In the Second World War, he took advantage of intelligence. He took advantage of covert operations. He took advantage of the resistance movements on the continent working against hitler. So in the cold war, its easier for him to connect the two and say were waging a global cold war against the soviet union. They are the bad guys. I want to know what theyre doing, i want their secrets. I want intelligence on them. And im happy to use covert operations if it will help our global struggle in the cold war. So, i think we know in retro spect that thats going to lead to unfortunately an abuse of the role of the c. I. A. , i believe, over time. But in the 1950s, ikes view was the c. I. A. Is a very valuable tool that i can use to constrain soviet power and also to wage war on the cheap, and secretly, so i can avoid an overt conflict with boots on the ground. So he is quite enamored of the secret power of the growth of the c. I. A. Now, unfortunately, his choice of or the man who is going to lead the c. I. A. Throughout his tenure was alan dulles. I think alan dulles did a great deal of damage, and i think he did the country and eisenhowers presidency, i think he was a poor choice. I understand why he was chosen. He had certain gifts. He had a legacy in the warriors himself of building Intelligence Networks in europe. But he was so secretive. He was so he amassed a great deal of power. Talk about supervision. He was a clever bureaucratic in fighter. He didnt let any of the blueribbon panels that were supposed to supervise the cia to get anywhere near him. And he persuaded eisenhower to take a number of risks that i think in retrospect were illjudged. So thats one of the faults that i talk a lot about in my book about ike. I do want to say, though, that on balance, the eisenhower Foreign Relations and National Security is a record of success. Even though the c. I. A. Dimension is a series of real black marks , what eisenhower managed to do is come into office at 1953 at a moment of extraordinary fluid di fluidity and difficulty and explosiveness in the cold war. The korean war is going on. The indo china, the french vietnam war going on. Theres a very nasty conflict brewing over china and the u. S. Over taiwan. Just gone communist in 1949. The nationalists were set up in taiwan, which the americans back. That could explode at any moment. There was the berlin problem. The city of berlin. How are we going to deal with that . American, soviets, british, and french were all in berlin claiming to have access to it, but that was a flash point. Eisenhower has to deal with all of these things in addition to the growing soviet threat because theyre developing new missiles and new technology all the time. So people have an idea that ike had it easy. The 1950s was a relatively peaceful time. Dont believe a word of it. It was a very dangerous era. And i believe that we dont give ike enough credit for doing the things that president s have to do every day, which is to manage crises. You know, its all well and good to say, i waged and won a war. Well, all right. Eisenhower certainly did that. But managing the crises so that they dont become worse is actually a huge part of the cold war presidency. And i think eisenhower managed to do that very well, staying out of indo china. He did use the Nuclear Threat in taiwan with china. But nonetheless managed to avoid serious expansion of conflict, which the American Public were very grateful for because they hated the korean war. They were delighted that he got out of the korean war in 1953. They had been at war since 19 41. The country did not want that kind of conflict, and eisenhower gave them peace, which they definitely wanted after a decade of conflict. Stan before i go any further, i should tell our audience that as you are listening to this, if you have questions, if theres something that sparks your interest that you want to know more about, please submit those. When we get to the end of the program, will and i will take questions. Well, i want to quote from your will, i want to quote from your book because you mention president ial crises, a moment of truth there with the president. And you have written and i quote. President s always confront crises. They do not foresee and often do not understand. It is then that history is best able to take the measure of the man. We can think of many such moments for the cold war president s. For truman, perhaps, the soviet locate soviet blockade of berlin. For jfk, the most famous, the crisis. Issile for carter, the iranian hostage crisis. What moment would you point to for eisenhower . Well stay with him for a moment. Perhaps that tested him in this way that perhaps nothing else did. William you have the book in front of you. I wrote that about a domestic crisis that was going on in the United States during the cold war, which actually is relevant to the cold war, which was the Civil Rights Movement, the civil rights challenge. And eisenhower was not prepared to deal with the emergence of a nationwide Civil Rights Movement and he was not comfortable dealing with those policy issues. He had very little experience in the United States in the 1950s. But he had to deal with changes in the country that he didnt understand. So he relied upon very talented subordinates and in his case the attorney general, who guided eisenhower through the thickets of the civil rights problems of the 1950s in a very progressive way. We get all sorts of changes. The brown versus board decision, the appointment of earl warren, the little rock incident of 1957 in which eisenhower decides to use federal troops to allow black students into little rock high school. So thats a cold war crisis that was related to the cold war in part because it was such an embarrassment on the international stage. Americas jim crow policies were a terrible embarrassment and eisenhower knew this because em because embassies across europe, across the world, would constantly write into the president , saying, you ought to know that in europe, in france or germany, they think that mccarthyism and jim crow are terrible embarrassments for the United States, and it undercuts your moral authority to lead the west in the cold war. You should do something about it. So, thats an interesting way in which the domestic policies and the cold war policies became knitted together. So, thats an example of a domestic crisis that has an international dimension. That eisenhower had to face. I think another example, ike was very good on National Security policy. He had seen every conceiveable crisis during the Second World War. But the sputnik crisis was a big one for him. He anticipated that there was going to be breakthroughs on the soviet side, but it was a Public Relations nightmare that the soviets got a satellite in space first in 1957. And really, eisenhower handled it initially handled it rather poorly. He wasnt quite sure what to do. The soviets had beat the United States, everyone could see that. So, how do you spin that . The way that he spun it was dont worry, everything is going to be fine. And thats not at all what that didnt work. He came back about a month later and he said, look, ill grant you that they beat us. But it doesnt matter in terms of the balance. Were way ahead on technology. Were going to get a satellite up in space, which they did a couple months later. And after that, the embarrassment eased. But it was just a sign that Technological Breakthroughs can be one of those moments when everyone is counting the relative prestige of the two superpowers, where there can be a sudden embarrassment. Of course, you mentioned many other crises that we can dig into if you would like. Stan sure. Lets go back just for a moment before we skip over it. You mentioned at the beginning harry truman. Where would you place him in the pantheon of cold war president s . He was not highly regarded at the time. He went out of office with a very low approval rating, the man who lost china to communism, who let the soviets develop a bomb on his watch, who got us into supposedly the korean conflict, couldnt get us out. But he has risen in stature cents. Why do you think that is so . William he got lucky in this sense, which is that David Mccullough wrote a biography about him. Any president would ought to be anyone who wants to be president should be going to David Mccullough, saying, will you please write my biography . It took truman and gave us a rounded picture of the man. And what he showed was trumans true essence, that was a man of that he was a man of the people but he was a midwesterner, that he had been a public servant, he fought in the first world war, that he had gone into politics, that he had an earthieness and attractive quality about him. And once he was able to draw the character so colorfully, one became much more able to sympathize with the difficulties that truman faced in the white house. I mean, the first thing to recall is just what youre , shocks. Bout what is it like when youre the Vice President and the president dies and you get that call . And when the president is Franklin Roosevelt and the Second World War is still going on, what do you suppose was going through his mind . And mccullough does a really good job of pulling out that moment of shock, and truman himself would later say i felt that the moon and the stars had all fallen on me. You know, he felt the world had just pivoted and he was now in charge. But it was his great achievement to find his balance pretty quickly and to say, look, its the next man up. You know, one foot in front of the other, etc. Pragmatismnd of about him that he was able to fill the role quite quickly. You asked how the cold war historians feel about him. And i think the answer is its an ambiguous judgment. On the one hand, he engineered and his advisers, he created the infrastructure that would essentially allow the United States to win the cold war if you like. I mean, the Marshall Plan, the nato alliance, the institutions of the western alliance that brought the u. S. Into European Affairs on a permanent basis, which it is still there. Were still in europe and thats a good thing. It created a community of interests, a community of security so that the cold war would remain cold, unlike the first world war, which had drifted into the Second World War. So just in terms of their achievements of identifying the common interests of the west and building a community of interests through the Marshall Plan and nato, i think you have to say that truman was one of the most consequential leaders of the cold war era altogether. On the other hand, theres a great deal to suggest that truman over simplified and over reacted. And that he perhaps brought about the cold war to begin with. Now, im not saying thats my view, but theres a great deal of literature, a great deal of very thoughtful scholarship that suggests that truman did as much as stalin did, maybe even more, to bring about the worsening of u. S. Soviet relations that is roosevelt had tried so hard to keep together, and that he was not particularly sophisticated in his reading of soviet insecurity, soviet weaknesses. Everything he saw was soviet threats, soviet dangers. And i think theres some merit to that. And i think that part of it is that the domestic politics of being anticommunist were very powerful, very it forced his hand to some extent. So the long run is that its a mixed legacy, but its an enormously consequential one. And i also believe that truman was as honest and as transparnt a figure as weve had in the white house. And so, that alone is comforting. So that whether you disagree or agree with his decisions, you can always track them down. I will just add one more thing before we move on, because it does bear on the whole story of the cold war. Truman is the only president still to have dropped two atomic bombs. And now, thats another factor, r that has attracted a great deal of attention from scholars. Was it the right thing to do . There is a debate. And that debate has gone on, and it will continue to go on. Maybe the first bomb was the right thing to do. Maybe the second was the wrong thing to do. Maybe both were right, maybe both were wrong. How did it change americas standing in the world . What did it mean for the presidency . That now the president of the United States, a single person, had that kind of power at his fingertips. And now today, of course, infinitely greater power. It changed world politics. So truman said he never lost a nights sleep over it. I find that hard to believe. But at the same time, it gives you a sense for what kind of man he was, that was able to make such a consequential decision without losing too many nights sleep over it. Stan and the Nuclear Threat is what really defines the cold war, a threat that continues to hang over the United States, although we dont feel it in the same way now because were not in the midst of a cold war. But lets take that one step further to eisenhower. He wrote, and i quote here again from your book, between 1945 and 1961, no person dominated American Public life more than eisenhower. Eisenhower expanded the power and scope of the 20th century warfare state and put into place a longterm strategy designed to wage and win the cold war. So describe, if you will, what you mean by expanding the warfare state, and what was the strategy . If truman laid the foundation for the agencies that would carry out the cold war, you give eisenhower i think the credit for ultimately setting in place the strategy that ultimately won it. Describe for our audience what that was. William well, put simply, it was peace through strength. And eisenhower did build out the infrastructure to wage the cold war. By that, i mean it was in the 1953 to 1961,iod, that the tools were actually designed and built to contain soviet power and to deter the soviets. So, im talking about the nuclear infrastructure. You know, in the eisenhower period, they designed and tested and deployed thousands of new missiles with initially short range, then longer range, then finally intercontinental range. , so that Nuclear Weapons could be delivered to any point in the world. That occurred deliberately during the eisenhower period. Eisenhower also supervised the construction of the triad. So we can nuclear missiles, submarine missiles, polaris missiles that could be carried undersea. Those went live in 1960. And also the aircraft, intercontinental bombers, which circle the globe 24 hours a day, carrying nuclear warheads. And he took the first steps to militarize space by placing the first spy satellites in orbit. And drop them through the atmosphere to be collected by an aircraft. So, eisenhower created this infrastructure not because he wanted or expected that he would use it, but because he figured this was the best way to deter soviet threats, to deter soviet challenges, and to deliver a clear message that america was prepared to use its Nuclear Power if necessary. He hoped it would never be necessary. But i had come to the conclusion by studying eisenhower that he would have used Nuclear Weapons , probably some of the smaller scale Nuclear Weapons, had it come had he felt it was absolutely necessary. Like harry truman, i think he would have said it has to be done. Especially in the case of u. S. China relations because in the eisenhower period, china didnt have the ability to respond with a nuclear weapon. So i do think thats a facter. I do think thats a factor. But the other piece of this so thats the strength piece of this. The other piece is that eisenhower avoided conflict, he sought to he extended the hand of peace to the soviets. In 1955, he meets nikita khrushchev. Khrushchev comes to the United States. I enjoyed writing about that visit, which is full of comedy. Khrushchev coming to washington and going all across the country , he goes to hollywood. Cancan anvie International Incident because it is so risque. He eats hot dogs goes to a corn field. Whats happening here is the americans are domesticating khrushchev, making him less scary, making him appear to be normal and human. Eisenhower embraced that. He wanted to diffuse the cold war. So you get the results that we avoid a major conflict, we avoid troops overseas in the eisenhower period. Yes, theres the covert operations. But also, final point, eisenhower does this without destroying the economic balance of the country. During the eisenhower period, he is able to balance three budgets. He comes close on the others. He does spend significant sums on the military, but not at the expense of blowing up the federal budget like, for example, Ronald Reagan would do. So if i told you that i could get you a president that would give you eight years of peace, had 70 approval rating, would pass progressive legislation on issues like civil rights and housing and health and education, infrastructure, super highways, and would somehow manage to get us out of an unpopular war, all while balancing the budget, i think i have just described the political unicorn. But that is the legacy of eisenhower. Stan well, and you go from there, of course. You mentioned balanced budgets. John f. Kennedy ran against eisenhower not eisenhower, but Richard Nixon, his Vice President , claiming that there was a missile gap and got into of course what is arguably the greatest failure of president ial leadership during the cold war , and that is, of course, vietnam. He and his Vice President and then president Lyndon Johnson. Its easy to look back at these two and either romanticize what jfk might have done had he lived to prosecute or not that work, and also of course to demonize lbj for not being able to see into the future and know what we know looking back at vietnam. That the domino theory didnt hold, that all those lives and treasure, and in fact americans couldnt have guns and butter. If you will, talk about vietnam as a failure of leadership would leadership. Would you characterize it as that . And is it fair to sort of blame lbj because we can look backwards, and could he have made a different decision realistically . William yes. The answer is yes. Theres two individuals here that you mentioned here, kennedy and johnson, and theyre very different. Of course, once presidency was tragically shortened. The kennedy plot line in my view is learning on the job. And he only had three years, so we can only project what he might have accomplished in eight years. But you get the young john kennedy, who you said ran against eisenhower and then you corrected yourself. Of course, he ran against nixon. But youre right. He ran against eisenhower in a sense because ike was old. Ike was the previous generation, ike was moderate, he was dull, boring. Kennedy was young, dynamic, handsome. He ran against the eisenhower record as a hawk. He said, youve done too little. Look, we have missile gaps. The communists have taken over in cuba. Youve done nothing. He tried to criticize eisenhower. Can you imagine running against Richard Nixon and saying, you are soft on communism . Kennedy was good. He was good. He comes into the office full of beans and says, i dont need to listen to the experts. Im going to run my own National Security security things. I am smarter than these old fogies. And the first thing he does is the bay of pigs, a scheme that was planned in the eisenhower years, executed april 16, 1961, and blows up in his face because he didnt really run the numbers. He didnt really think through this plan. He didnt see his flaws. But the reality is i think he learned from that. And in the cuban missile crisis, which will come in october of the following year, what we see is a very different john kennedy, somebody who is now starting to feel a sense of confidence and of managing the crisis. And, you know, imagine the difficulties. Suddenly you wake up and they bring you the slides and khrushchev, and say, has put missiles in cuba what. What are you going to do about it . Very difficult problem to solve. So he tackles it with masterry, with skill. He comes up with a plan to put pressure on the soviets to withdraw those missiles. But its a facesaving negotiation, its a facesaving deal in which the soviets will withdraw those missiles, and secretly kennedy will give them a similar deal, which is the withdrawal of some missiles in turkey so it looks like he made in turkey. But the public doesnt know that, so it looks like he made the soviets blank. But he negotiated a way out. So thats a clue to where he might have gone. Now you know, we all know that he increased soviet advisers in vietnam. Does that mean kennedy would have waged the vietnam war the way Lyndon Johnson waged it . I do not think thats the case. We dont know exactly how he would have handled the challenge of vietnam, but i dont think he would have sent half a million soldiers there. It just doesnt feel right to me. Johnson is the character who is the great tragic figure here, the gifted legislator, the southerner who finally made it into the white house. But how did he come to the office . He came to office through a national tragedy, kennedys assassination. So he spends the first year feeling the shadow of the kennedys, knowing the country has not elected him. Hes filling a dead mans shoes and there is a lot of insecurity in that first year. There is the gulf crisis in which some of the american ships claim they were fired up upon by vietnamese patrol boats. They claim they were struck. Maybe they were not. Johnson goes to congress and says i need a blank check. I want you to support me on this. You have to give me a blank check to give me whatever force is desirable. That was in 1964. His ratings go through the oof. The congress is behind him. Johnson has a landslide victory. He has it all. He squanders this great gift, national unity, national consensus. He pushes through all this transformational social legislation that he has wanted to do, the Voting Rights act, civil rights act. Then he decides the United States has to go to war with vietnam to protect american credibility. Oh, boy. Whats the i tell my students that is the c word. Credibility. It is the great myth, mistake, trap of the cold war. Johnson falls right into it. Here is this, the scholars who have written carefully about johnsons decision to go to war have reminded us that nobody was pressuring johnson to go to war in 1965 at such a scale. Yes, vietnam was a problem but could it have been managed differently . Of course. The American Allies were not pressing for a huge conventional war in vietnam. The soviets were not doubting their credibility. The American Congress was not begging to get into a war in Southeast Asia. Johnson made the decision himself. T was a tragic decision. Once so many hundreds of thousands of americans were committed there, then it would be next to impossible to extract them. It would destroy his presidency. It destroyed the cold war consensus. It ripped the country apart and younger College Students went out into the streets and for the First Time Since the cold war, turned their back on the government. They said we think youre lying. You are wrong. You have lost the moral authority. Americas credibility was worse after four years in vietnam. Thats when johnson realized he had failed and could not seek reelection. I could go on but you get the point, it is the tragic story that i think our contemporary students, my students need to study much more carefully. The vietnam war is still a rich subject for lessons about leadership and failures of eadership. Maybe hubris, ego is also a topic we could study when looking at johnsons decisions in vietnam. You dont think he was correct in his fear that the idwestically domesticically the republicans would hang on him and that it was on his watch that china fell to the economist. That all of Southeast Asia would go to the communists. As lbj said, not on my watch. That really was a consideration. It was a consideration. He could have pushed that aside . That is what i am saying. Of course there was consideration. Johnson worried very much about the china problem. It could be politically difficult problem to handle. Im not suggesting that there were not consequences of walking away from Southeast Asia. Johnson could have built a coalition in his party to say that we are not going to wage world war iiiasia because we are already in southeast doing pretty well here. We have south korea going, japan going, the philippines going. Were containing china and taiwan. We are doing fine in asia. We dont need this fight. I think you could have made this case to the American Public. He could have made that case to the American Public. It really is a tragic story. Lets move ahead a little bit. Were going to for a moment jump over the ultimate cold war era with Richard Nixon. I do want to get right to Ronald Reagan. I want to talk about him. I think he is the president most associated with the end of the cold war even though it did not happen right on his watch. He is the president who told gorbachev to tear down this wall in berlin. He is often credited with winning the cold war. Do you think that is true . Do you think he is maybe the most important cold war president . I will break the hearts of at least half the audience. The answer to that question is no. Ronald reagan does not get credit for ending the cold war. Im sorry. You heard it here first. I am sure that people are clicking off zoom right now. Hear me out. That is not to take credit away from him. He played a crucial role in the winding down of the cold war. I want to stress this. It used to be said he came into office a super duper hawk and then left as a dove. That is actually not really true. A lot of scholars have shown us that that is not quite right. Reagan came into office as a hawk and left office as a hawk but he also came in as an idealist. He was a truly idealistic person, he wanted to end of the cold war. He thought the cold war was immoral. He wanted to get rid of Nuclear Weapons. He was a nuclear abolitionist. In that sense, he had quite a lot in common with the hippies of america and those in europe that were calling for an end to Nuclear Weapons. This is what makes reagan so compelling. He brings together some things that we dont often find. Yes, he was a cold warrior and he built up the defense establishment considerably but he was genuinely interested in seeking a breakthrough in soviet relations. E believed deeply that the soviets somehow would surely want to embrace the notion that you could transcend the cold war. The reason i say he does not get credit for ending the cold war is without gorbachev in power, reagan would not have had a partner to work with. He couldve had all the ideas in the world but they would not ave gone anywhere. If andropov had lived. And it was gorbachev who was the radical. He was the innovator, he was the risk taker. He took all the risks in the world, leading to the complete collapse of his country and his own destruction, politically speaking. He reached out to reagan politically speaking. He wanted an easing of the cold war so he could reform socialism in the soviet union. They may be the proverbial odd couple but they read each other in a moment of history where soviet weaknesses were really the key thing that both guys understood. The soviet economy was falling apart. The soviet could intervene in afghanistan. That was a fiasco. You have the chernobyl incident in the early gorbachev years. The soviet union is swirling the drain. Both sides are able to see that they have a vested interest to do something in order to reduce Nuclear Weapons. Gorbachev and reagan are sitting at the table and reagan says get rid of them all. The advisers are thinking that is a terrible idea. Besides that, reagan wont give up his great idea which is the Strategic Defense Initiative or star wars as it was mockingly called. But this was a technological idea. It could in theory shoot down missiles and create a bubble around the United States. Gorbachev says you have to get rid of that or we cant negotiate. So the negotiations come to not. N 1987, you have the first great big breakthrough. I want to remind people that this was a huge deal. The idea that you can have acumen, personal connection with the soviet general secretary he came to the u. S. And seemed like a young, intelligent european, that you could go rip open the heart of the cold war and say lets get rid of a whole class of Nuclear Weapons, what a great thing that would be. Reagan leaves office having accomplished an enormous amount in terms of bringing the two sides putting both the u. S. And the soviet union on the same Railroad Tracks in the direction of history. It was that the cold war was changing, it was softening, falling apart. I think he gets credit for that. It is often said that reagan spent so much money on the cold war that he forced the soviets to give in. I think that is a caricature of a much more humane process in which reagans idealism and good fortune, his luck actually served to unwind the cold war or at least begin to unwind it. That sounds like your next biography. The first person i voted for was in 1984. I voted for prince mondale. He lost in 49 states i think. Indeed. That was my introduction to how popular reagan was in the 80s. We could go back to some of these elections. Talk about what might have happened if the loser had become president. But before we start taking some questions from our audience, i want to answer another big picture question here. The cuban missile crisis, jfk is often given very high marks for his temperate, cool leadership. Supposedly during that crisis. I talked to senator sam nunn two weeks ago. He gives them credit for their restraint in not launching a nuclear war, not whether on purpose or as he thought, by accident. Over the 45year period while dealing with the soviet union and other threats to the u. S. Across 45 years. There would be many sincere words of peace during his presidency. Ike was always preparing for war. That is what being president in the cold war europe was all about. Would you agree with that . Cold war era was all about, would you agree with that . That is the job as president and some have not taken that as seriously as maybe they hould. Could t think any of us imagine what that is like. The notion that you have the ability, the Nuclear Codes are always right with you. You have the ability to launch a nuclear strike. That it is your judgment. Your judgment alone that is going to decide whether these eapons could be use. Ut there is also a gigantic network, a gigantic world circling infrastructure of destruction that you can activate with the push of a button. What humans would not be overwhelmed by that pressure . When i said that ike was over preparing for work, i think that is the role of the president to anticipate. Ines hour having been a military officer was very good at were plans. He thought a lot about strategic problems in the hypothetical. I actually believe that in general, it was not so good to have these people in the civilian world but in this one area of thinking ahead, imagining what is around the corner, doing exercises to simulate, it would happen if x occurred . How would we react . Thats the kind of training many advisors need to have. Ike brought that with him. John kennedy did not have that kind of experience when he came into office but he acquired it very quickly. Just because i think he was an enormously intelligent man who was good at that kind of imagining. F x then y how do i respond. As he is working through the cuban missile crisis, he is constantly interrogating his advisors. The advisors say you should invade cuba right now. That is where the military initially said. Walk me through what happens next. By the time they get to world war iii he says we are not doing that. He is constantly pushing his advisors to say you cant just tell me the first move, you have to give me the next five moves. It is in that process that he limits the most dangerous option. Ground invasion or bombing some of the missile sites themselves. What we now know, what they didnt know at the time is the soviets had a wide array of Nuclear Weapons in cuba. Had the americans invaded on the ground, those weapons would have been fired at the american troops coming in to land. We would have had a nuclear stand in the first few minutes of an americanization. Kennedy knew that was a very dangerous move and avoided it. The more we look at the cuban missile crisis, the more you come away thinking that it was this close to genuine Nuclear Exchange but also, what a gift it was to have a president at that moment who just had kind of an instinct that there was a way out. There was a negotiated settlement here and he kept going until he got it. He deserves the credit that he gets more managing the countrys way out of that. Taking a question from the audience. Assessing your take of eisenhowers Nuclear Industrial complex speech. It was famous as he left office. It is a puzzle. The great military leader and the guy who does so much to build the cold war infrastructure. He leaves and says watch out for the militaryindustrial complex. It might take of your overnment. Your head is swiveling a little bit. What he was really saying if you read the speech from start to finish is that the cold war is a tragedy. We are very sorry this happened but it has happened. In order for us to protect american interests and American Allies and freedom, we have had to build in this huge military infrastructure. It is the role of the president to control that military infrastructure. What he is doing is he is saying to the American Public that you, American Public have to hold your leaders accountable so that they dont get intimidated by the brass, ntimidated and fall to the lure of war or prestige or foolish overseas intervention. I believe that this is a bit of a warning to john kennedy. It is a bit of a chastising for the American Public for electing john kennedy who did not have the experience to be president. He was saying watch out, you just elected this 43yearold. Good luck with that. You have to hold your leaders accountable to keep the cold war cold. Dont let them full under the spell of the military. I think that comes from a lifetime of him knowing that he generals will always try to get more money and weapons out of you if they can. With a president ial election coming up in just a couple of weeks, i want to ask you about the effect of the cold war on president ial politics and what happened since the cold war ended. For more than 40 years, americans running for president , the first thing they had to do was promise to stand up to the soviets, to be firm against communism. Calling your opponent soft on ome nism was something that happened every four years. After we lost the cold war, along with terrorism, globalism, immigration, how has the end of the cold war affected american president ial olitics . Have we perhaps foshtsen . Forgotten. We tend to romanticize partisanship in the past. Have we over romanticize partisanship during the cold war . Ow has the end of the cold war affected president ial politics since 1992 . Into the present. Prof. Hitchcock one of the ways in which the cold war changed you might even say worked american warped american politics is it created a framework in which we understood americas place in the world as fighting bad guys. Not as just being a normal state with friends, maybe some friends, maybe some enemies but basically wearing about itself mostly but it created the notion that americas proper role in the world was a global one. And that we would have an opinion about every single conflict all over the world and that we would find allies and identify the enemy. The cold war gave us this somewhat warped vision of our place in the world as the only bastion of freedom in a dangerous world. Once that was gone in 1989 or 1990, there was a brief moment in which we talked about a new world order. In which, maybe we would cease this kind of constant rivalry and a Nuclear Arms Race and we would she our swords. Sheath our swords. America did not have the ability to stick with that lan. Once the threat of global terrorism emerged, it was there in the 1980s but began in the 1990s in true with the first attack on the world trade enter. In 1993. Also the rise of rogue states in the middle east that that may be dangerous in some way. They started to serve the same function of being a monster that we have to corral and contain. Some would say that was the ppropriate thing to do because they presented a threat to us. But otherses would say that was replacing one global enemy for another because that is the way that americans were used to seeing themselves in the world. My own view is since 9 11, we have fallen into a very regrettable posture around the world which is we have expanded he American Security apparatus on such an enormous scale. Are we safer and more secure around the world after almost 20 years of conflict in afghanistan . A little less in iraq. Nonetheless and in addition to which, we have been waging war on terror nonstop. Has it worked . Are we as secure as we could be . It is true that we have not had a 9 11 event. Thank god for that. Maybe the answer is absolutely, we are more sure. I know people who believe that who participated in that policy but the costs are real. We know the costs are real. We dont have the kind of Civil Liberties we would like. We have a surveillance apparatus that has been created. The government knows more about us than it has ever known. It can control much of our ersonal data and so forth. The reality is that you might ook back at the cold war and say we had the balance better then than now. That is something you would not have predicted when the cold war ended in 1989. Stan i have to ask you where you put jimmy carter in the cold war . What role did he play good or bad . Where do you rate him . Prof. Hitchcock that is a tough one. I admire timmy carter in honestly. His presidency has been a model for what president out of office can do. He is a leading humanitarian. He is a man of integrity. He is a man of extraordinary longevity but it is no shame to say there was no harshness in the judgment but i think he was overmatched by the events of the late 70s. I think many president s would have been. He was overwhelmed by a changing world. The 70s was a decade of enormous upheaval, global economics, all kinds of new threats in the middle east. Handling the threats of afghanistan, the returns of the cold war after the soviet invasion of afghanistan. That was something he did not expect. He wanted to be the peacemaker, he wanted to be the human rights president. He wound up taking us back into the freeze of the cold war. He was overwhelmed by the iran hostage crisis. The revolutionary government seized american hostages. On a personal note, my father was in the foreign service. He asked to be assigned to tehran in 1977. He went to tel aviv. I went to tel aviv with my dad and lived in israel for four years in the late 70s. It was a wonderful time. The man who got the job was a hostage the entire time. It is just one of those moments, a little tip of the dial and my life would have been very different. That was an outrageous breach of International Law and decorum that to this day should enrage every american. Carter was overwhelmed by it. We can find fault and maybe how he handled it but it did partially destroy his presidency. Stan we have run out of time. We could talk for several more hours about president ial leadership in the cold war. My thanks to our partner, the u. A. V. Club of savannah. William hitchcock, take you so much for coming on here. The book which he has right behind him, it is called the age of eisenhower. America and the world in the 1950s published in 2018. Thank you so much for coming on. Stan i really enjoyed your excellent questions. Prof. Hitchcock thank you so much, i really enjoy your excellent questions. American history tv is on social media. Follow us at cspan history. 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