Transcripts For CSPAN2 Fred Kaplan The Bomb 20240713

Unthermal nuclear war. It was a big deal at the time. And so now to go back and listen to what has happened to Nuclear Weapons from truman to trump is, is really, really remarkable. Our author grew up in the midwest in kansas, went to Oberlin College thinking he was going to be a lut major lit major, but watergate changed him to political science. And then he went on to graduate school at mit, and it was International Relations and Nuclear Strategy. Then he moved to washington as a defense policy adviser for the house of representatives. But, you know, government work being what it is, he decided that wasnt for him. So after a couple of years he left and wrote his really widelyacclaimed book the wizards of armageddon an inside history of Nuclear Strategy. He then spent time, he joined the boston globe because they were looking for experts in defense and that sort of thing and stayed with the boston globe for 20 years. He was bureau chief in moscow, bureau chief in new york city. By the end of 2002 he quit and then started writing stories, war stories for slate. Hes written four previous books before tonights book, but im really excited to have as our guest tonight fred kaplan and his book, the bomb. Please join me in welcoming himment. [applause]. Intellectuals who invented concepts of Nuclear Deterrence and nuclear war fighting, i thought i wouldnt write anymore about nuclear war, the cold war was over, i expect very few in his audience have thought much until a couple years ago about Nuclear Weapons or nuclear war for 30 years. Some of you who are younger might never have thought of it at all until a couple years ago. What happened a couple years ago was in 2017 donald trump came out of his golf club in new jersey and said if north korea keeps making threatening noises and launching missile tests i will rain down fire and fury that has never seen before. He didnt say if north korea attacks us or invades south korea, he said if they develop the capability to attack us and that is a completely different thing. Everybody started getting very nervous about nuclear war all of a sudden and it struck me now it might be time to go back and take a look at the history. As much time is past from hiroshima to the wizards of armageddon, between the wizards of armageddon and now which says something how old i am. As you look back to the archives it is kind of interesting. The wizards of armageddon, nothing had been declassified. What johnson or kennedy thought or said but now a lot of things have been declassified even up to reagan, quite a bit of research in the Carter Library and interviewed a lot of people which i tend to do. This book focuses on the decisionmakers. The farm is the protagonist. The looming force over everything and the subtitle, the bomb president s, generak, and the secet history of nuclear war, how various president s and their advisors have confronted crises and there have been more than most people think in which the use of Nuclear Weapons has been seriously contemplated and how they dealt with these issues and what they came up with. I will give a brief history of that. How did this start . It started toward the end of world war ii when general curtis lame, commander of the 21st Bomber Command at the time, firebombing every city in japan with immense destruction was asked by the head of the Army Air Force is in spring of 1945, when is the war in the pacific and to be over . The nazis had surrendered but the japanese were fighting on. He kicked the problem to his staff and they did calculations, how much more how many more square miles of territory there was to firebomb, how long it would take the bombers to get there and he said the war will be over by september 1st because that is when we will have bombed every square mile of japan. This was his philosophy of war. Bomb everything. What happened in the meantime was august 6th and august 9th two atom bombs dropped and that ended the war and after that lame became the head of Strategic Air command in omaha which controlled the Nuclear Weapons and the bombers who dropped Nuclear Bombs and lemay translated this bomb everything philosophy to this new and much more destructive bomb and he was a cultlike figure, very charismatic, real disciplinarian, smoked a cigar and by the end of the 50s, the first integrated war plan called the single integrated Operational Plan and the plan was, this was the war plan of the United States. If the soviet union attacks west germany or occupied west berlin even if they didnt use Nuclear Weapons and at the time they didnt have them. Even if they just crossed with troops the United States would unleash its entire Nuclear Arsenal against every target in the soviet union, satellite nations of Eastern Europe and china even of china had no involvement in the war and estimated this was going to kill 285 million people. This wasnt just lemays plan. This was approved by the joint chiefs of staff, by president eisenhower. Eisenhower, who was a cheapskate want to spend a lot of money on conventional arms. It was believed the soviets might make little incursions all over the place so he came up with a philosophy called massive retaliation, that anywhere the russians ago we respond in a manner a own choosing, it was stated policy in classified documents that any Armed Conflict between the United States and the soviet union would begin with the use of us Nuclear Weapons, that was the policy. Eisenhower was not a bloodthirsty maniac but eisenhower thought any war with the soviet union would go nuclear. It was inevitable and therefore realized what had to be done was to deter a war from happening in the first place and the way to do that was to tell the soviets in no Uncertain Terms that we will destroy your entire country if you do this and that would deter things. Then something happened to nearly 60s, the soviets developed their own Nuclear Arsenal. That weapons that could strike us. This became a policy of suicide. Of the soviets invaded western europe or grabbed west berlin and we responded by blowing up the soviet union they could blow up us and that is when it was decided we should have some conventional weapons so we dont have to go nuclear right away but also thought about limited nuclear war. Maybe if a war starts maybe we can just launch some weapons at their military forces and tell them if you strike back against us we will take the weapons we have left and hit your cities. The people who came up with the idea had serious doubts whether this was plausible. They thought, if they had to bet on it they would bet that it would all go sky high from the outset that they figured if theres a small chance this might be controlled lets go for it. And so president kennedy comes into office with the situation. The war plan was still, the blowup everything, in berlin the russians are threatening by the end of the year, taking over berlin. Most of you realize that some of you do not, berlin, west berlin, it was 100 miles inside east germany, a small enclave of freedom and democracy and there is no way of the russians decided to occupy west berlin, no way we could fight them with conventional weapons so the plan again was to unleash everything. There were discussions and these have been declassified. They werent when i wrote my first book, some of them on tape, some of them transcript, discussing this and the idea was okay, what if they do this . They came up with four phases, the russians come into west berlin, phase i was lets send out a patrol. Phase 2, lets send out a battalion. Phase 3 was we will do some intimidation, flies and airplanes over places, bottlenecks and memberships, do economic sanctions, have the United Nations passed a resolution condemning this and then phase 4 was nuclear, there were three divisions, for a, we should off one Nuclear Weapon is a demonstration of our resolve and they will back off. 4 be was we use tactical Nuclear Weapons, we blowup a whole battalion of their troops with Nuclear Weapons. 4 c was all out war and there were questions like can we just go with 4 a with a chance that he would escalate to 4 see right away . Kennedy, there were people among kennedys advises thought we can only go to Nuclear Weapons. We shouldnt bother to build conventional weapons because that might convince khrushchev that we are not willing to use Nuclear Weapons, evolving of deterrence and our credibility and power to convince them that we are willing to use Nuclear Weapons. This was the essence of our defense policy at the time. Kennedy decided this was insane, this was going to be catastrophic so he decided to do something clever in the short run. When kennedy was elected president it was widely believed there was a missile gap, russians were way ahead of us in missiles. By the time kennedy entered office we started putting photo reconnaissance satellites over the soviet union and turned out there was no missile gap. The soviet union which was believed to have 200, 300 missiles turned out to have 4 and they didnt have much of anything else either. So kennedy had his deputy secretary of defense give a speech he had been intending to give it the Business Roundtable in virginia and the idea of the speech would be to announce there is no missile gap and khrushchev had been exploiting this. He boasted we are churning out icbms like sausages. The purpose of this speech was to tell khrushchev we know you are bluffing. Heres how many weapons we have, heres how many weapons you have. Even if you launched the first strike we would have overwhelming superiority against you and as a result shifted two things, first he did a test of the 50 Megaton Hydrogen bomb which didnt have much emissary purpose but he did it and second he realized oh my god, the bluff has been blown. He really believe that the United States was planning to launch the first strike on the soviet union and now he knew the kennedy knew that he had nothing to fire back so what does he do . He puts mediumrange missiles in cuba. A couple dozen mediumrange missiles in cuba would be like having some intercontinental missiles in russia but then we discovered because are you 2 aircraft were better than khrushchevs people thought they were and third, there is a real pivot. Think about the cuban missile crisis, there still a lot of myths, this was in 1962. Still a lot of nonsense being written about the cuban missile crisis which strikes me as very odd because kennedy secretly taped all 13 days of the meetings he had with all of his advisers, you can go listen to these tapes, you can order them from the kennedy library, you can read the transcript of these tapes. The myth is we went eyeball to eyeball with the russians and they blinked. There is another method on the friday night, the night before the crisis ended khrushchev came up with a deal, we will take our missiles out of cuba if you promise never to invade cuba because kennedy had been plotting to assassinate castro as we know now, but on saturday he comes up with another deal, khrushchev says actually we will take our missiles out of cuba if you take your similar missiles out of turkey. The myth has been that kennedy took the friday night proposal and ignored the saturday morning proposal. Thats not at all what happened. The proposal comes in saturday morning and finish of it made that public and kennedy says and it is on the tapes this seems like a fair trade. Any man at the un would take this deal, it is a trade. Everybody roundtable goes nuts, not just the generals, everybody, bobby kennedy, secretary of defense robert mcnamara, National Security adviser, they are, all of them say this will end nato. This will humiliate the turks, this will destroy our credibility. The plan was that we are going to start launching air attacks on missiles in cuba on monday, two days later and kennedy says then we are going to invade cuba three days after that. Kennedy says, you know, seems to be looking ahead at what we are looking at, 500 air sorties a day followed by an invitation, then the russians are bound to grab berlin and blood will start to flow and it is known this deal is on the table this is not going to be a good war. At the end of the meeting kennedy call 7 people into his office and tells them hes taking the deal, and sending bobby to ambassador andropov to take the deal on the condition they never reveal it and he told these 7 people dont ever talk about this ever. And he perpetuated, perpetrated the myth that he ignored saturday and went to friday because this was the cold war. And it looked like he had made a deal with chris of this would be appeasement and he would be in deep trouble. One of the 7 people he did not tell was Vice President Lyndon Johnson ran into the war and vietnam and other crises thinking going eyeball to eyeball, you dont back down, dont proceed diplomacy and george bundy in his posthumous memoir regretted, said was a tragedy that we continued this lie for so many years because it led to false lessons and further tragedies. After the cuban missile crisis kennedy is sitting looking at the Defense Budget with mcnamara and general maxwell taylor, especially on Nuclear Weapons and kennedy says i dont know why we are spending so much money on Nuclear Weapons, seems to me 40 missiles getting to 40 soviet cities, when the russians had 24 missiles in cuba i would have been deterred by that. As the conversation went on he said deterrence fails, i wouldnt want to attack those cities. I would want to go after their missiles and that will take more than 40 weapons and kennedy in that moment summarized the enduring dilemma of Nuclear Strategy which is of all you want to do is declare and say im going to blow everything up, youre going to be did if you do anything bad, deterrence what if deterrence fails . Wouldnt you try to do something that brought it to a conclusion that didnt involve destroying all of humanity . Kennedy wasnt comfortable with this dilemma so he said we have to end the cold war. That is the real problem and he gave a speech at American University in june of 1963 basically a beautiful speech, look it up calling for the end of the cold war. Khrushchev was eager to listen to this. The soviet press reprinted the speech in its entirety. They turned off the jammers from voice of america so the soviet people could hear this, khrushchev embraced it as he told one of the ambassadors from the us the greatest speech by an american president since franklin roosevelt. Things were started to happen, they cite a test ban treaty, and there would be other things, then khrushchev was ousted after kennedy was assassinated, replaced by hawks and 1964 is really worthy arms race begins. During this arms race over the next 25 years, various president s looking at this war plan and being horrified by it tried to institute things in the war plan for limited options, trying to make things limited, but one thing i discovered looking at the archival material which i hadnt done before is secretaries of defense would sign statements outlining 5 or a dozen different options that would escalate slowly the level of Nuclear Attacks, people in omaha paid no attention to this. They kept the way was. They would always get written into the garden Something Like to the extent feasible or to the extent it does not compromise military objectives and they decided that it wasnt feasible and it did compromise military objectives so this plan just kept remaining the allout plan the administration starting with reagan and ending with george h w bush, i should Say Something about reagan because reagan turns out to be more interesting character and i covered as a reporter, turns out much more interesting in a good way and a weird way than anybody new at the time. First of all turns out reagan was a secret nuclear abolitionist. That is why he was so keen on the star wars defense, the shield that was shoot down every missile coming its way and therefore render Nuclear Weapons impotent and obsolete. He was one of 2 or 3 people who believed that was what that program was about. Hes doing incredibly provocative things in his first year, the cia is doing incredibly provocative things, the nsa and then he gets wind that the russians are taking this seriously, they really think we are planning to launch a first strike and are taking steps accordingly, reagan is horrified and says thats not what he meant so he seeks out, we need to talk to them, there are transcripts of meetings, we need to dial this back, we need to reach out to these people. By the time that happens gorbachev is the head of the soviet union they meet for the first time in 1985 in geneva and it is very tense so they decide to take a walk by the lake, duck into a cabin where fires blaze, just the two of them and their translators and at one point reagan leans in and says if the United States were attacked by aliens from outer space would russia come to our defense and gorbachev says absolutely. Reagan says i feel the same way about you. When they come back into the Conference Room george schultz, secretary of state who has not been privy to this conversation right in his book all of a sudden the atmosphere was completely different. They were smiling, joking like they world friends and that was sort of the pivot to what became the end of the cold war and reagan. A couple years later gave a speech at the Un General Assembly and this particular passage, colin powell, the chairman of the joint chiefs at the time tried to excised this passage twice and reagan kept putting it back in which was if we were attacked by aliens from outer space the conflict and disputes among us here on earth would seem trivial by comparison. On the one hand this was kind of naughty. On the other hand there is something to it. Maybe when you are talking about catastrophic things and weapons of mass destruction taking a view from 1 billion miles up might be the way to do it. While reagan was doing this something was going on on the subterranean level. There was a civilian in the pentagon named frank miller, where dick cheney became secretary of defense, he was a different guy then than he was as Vice President , he was listening to a briefing from, ha, all the doctrines with and by secretaries of defense calling for limited Nuclear Options and restraint in the use of Nuclear Weapons, hes hearing this briefing and doesnt hear any of this and goes to cheney who he is friends with and i dont understand what is going on. Cheney says im assigning you to go deep into omaha, you can look at anything you want. He goes deeper than any civilian ever has and discovers extraordinary things. The level of overkill is astonishing. There were 700 Nuclear Weapons aimed at a 50 mile radius surrounding moscow. There was an airbase in the Arctic Circle which couldnt be used for 3 quarters of the year, 17 Nuclear Weapons under this airbase. There was an antiballistic missile site in moscow which we later learned after the cold war was over never worked, completely useless. 69 Nuclear Weapons at this weapon site. Then they discovered something even more profound, more disturbing. At that point bush, bush one, was negotiating a strategic arms negotiation treaty, and if we reduce the number of weapons could you still perform your mission . And the guy who was a senior officer said we dont ask that question. I understand what you mean but that is not the way we work here. What we do is take the weapons we are given and assign them to the targets on our list of targets. In other words at no point in the actual operational level of how this was being handled, at no point had anybody been asking how many of these things do we really need to do whatever it is you want to do, deter nuclear war, fighter nuclear war, whatever it is, how many do we really need to accomplish the objective, nobody had been asking that. At one point before this there was a sack commander who had a congressional hearing, and said i need 10,000 weapons because i have 10,000 targeted people thought he was joking or being flip or not too bright but that is how this works. Another thing, the overkill, lets say one of the objectives was to destroy the way sack interpreted this, not only destroyed the tanks, they destroyed the factories where the tanks were built and destroyed the factories where spare parts for the tanks were built, they destroy the factories where the metal was rolled for the tanks, they destroyed the minds where the metal it would be as if i wanted to destroy your ability to make a dinner in your house so i destroy your refrigerator, your freezer, your pantry, your dining room and also destroy the Grocery Store where you buy the food and the farm where the food is grown and then also destroy all the railways and roads you dont need to do all of this stuff even if you think it is a rational objective to keep you from making dinner you dont need to do all of this. So frank miller and his staff were able at the time we had 10,000 Nuclear Weapons that were able to hit the soviet union and china, 5888, the numbers now because one of franks assistance wanted to put fighter 88 on his license plate is a whimsical joke and then when the cold war was over we dont need to attack targets in Eastern Europe anymore, they are not our enemies, goes down to 3000 so by the time bush negotiated strategic arms reduction, the military was in a place where they accepted we dont need anymore than this and this continued. When obama was president , they were very similar and went over every single target, all the weapons aimed at the target and they were able to cut it down by another one third. Its negative incentives for them to respond in kind. And thats about how many Nuclear Weapons we have now, and the joint chief of staffs agreed we could cut onethird with no harm to National Security, but we dont want to do that because you dont want to do unilateral cuts. So another thing, though, that did come out of this exercise by frank miller is that limited Nuclear Options, as they were called, suddenly became kind of feasible. We now had a plan where, you know, there are some plans where 20 Nuclear Weapons are used. Before when frank was coming into it this is another example of how insane everything was before he asked somebody in the Defense Intelligence agency to examine soviet Early Warning radar. And he said, okay, how many discreet objects coming through the sky, missiles, could the radar detect and separate until it all just becomes one big blob, you know . How many could there be . And the answer was 200. In other words, if we shot 200 missiles at them, it would look like a mass attack. Well, at that time the smallest Nuclear Option that the United States had would involve 900 missiles. So one reason for 900 missiles and this astonished me when i first heard it, and i checked it out with a few people, and its true. No matter what the option was, whether it was a massive option, a limited option or whatever, icbms, submarinelaunched missiles and bombers all had to be involved. It was like a bureaucratic thing. Nobody wanted to be left out of any optionment. [laughter] now, in some cases the bomber would arrive hours after the missiles did, and yet the people on the other side are supposed to see this as a limited attack. So, you know, thats kind of where were at. So trump comes into office. So some of the trump, some of the things that are being said now about Nuclear Weapons, you know, the Nuclear Posture review which his pentagon put out in 2017 talked about integrating nuclear and unnuclear operations and talked about Nuclear Weapons as deterring a wide range of threats, not just to deter another country from launching a Nuclear Weapon. Those have been around forever. Theyve been the kind of Subterranean River bed going on under our noses. We know nothing about. That was not new at all. And obama tried to change some of it, but he ran into lots of political and bureaucratic obstacles. What is new . One theme running through my book is that every president before now, when theyve confronted a crisis that has involved thinking seriously about Nuclear Weapons and there have been many more of these than people think and advisers have gone through the scenarios and even sound kind of reasonable in some cases, the president s, theyve all immersed themselves in the logic in the scenarios and the consequences very deeply. And this is documented. And theyve decided at the end no matter what their advisers say, no, this is going to end in catastrophe, and i have to scramble out of this rabbit hole as fast as possible and figure out a diplomat ific solution to the diplomatic solution is to the crisis. This has happened over and over. Trump, whatever i dont know your politics. Whatever else you think about trump, hes not known to be a guy who immerses himself in the logic of anything, to think deeply about it. And so my fear, one thing we have learned in the last year or so is that he doesnt seem to be terribly eager to get involved in a war. We know that. You can get trapped in the dynamic that can take you into a war. And so, you know, there was a set of hearings in 2017 around the time that the fire and fury that wasnt, they werent covered very much at the time, and theyre forgotten now, but they were open hearing. The chairman of the Senate Foreign relations committee, bob corkerring, republican, suddenly realized its kind of weird that he didnt know this beforehand, suddenly realized that the president of the United States has the Legal Authority and the power to launch a Nuclear Attack without anybodys permission. There are protocols, youre supposed to have a consultation and so forth, but ultimately, the decision is his. This is around the time corker was saying the white house is an adult daycare center. And so he held hearings where it was kind of confirmed that that was the case. And at one point in the hearing, itsst interesting, a democratic senator said, look, lets cut away the rhetoric here. We have a president whos reckless, who doesnt have good judgment, who might get us into a nuclear war. And not a single republican on the committee challenged this premise. But then the at the end of the hearing, the senate doesnt do anything. And one of the people testifying at the hearing was a retired general named bob keller who had recently been commander, what is now called strategic command. And he was very disturbed by this hearing because his view was, look, if Congress Wants to change the proceed yours for how procedures for how a president could launch a first strike, i mean, its one thing if youre facing an attack, but just thinking about a first strike, if you want to change the rules, fine. Thats what you can do. But dont what he didnt want them to do was to create serious doubts, public doubts about the reliability and legitimacy of the chain of command and then to do nothing about it. And yet thats, thats what this hearing did. So, you know, when the founders created the government that we have now, they put in motion all these checks and balances. Because they thought that one day there might be a president who hasti ran call has tyrannical tend sus. So they created a legislature and articles for inpeachment and lots of things and elections, you know, every four years. Knob has done that nobody has done that when it comes to the ability to blow up the entire planet which, if you think about it, is a little strange. Especially since weve had a few incidents where weve almost gotten there. So, you know, one the question, and ill end it here, you know, its a good question, why hasnt there been a nuclear war . Why has nobody even used Nuclear Weapons since august of 1945 . And i think if you go back in time, say to 1947, and said, you know, i come from the year 2020, and in all this time nobodys used Nuclear Weapons, i think people would lock you up. They wouldnt believe you. They would find this prediction astonishing. Highly unlikely, and yet its happened. Why is that . There are three answers. One, you know, to a certain degree, nuclear detenderness works. The idea that you attack us, we attack you, that has a restraining influence on people. But number two, weve been lucky enough to have fairly shrewd and common sense president s for most of this time. And number three, theres been good luck. Theres been a couple cases where somebody on air Defense Command sees a false reading, what turns out to be a false reading, of missiles coming over the horizon and decides this has got to be a false reading and doesnt tell their superiors. Thats happened a few times. So. Ruled leaders ruled leaders, good luck. What happens if we have a convergence of slowwitted leaders and bad luck . You know . Past is not necessarily precedent. Weve avoided this catastrophe so far, but, you know, one reason i wrote this book is that, as i said, the president s who avoided this actually immersed themselves in the logic. They didnt feign innocence and just decide, oh, no, im not going there. They actually dug deep. And so i thought it was, you know, might be a good idea for citizens who are interested in this also to dig deep and maybe come away with the same conclusions. So thank you very much. [applause] and now to your questions. I think theres a monas going to be passed around a microphone thats going to be passed around. And if you could speak up, because its a tv mic, but its not it doesnt amplify in this hall. I went on active duty as artillery officer in 1963 in a rocket battalion, and i dont know about what classified, what is past probably so i wont make any comments, but i will ask you to comment on a couple of things. One is the prevalence of tactical Nuclear Weapons, their spread, where they work, their yield. And secondly, what was left in turkey after the deal even though some were removed . And thats it for you. Sure. Well, you know, at the time when everything was nuclear and we didnt have much in the way of conventional armies, we had thousands of Nuclear Weapons all over europe and asia and on ships. I mean, when jimmy carter became president , we had 7,000 Nuclear Weapons in western europe. And some of them were very short range, some of them were mines. Some of them were half a kill lo ton, some of them were a megaton. George h. W. Bush unilaterally got rid of a lot of these weapons, and the people who were most relieved about these were military officers who considered these things a first of all, not needed. We had pretty good conventional forces, but second, a security nightmare. I mean, ships, these were on almost every ship of the navy. There were harbors they werent allowed to go dock in because the countries didnt want Nuclear Weapons on their soil. So everybody was relieved by this. But for political reasons, there were still about 180 left in western europe including 50 in turkey. And its interesting, when obama became president , one of his first, you know, big speeches he talked about reducing the role of Nuclear Weapons in National Security policy. And there was an ambassador to nato at the time, obamas choice, he goes, ive got a great idea. Lets unilaterally cut number of Nuclear Weapons in europe by half. These things arent really are needed anymore anyway, it would make a good signal to everybody that, hey, you know, were trying to reduce the role of Nuclear Weapons. But this was rejected by the National Security council including secretary of state Hillary Clinton because we were involved in negotiations with russia, so you dont do unilateral cuts. Aside from the fact that george h. W. Bush made tons of unilateral and requested yeltsin to reciprocate n. Some cases he did, in some cases he didnt. But, yeah, we still have 50 of these things which can be loaded onto bombers in turkey which, you know, turkey is less and less are an ally these days. Somebody dud go over there to check out the security, they seem to be locked up pretty well. And just because you have a bomb, take possession of it, it doesnt mean you can use it. But, you know, there are people all over the world who can do these things. So i bet, i bet that some people from the obama days might have said, well, it was too bad that we didnt take those 50 bombs out of turkey. I was wondering, as far as looking at the big picture, 1. 3 trillion a year is spent on wars where strangers kill strangers. And the people who make the decisions always are safe. Do you think if people came from another planet, they might think were totally insane . I worked as a doctor at the v. A. Hospital. I saw a lot of people who were suffering who had been in wars, injured, problems. And that just seems to be nobodys interest, nobodys real concern. Do you think that theres any chance that this planet will change . Well, i thought you were going to ask a question about the draft. [laughter] because, you know, what ended the vietnam war really was the draft. The fact that your kids could go now women are also in the arm forces, if the draft were revived, oregon how you couldnt i dont know how you couldnt have little jane as well as little jack going off to war. They say that Something Like 1 of the population is in the military now, and a lot of those are regionally focused, regionally concentrated. Places like georgia especially, right . Maybe it will spread out. Maybe my kids, who live in new york, were also, maybe thered be more marching in the streets. I do think, i do think that short of some transformation in world politics, the likes and scope of which can hardly even be imagined now, i think were kind of stuck with these things. I mean, kim jong un, okay, trump thinks that he signed a contract to rid of to get rid of his Nuclear Weapons. No. This onepage agreement, onepage statement says that both sides agree to work toward the denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula. And so north korean officials have been saying their interpretation of this is that, calling for the end of, among other things, Nuclear Weapons capable of striking anywhere in the Korean Peninsula which would mean all of our weapons too. And if you or i were the head of north korea and if our aims were the same as kim jong uns, survival and perpetuation of the regime, no way would we get rid of our nuke hard weapons. Thats the only thing we have. Thats the only thing that gives us any leverage, that makes people pay any attention to us, keeps people from invading us. And he lookses around. Okay, gadhafi, he got rid of Nuclear Weapons, now hes dead. Saddam hussein, he got rid of his Nuclear Weapons, hes dead. Iranians actually signed a treaty e to get rid of their Nuclear Weapons, and the International Inspectors were saying that theyre actually doing it, and trump just pulls occupant of the treaty. Out of the treaty. So why should i, kim jong un, get rid of any of my Nuclear Weapons . And so, you know, if the United States continues to say, yeah, we dont really care about allies, were not going to come to your defense, i could imagine countries like japan and saudi arabia saying, oh, we need to Start Building our own Nuclear Weapons. I mean, its, it looms over everything. Everybody kind of knows its nuts that if your enemy is also doing this, then the argument is i have to do this too. And then, you know, to the point i was talking about earlier, if you want to do deterrence, you dont need very many, but what if deterrence fails, what happens . Even among countries that have a lot of Nuclear Weapons, you say i need limited options so its credible. Well, to do that, i need to have plans to do this, i need to have weapons to do this, i need to take this seriously myself. And before you know it, the concept of credible Nuclear Deterrence and nuclear war fighting kind of converge. They become the same things. And thats what i call the rabbit hole that president s who have confronted these crises kind of stumble into and see the implications and realize that this is going to end in catastrophe and scramble out. But one thing to do in a crisis, its another thing to do it at a u. N. Meeting or something. I donti dont see i think as control agreements can do quite a lot, but again, unless, you know, people come from outer space and occupy us or unless maybe theres a nuclear, a Small Nuclear war and people come to their senses, i just dont see getting rid of them as an option given the world that we inhabit. Frank, are we so far removed from the horrors of nuclear war because hiroshima and nagasaki were so long ago that we dont, the public, doesnt understand really what nuclear war would mean . I think theres something to that. Its not just the public. You know, just a few weeks ago the military deployed what is called a lowyield Nuclear Warhead on some of the trident submarines. By low yield, like about 8 kill lo tons kilo tons, the equivalent of 8,000 tons of tnt, plus all the other effects, radiation, smoke, fire, electromagnetic pulse, all of this. As opposed to other trithe dent missiles which have between 90 and 450 kill lo tons. And the idea is the lessons have been in some of their doctrine and having some of the exercises where where they use lowyield Nuclear Weapons of their own. And the theory is, well, we need to have our own lowyield weapons so that because if we dont, if we have highyield weapons and they fire lowyield weapons, we wont fire back. Well, first of all, you know, how do they though that. Second, we have a lot of lowyield weapons on bombers. But third, the idea of talking about a lowyield weapon and talking about this chess game, i mean, its almost as if theyre speaking of war like two masters on a chess board. My queen is here, his bishop is here, and these pawns are over here. Whereas in a real war you might not know anything thats going on. Communications are going to be blown out, some satellites might be shut down. You dont know if that weapon you fired at that target actually went off, whether the target is still there or not. Can you still even talk with your commanders, much less the guy that you need to negotiate with to end this war . I mean, there was an exchange at an aspen security conference a couple years ago with one of the chief advocates of this lowyield weapon. And they were talking about it, and the moderator said, well, low yield, what does that mean . What are we talking about . Well, in the high single digits. He goes, of what . He says kilotons. Oh, you mean, almost like hiroshima . That was 12. 5kuhotons kil otons. The guy said, well, you can be pejorative about it. The moderator said i just want the make it clear that were not talking about firecrackers. When youre used to talking in terms of megatons and then youre talking about 8 kilotons, you see a bomb going off in iraq or afghanistan, the biggest of these is, like, 2,000 pounds. So theres the use of this lowyield warhead would be way, way, way more destructive than any bombing raid much less any single bomb thats been used since world war ii. And yet because its so small and its enveloped in this very finetuned tit for tat as they call it exchange strategy, you can, you can kid yourself into thinking that its small, not terribly harmful and controllable. In fact, it may not be any of those things. Can you compare lowyield with can you compare lowyield weapons to the tactical weapons that were already deployed by the 60s . Some of them were smaller, some of them were bigger. But this wouldnt be a tactical weapon, this would be fired from a submarine which also has missiles that are aimed at russia. So, you know, as the russians see it coming over the horizon on the radar screens, you know, theres no light flashing low yield, low yield. Nobodys getting on the phone saying, dont worry, this is only 8 keel lowtons. Wed appreciate it if youd respond to us. You know, maybe this isnt a chess game. Thats the illusion. [inaudible] are gnaw donations nato nations close enough to rush for to russia for tactical weapons to reach russian territory . Well, nobody has we dont britain and france have their own independent Nuclear Arsenals with a range that can hit moscow. Except for these 150 bomber weapons, we dont, we dont really is have tactical Nuclear Weapons anymore. I mean, really we got rid of all of them. And all the ones that were in south korea too and on ships. I mean, its, yeah, this would be, this would be bigtime stuff, what they call strategic which means hitting the homelands. I mean, i guess they could thats the other thing about in the lowyield weapon. Ive asked people in the pentagon who have worked on this, where would these things be aimed . Some people will tell me, oh, targets inside russia. Other people would tell me, oh, no, we wouldnt do that, that would be escalating. We wouldnt do that. And someone finally admitted, well, its up to the president which may be the scariest answer of them all. I think ill end on that. Is there reason to be optimistic or pessimistic about the future with all of these Nuclear Weapons . Well, you know, all of these Nuclear Weapons, we have a lot fewer than we used to. Ill just end on one story myself. When trump first became president and some of his advisers were concerned that he really didnt understand the world with, they brought him over to the tank, the joint chiefs of staff Conference Room in the pentagon. This is parts of this meeting have been written up in another book, july 20, 2017, this is the one you might have realize in this other new book called very stable genius where he starts yelling at the generals telling them theyre losers and babies. But there was another moment where hes shown a chart showing Nuclear Weapons over the ages. And the peak, the peak was in 1969 when the United States had 32,000 Nuclear Weapons including a lot of tactical weapons. And now we have less than onetenth that number. And so this was meant to signify the value of arms control treaties and the new stability of the world and so forth. But thats not how trump saw it. He looked at that chart, and he pointed to the peak, and he said how come i cant have as many Nuclear Weapons as we had back then . Explained to him, well, there are arms control treaties, and we Start Building more and more weapons, other countries would think we were preparing to launch a first strike, so theyd build more weapons too, and its really not necessary. He seem to be placated, but then about two weeks later at a white house meeting with then secretary h. R. Mcmaster, he brings this up again. So theres this cavalier attitude. Its why he loves a good military parade. It shows its nothing to do with true National Security needs. But he just and he brought it up again at another meeting. He just feels insulted or insecure or tinier or something by the fact that he cant have as many Nuclear Weapons as Richard Nixon had. The book is called the bomb. Fred kaplan is going to be signing copies of the book in the lobby, and i see some of you already have it. We have more that you can purchase. Lets give fred a hand. Thank you. [applause] thanks very much. Thank you all very much, and if youll join us in the lobby. More information. Next, doctor David Shulkin recounts his time at the secretary of the Veterans Affairs department for the trump administration