So now, to go back and listen to what has happened to weapons from truman to trump is really remarkable. All from the midwest and college thinking he would be a literature major but watergate changed him to Political Science and then he went on to graduate school at mit and it was International Relations and nuclear strategy. Then he moved to washington with the house of representatives house policy advisor but you know government work, he decided that wasnt for him so then he left and wrote the widely acclaimed book of armageddon. And t then spent time at the boston globe because they were looking for experts inn defense he stayed there 20 years as bureau chief in moscow, bureau chief in new york city. And by the end of 2002 started writing stories and has written for previous books before tonight what i am really excited to have is our guest fred kaplan and his book the bomb. [applause] thanks for coming out. Just said my first book was 1983 about the small group of defense intellectuals that invented the concept of Nuclear Deterrence and were fighting i didnt think i would write anymore about nuclear war 50 years later the cold war was over. There are some people in this audience who havent thought much about Nuclear Weapons or war over 30 years. Some of you might never have thought of it at all until a couple of years of ago. And then you will remember on august 8, 2017 President Trump came out of the golf club in new jersey and said north korea if they keep making threatening noises launching missile test i will rain down like the earth is never seen before. He didnt say if north korea attacked us or invade south korea he said if they develop the capabilities to attack us. And that is completely different than everybody started to get very nervous about nuclear war all of a sudden and it struckk me now might be a time to go back and look as much time has passed gobetween hiroshima with the weather one wizards of armageddon ande now, but if i look back into the archives it is kind of interesting because nothing had been declassified like president kennedy or johnson what they thought or said about nuclear war. Now a lot of things even through reagan or carter i did quite a bit of research at the Carter Library and i interviewed a lot of people. So this book focuses more on the decisionmakers the bomb is the protagonist that rises over everything and the subtitle president generals in the super history is how various president s have a crisis and theres more than what people think that the Nuclear Options have been seriouslyy contemplated and how they have been dealt with these issues and dilemmas and what they came upp with. So i will give a brief history of that tonight. That started toward b the end of world war ii commander of the 2t bomber commander at the time to be addressed by the head of the Army Air Force the spring of 1945 with the war on the pacific when will thatt be over . So took the problem back to the staff with the calculations how many more square miles of territory how long does it take the bombers to getio there . They said december 1st because that is when we bombed every square mile of japan. So this is the philosophy of war. So what happened in the meantime onn august 6, two atom bombs dropped and then shortly after that with the Strategic Air command in omaha which controls the Nuclear Weapons. And they translated the bomb everything philosophy to a much more destructive bomb he was verytr charismatic smoked a ciga cigar, and by the end of the fifties, the first single integrated Operational Plan it was the war plan of the United States that the soviet union says attack west germany occupy west berlin even if they didnt use Nuclear Weapons but even if they just crossed with the fruit few troops United States word unleash the entire arsenal against every target and the soviet union the satellite nations of Eastern Europe and china even though they were not involved in the war 285 million people. So this was approved by the joint chiefs of staff and eisenhower was a cheapskate and didnt want to spend a lot of money on conventional arms and so he came up with the philosophy of massive retaliation anywhere the russians go we respond in a manner of our own treatment that statement of policy and classified documents that any Armed Conflict between the United States and the soviet union would begin with the use of the Nuclear Weapons that wasnt like eisenhower was a bloodthirsty maniac but we thought any war would go nuclear and it was inevitable and then to realize they had to deter a war from happening in the first place in the way to do that was killed the soviets in no Uncertain Terms and that would deter things. They had their own Nuclear Arsenal so this became a policy of suicide so we responded by blowing up the soviet union and that is when certain strategist first of all thinking maybe we should have conventional weapons but they also thought about limited nuclear war that may be a four war starts we can drop some weapons on the military forces and then strike back we will take those you have left. The other people that came up with this idea had serious doubts if this was possible. They had to bet on it. And that was a small chance so president kennedy comes into office with the situation with the blowup, everything. This is the crisis in berlin so now we are taking overer berlin. And then west berlin was 100 miles inside east germany a y place no freedom of democracy no way the russians decided to occupy west berlin because we could fight with conventional weapons so they unleashed everything in they are now declassify these discussions some of them are on teeth tape some are transcripts discussing, this. The idea is they came up with four phases. Phase number one lets send out a patrol. Number two send out of italian. Phase three, we will do psalm intimidation bottleneck the ships and sanctions the United Nations will pass a resolution to condemn that and then there were three divisions if we shoot off one Nuclear Weapon and then to use tactical Nuclear Weapons. And then it was all out war. So what is the chance that would escalate to foresee wright away . And by the way those are people among kennedys advisers who saw they could only go to Nuclear Weapons we shouldnt bother to build conventional weapons because that might convince khrushchev we are willing to use them with our credibility and power was to convince him we are willing to use nuclearen weapons that is the essence of the defense policy at the time that this would be catastrophic and clever in the short run but russians were way ahead of us and missiles but then we started to put photo reconnaissance and it turns out the soviet union was rebelieved to have 200 to 300 it turns out they had for. Kennedy had the deputy secretary give the speech he was intending to give at the Business Roundtable in virginia and then to announce there is noth missile gap in that khrushchev was exploiting this and boasted we are churning out the icbms w like sausages so this was to tell him we know you are bluffing. Even if you launched a first strike with overwhelming superiority, and then khrushchev did a 15 make a ton Hydrogen Bomb and then he realizes now United States really was planning to launch a strike on the soviet union and now he knew that kennedy knew he had nothing. So what did he do . He put missiles in cuba. So thats like having icbm. But the aircraft prevented them to discover that and then think about the crisis there is still a lot of myth this is 1962. There are still a lot of myth written about the cuban missile crisis. Because kennedy secretly tapes all 13 days of meetings with his advisers you can listen and order them from the Kennedy Library and read the transcript transcripts. The myth is to go eyeball to eyeball with the russians but another myth on the friday night that khrushchev came out withd the deal we will take missiles out of cuba if you promise not to do anything in cuba as we know he promised to assassinate castro so then he comes up with another deal and says we will take the missiles out of cuba if you take your similar missiles out of turkey. The myth was he took the tufriday night proposal and ignore the saturday night from one saturday morning proposal thats not what happened the proposal comes in saturdayda morning. Kennedy says on the tapes this seems like a fair trade. Everybody around the table not just the generals, everybody, bobby kennedy, robert mcnamara, all naof them say this will and nato and humiliate the turks and destroy the credibility. The plan was if we launch era tax from the missiles from cuba and kennedy says we were going too invade cuba three days after that. And to see what we are looking at with the invasion now the russians are down this bill is on the table it will not be a good war. So kennedy called seven people into his office. And on the condition that he told the seven people in fact dont ever talk about this ever. And he perpetrated the myth that he ignored saturday and went with friday. This is the cold war. It look like he had made a deal with khrushchev and would be in big trouble. One of the seven people he did not tell was Vice President lyndon johnson. And then to go eyeball to eyeball that this is a tragedy that wen continue this lie so after the cuban missile crisis kennedy is looking at the Defense Budget with mcnamara and chairman of the joint chiefs especially around Nuclear Weapons and kennedy said i dont know why we spend so much money on w Nuclear Weapons i would not have been deterred by that and that if deterrence fails and say yes that will pay for more than 40 weapons. And then to blow everything up. And as many others have put it and then try to do something to draw to a conclusion that kennedy wasnt comfortable and said we have to and the cold war. And in june 1963 that its a beautiful speech. Looking up one look it up calling for the end of the cold war. The soviet press reprinted the speech in its entirety. And khrushchev embraced it as he told the ambassadors from thea us the best president sends roosevelt and then kennedy was assassinated and then khrushchev one year later s d that 1964 is where it begins. So various president s with the war plan try to institute the plan to make Things Limited but one thing i discovered is that secretary of defense with signed statements that would escalate with the attack in people of omaha paid no attention they would always be written into the guidance to the extent it does not compromise military objectives but it did compromise military objectives. So this is the all out plan until the administration starting with reagan and ending with george h. W. Bush reagan turns out to be morei interestingg character in a good way and in a weird way. First of all reagan was a Nuclear Abolitionist why he was so keen on the star wars defensive shield so every missile coming your way would make it obsolete two or three people believe thats of the program was actually about. He is doing incredibly provocative things the first year the cia is doing currently provocative things then he gets wins they take this seriously that we are trying to launch a first strike he said he is horrified thats not what he meant we need to talk to them. That we need to dial this back. By the time that happens gorbachev is the head of theof soviet union and they meet for the first time in 1985 in geneva so they decided to take a walk that is just the two of them and their translators. And at one point reagan says if the United States were attacked by aliens of the United States would russia come to our defense the gorbachev says absolutely and reagan says i feel the same way about you then they come back to the Conference RoomGeorge Schultz secretary of the state not privy to this conversation with later in his book now all of a sudden the tomosphere was completely different they were smiling and joking like old friends and thatat started the pivot to what became the end of the cold war and then a couple years later he gave a speech to the Un General Assembly and then colon powell which was that if we are attacked by aliens from outer space the conflicts would seem trivial by comparison. This is kind of nutty but theres something to it. That they are talking about catastrophic things and weapons of masst. Destruction maybe this is the way to do it. So while reagan was doing this Something Else was going on subterranean world. A civilian and the pentagon named frank miller and when dick cheney became secretary of defense. He was very different then for what he was as Vice President. He had a briefingef from omaha so he derailed all the doctrines written by the secretary of defense with a limited nuclear oftens restraining use. And then he goes to cheney and says i dont understand what is going on. And then to go deep so those people in omaha and the went deeper than any civilian ever has. And that level of overkill is astonishing. And then td something even more profound, more disturbing. At that point, bush was negotiating the strategic arms reduction treaty and the contact if we reduce the number of weapons could you still perform your mission and the senior officer said we dont really ask that question. What we do is we take the weapons that we are given and assigned them to the targets on the list, so in other words, at no point in the actual operational level with how this is being handled, at no point had anybodypo been asking how my of these things do we need to detour or fight a nuclear war, how many do we really needed to accomplish the objective. They opencurlybrace are all hearing that says 10,000 weapons people thought he was joking or maybe he wasnt too bright but thats how this worked. And another thing lets say one of the objectives was to destroy the army the way jack interpreted this they destroyed the factories when the tanks were built. They destroyed when they were right and the mines. Then i also destroy the Grocery Store where you buy the food and then also the roads between all of these. Ten if you think it is a rational objective you dont need to do all of this. At the time we had about 10,000 Nuclear Weapons that were able to get the union but it was 5,888. He wanted to put it a up his license plate as a joke and we dont need to attack the targets it goes down to about 3,000 so by the time bush negotiated they were in a place that they accepted it but we dont need any more of this and it continued when obama was present it was very similar they went back over every target and they were able to cut it down by another one third and the people that worked on the study told mo sometimes that meant twice instead of four or five times because we were involved in negotiations for the new treaty with russia and and by the way president obama agreed a. Of the joint chiefs of staff agreed we can cut one third with no harm to the National Securi security. One thing that did come out off the exercise is that the limited Nuclear Options as they were called simply became feasible. We had a plan where some were 20 seNuclear Weapons. This was another example of howf insane everything was before. They asked somebody in the Defense Intelligence agency to examine the Early Warning radar. Could the radar detect and separate until it becomes one big blob. The. No matter the option if its a limited option or whatever, icbm, launched missiles and bombers all had to be involved, it was like a bureaucratic no one wanted to be left out of any option. In some cases it would arrive hours after and yet the people on the other side are supposed to see this as a limited attack. So thats kind of where we are at. Talking about the Nuclear Weapons as a deterring wide range of threats and for launching the Nuclear Weapons those have been around forever. Theyve been the kind of Subterranean River bend going on under our noses that we know nothing about and obama tried to change some of it. One thing running through my book is that every president before now when they confronted a crisis that is involved thinking seriously about the use of Nuclear Weapons and the divisors have gone through the scenario andgh made them reasonable in some cases, the president , they fall in burst themselves and the logic and the consequences and this is documented. They decided at the end this is going toe end in catastrophe and to scramble out of here as fast as possible and figure ht a diplomatic solution to the crisis. The. One thing we have learned in the last year or so they dont seem to be terribly eager to get involved or trapped in a dynamic that can take you to a war and so there was a set of hearings. Dorset is to have a consultation and so forth. When it was kind of confirmed that that was the case and at one point in the hearing its interesting they