privilege. reading is something you get to do because they were older and d went 7:30 comes along they don't say can i stay up late or finish this chapter or finish this page i'm almost done with the buck. so you were sort of training them in a way to want to read cover to view reading a positive light. .. >> one of the years the debate

topic was nuclear weapons and we all read it was a big deal at the time. and to nuclear weapons from truman to trump and then went to overland college and watergate changed him and then went on to graduate school at mit with nuclear strategy. and the policy advisor for the house of representatives on

the left and wrote he wrote his widely acclaimed book wizards of armageddon. listed with the boston globe for 20 years and by the end of 24 - - 2002 we started to write stories he wrote for previous books and i'm very excited to have fred kaplan in his book the bomb please join me to welcome him. [applause] >> the wizards of armageddon

the end of nuclear deterrence i did they get right anymore about nuclear war the cold war was over and nobody thought much about nuclear weapons until a couple years ago. and so might not have thought of it at all. but on august 8th the president trump said that if north korea keeps making threatening noises and launching the sole test like it has never seen before. and then the capabilities

women everybody start to get nervous. and it struck me now is a time to go back and look at the history with as much time that passed with you oshima and the wizards of armageddon it says something about how old i am. but if you look back into the archives it is interesting because and nothing was declassified and what they thought was set about nuclear war. even up to reagan and carter. and then i interviewed a lot of people.

and with that looming force above us all and of nuclear war it is how various presidents with those euphemisms are seriously contemplated and how they have dealt with these issues. and to have a brief history of that tonight. how did this start? maybe towards the end of world war ii commander of the 21st bomber command at the time firebombing every city in japan. and the head of the army air force spring of 1945.

that the japanese were fighting. then they go back to the staff and calculations and then there was the firebomb. it to say the war will be over by september 1st because that is when we will have bombed every square mile of japan. so that was the philosophy to bomb everything. now to adam bombs were dropped on japan. and with the strategic air command. and then then with this philosophy to the new and much

more bomb. and by the end of the fifties the single integrated operational plan so this was the war plans and then to attack west germany even if they didn't use nuclear weapons, but even if they just crossed with a few truth, the united states word unleash the entire arsenal against every target and the soviet union and china. even if there was no involvement in the war.

and to kill 285 million people. this was approved by president eisenhower and eisenhower was a cheapskate it was believed they might make incursions all over the place and what you called massive retaliation. anywhere the russians go we respond in a manner of our own choosing. with policy and classified documents that any armed conflict between the united states would begin with us nuclear weapons. it's not like he was a bloodthirsty maniac but eisenhower thought any war with the soviet union would go nuclear and therefore to

realize to deter a war from happening in the first place and then to tell the soviets in no uncertain terms would you do this for the entire country. and something happened in the early sixties with their own nuclear arsenal. so this became a policy of suicide and to grab west berlin and responded by blowing up the soviet union they could blow up us. so that's when certain strategists so we don't have to go nuclear right away so

maybe we could just want weapon at military forces and say if you strike back because they had serious doubts if this was possible they had to bet on it and then go sky high at the outset. president kennedy comes in to office and then to be involved in the crisis in berlin but by the end of the year most of you realize west berlin has

been 100 miles inside germany. there is no way that the russians decided to occupy. so the plan again was to unleash everything. and then to discuss this. and so they came up with the russians coming in with the weapons. new with sahm intimidation.

and with those economic sanctions and the united nations pass a resolution to condemn this. should offer a nuclear weapon is a demonstration. but then there were questions like and then to escalate the forces there were people who thought there were only nuclear weapons.

but with the deterrence and credibility and then to use nuclear weapons. and then kennedy decided and then to be clever in the short run. and those that are way ahead of us by the time with kennedy and then to have 200 to 300 missiles. and with the deputy secretary of defense and with the business roundtable and this

is where they renounce there is no missile gap. and said we are turning out icbm like sausages. so this is to tell khrushchev this is how many weapons we have this is how many you have even launching the first strike to have overwhelming superiority and as a result 12 or 15 time mega hydrogen bomb and second to realize and then planning to launch a first-rate. that kennedy new so he put medium-range missiles into cuba.

like having a couple dozen intercontinental missions from russia. so here is where is the real pivot. there is still a lot of myths there is still a lot of nonsense which essentially is very odd because all 13 days and then order them from the kennedy library. and go eyeball to eyeball and myth on the friday night cruise jeff came up with the deal and promise to invade

cuba. then saturday and then to take those very similar missiles. and that ignore the saturday morning proposal. but the proposal comes in saturday morning and kennedy says it seems like a fair trade. anyone would take this deal. everybody around the table not just the generals bobby kennedy robert mcnamara all of them say this will humiliate the turks to destroy our

credibility. >> and then to start launching air attacks on monday two days later. and then three days after that. and looking ahead and then the russians are bound to grab and then start to flow it will not be a good war. kennedy called seven people and sending bobby on the condition don't ever talk about this ever. and he perpetrated the myth

because this was the cold war. this would be appeasement and be in deep trouble. one of the seven people he did not was vice president lyndon johnson. and then to go back down. and in the post you myths memoir to say it was a tragedy. because that led to further tragedies. after the cuban missile crisis looking at the defense budget. and with chairman of the joint chiefs with especially on nuclear weapons to say i don't know why were spending so much

money on nuclear weapons. then that would deter them but as the conversation went on that deterrence failed. and then go after they are missiles. and so to summarize the enduring dilemma of nuclear strategy. that you will blow everything up. it is not foolproof. >> what you try to do something brought to a

conclusion? kennedy was not comfortable and said we have to and the cold war. and he gave a speech at american university june 1963 it's beautiful. look it up. calling for the ad war. - - end of the war. they turned off the jammers from voice of america cruise jeff in braced it the greatest speech since roosevelt and things were started to happen then he was assassinated and

then in 1964 really that is where the arms race begins. so over the next 25 years various presidents looking at this war plan are horrified and try to institute things for limited options but one things that i discovered which i hadn't done before those with defined statements with a dozen different options that would escalate slowly people in omaha paid no attention to this it was always written into the guidance to the extent feasible or to the extent it does not compromise the military objective but yet it did so this remains the all

out plan until the administration of reagan and ending with george h.w. bush. reagan turns out to be a more interesting character in a good way and and now weird with anybody recognized. he was nuclear abolitionist that's why he was so keen on star wars defense and the shield to shoot down every missile coming this way. he may have been two or three people who believe that the program was about he's doing incredibly provocative thinks his first year and with the nsa then you really think were

trying to launch our first strike and america reacts accordingly and he is horrified so that's not what he meant so there are transcripts of meetings that we need to reach out to these people by the time that happens gorbachev is in the soviet union and for the first time in 1985 that first it is very tense so they decide that it's just the two of them and their translators. and at one point reagan says if the united states are to be attacked by aliens in the united states would russia contort offense and gorbachev says absolutely i said on - - reagan that i feel the same way that back in the conference room george schultz

not privy to the conversation rights letter one - - rights later they were joking with the were good friends and were completely different and a couple years later he gave a speech at the un general assembly in this passage :-colon powell who was a joint chief at the time tried to excises passage twice and reagan kept putting it back in which was if we were attacked by aliens in outer space those conflicts on earth would seem trivial in comparison. but on the other hand there is something to it. may be where you talk about catastrophic things with weapons of mass destruction taking a few from 1 billion miles up so anyway

ronald reagan was doing this at the subterranean level there was a civilian and the pentagon name frank miller and when dick cheney became secretary of defense he was a very different guy then when he was vice president. now coming into this job all the doctrines for limited nuclear options and restraint for nuclear weapons he doesn't hear any of this so he goes to chene cheney's as i understand what's going on. i have been assigning you to go deep deep to tell the people in omaha you get anything you want to goes deeper than any civilian and discovers extraordinary things, though level of

overkill is astonishing for example 700 nuclear weapons aimed in a 50-mile radius rounding moscow. in the arctic circle could be used for three quarters of the year 17 nuclear weapons. and anti- ballistic missile site after the cold war was over never worked 69 nuclear weapons and then they discovered something even more profound and disturbing at that point bush was discussing the nuclear arms reduction treaty. if we reduce the number of weapons could you still perform your mission? the senior officer said we don't ask that question and he

said i understand what you mean that's not the way we work. we take the weapons that we are given we assign them to the targets so in other words that no points in the actual operational realm of how this was handled that no point had any been asking how many of these do we really need to do what you want to do? to fight a nuclear war? how many do we really need. nobody was asking that. in fact one reporter there was one commander with the open congressional hearing said i need 10000 and weapons because i have 10000 targets they be thought he wasn't too bright

no. that's how this works. and the overkill. one of these was the tank armies. >> they destroy the factories were the tanks were built they destroyed the mines to destroy your ability to make dinner in your house your refrigerator your freezer and then the grocery store and the farm and then all the railways between all of these even if you think

it is rational objective to keep you from making dinner you don't need to do all of this. so frank miller and the staff at the time we had 10000 nuclear weapons. >> because one of frank's sister's want to put 588 it was a whimsical joke but when the cold war was over no need to attack eastern europe anymore they are not our enemy. so by the time bush had the strategic arms reduction they said we don't need any more than this and this continued when obama was president there was another review it was very

similar and they went back over every single target and they were able to cut it down by another one third even then they did not reduce it by another third because they were involving the new start treaty there was no point to make unilateral cuts later it is negative incentives that's how many nuclear weapons we have now if we cut was in third to no harm to national security but you don't want to do unilateral cuts.

so another thing that did come out of this exercise that limited nuclear options suddenly became feasible so now we have a plan where there were 20 nuclear weapons that before and he asked from the defense intelligence agency for the early-morning radar so how many discrete objects could the radar detect until it all becomes one big blob? and the answer is 200 if we shot 200 missiles but at that time the smallest nuclear

option wouldn't fall 900 missiles but for one reason this astonished me when i first heard it but no matter what the option was limited option or whatever icbms all bombers had to be involved nobody wanted to be left out added the option. so in some cases the bomber would arrive hours after the missiles we get the people on the other side had to see this as a limited attack. so trump comes into office. so some of the things that are said now about nuclear weapons and nuclear posturing that the pentagon put out talk about

the nuclear operations and as deterring a wide range threat to deter the country from launching a nuclear weapon. this is the subterranean riverdance under our noses. so obama tried to change some of this. so what is new? what is one theme running through my book is that every president before now when they confronted a crisis involve seriously the use of nuclear weapons. and advisers have gone through the scenarios that are kind of reasonable in some cases.

they have all immerse themselves in the scenario and the consequences very deeply and they have decided the matter what their advisers say that this will end in catastrophe i have to scramble out as fast as possible. this has happened over and over. but whatever else you think about trump he's not known to be a guy who immerses himself to think deeply about it. so my fear and then to get trapped in a dynamic.

there is such of hearings but they weren't covered very much at the time because the chairman of the ford relations suddenly realize that the president of the united states has the legal authority to launch a nuclear attack without anybody's protocols but ultimately the decision is his like the adult day care center and leading on a path to world war iii they were concerned and that was the case and one democratic senator said we have the president who threatens us and

not one single republican on the committee challenge the premise. but one of the people of the retired general was now part of strategic command because his view is if congress wants to change our president can launch a first strike. that's what you can do with those that didn't want them to do is to create doubts and then to do nothing about it.

so to create the government we had now. so there might be a president who had sensing so he gave him the judiciary and with elections every four years nobody has done that from the entire planet and that was a little strange. so the question, i will end here at it is a good question why hasn't there been a nuclear war? why hasn't anybody use nuclear weapons? if you had gone back in time 1947 and said and all this time then people would lock

you up and wouldn't believe you it is astonishing and highly unlikely. and that nuclear deterrence works. you attack us and we attack you. but number two we have been lucky enough to have shrewd and common sense president said number three there has been a couple of cases to see there is a false reading of coming over the horizon this has got to be a false reading it is happened a few times. so shrewd readers if we have a

conversions it was passed if it isn't president and those who avoided this immerse themselves in the logic and actually dug deep. it might be and then to come away from the same conclusions. thank you very much. [applause] and now i will take your questions. >> with active duty in 1963

with the iraqi battalion. i don't know what has classified sense but i will have you comment one is the prevalence of tactical nuclear weapons. and second what was left of turkey after the deal even though some were removed. >> at the time when everything was nuclear we have thousands of nuclear weapons and on the ships. when jimmy carter became president he had 7000 nuclear weapons in western europe some of them were short range. some more mines summer have a

ten or a megaton. george h.w. bush unilaterally got rid of a lot of those that were most relieved were military officers who consider them not needed and was a security nightmare because they didn't want nuclear weapons so for political reasons there was 180 left so it is interesting when obama became president one of the first big speeches he talked about reducing nuclear weapons and there was an them acid or to nato who said that

unilaterally cut that number by half it would make a good signal to everybody we are trying to reduce the role but this was rejected by the national security council including hillary clinton aside from the fact george h.w. bush requested ideals and to reciprocate so we still have 50 of these things and turkey is less and less of an ally these days. and to be locked up pretty well just because you have a bomb doesn't mean you can use

it. so i bet some people from the obama days so there were 50 bombs out of turkey. >> as far as looking at the big picture, what word $3 trillion per year for strangers? and the people that make the decisions do you think of people came from another planet they would say we are totally insane? and those who were injured and it seems to be no buddies interest.

do you think there is any chance this planet will change? >> i thought you were talking about a draft. because for the vietnam war was the draft and the fact and if the draft was is revived if little jack going off to war 1 percent of the population is military now and a lot of those are regionally concentrated like georgia especially. may be spread out like my kids to live in new york.

i do think that short of some transformation in world politics can hardly be imagined now. look at kim jung-un. trump made him sign a contract now this one-page statement that both sides agree to work toward nuclear one - - denuclearization of the peninsula. so calling for a nuclear weapons available to start anywhere. if your eye were that of north korea for the survival and

perpetuation let's get rid of the nuclear weapons. so i thing that keeps people at all and he looks around to say qaddafi he has nuclear weapons now he is dead. so the iranians actually signed a treaty that the international inspectors said and trump pulled out of the treaty so why should i get rid of any of my nuclear weapons? if united states continues to say we will not come to your defense i would imagine countries like japan or saudi

arabia that we will have her own nuclear weapons so everybody knows so the argument is i have to do this to. so then with deterrence but what if it fails with those countries that have a lot of nuclear weapons? to say i can't blow up everything that is not a credible deterrent i need options if i have plans to do this i need weapons to do this and before you know it, the concept of credible nuclear deterrence converges to become the same thing for those presidents who confront the

crisis to stumble into these implications to realize this will be a catastrophe and to scribble out. but it's another one that looks like the human meetings those arms control agreements but again people come for a small nuclear war people come to their senses. i just don't see getting rid of them. so with the world that we inhabit. >> to be so far removed from the horrors of the war hiroshima and nagasaki were so long ago that we, the public, doesn't understand what nuclear war would mean.

>> it's not just the public. until a few weeks ago the military deployed no board nuclear warheads. with the equivalent of 8000 tons. and those other missiles between 150 kilotons and with some of their doctrine and then we will have our own weapons we have high yield weapons of they have low yield

weapons so first of all how do we know that? but third the idea of a low load weapon like to masters of the chessboard otherwise you may not know what is going on. you don't know the weapon that you fired at that target went off or if the target is still there or not can you even talk to your commander much less the guy you negotiate with to end the war? as one of the chief advocate advocates, talking about the moderator so what does that

mean? and to say it's like hiroshima. and he said he has to be pejorative about it but we have to make clear it's not firecrackers were used to talking in megatons i was 8 kilotons. 8000 tons that is 16 million pounds. so the biggest of these is 2000 so it would be way way more destructive than any bombing raid. since world war ii and yet it is so small for the fine tit

for tat you can kid yourself into thinking it is small and controllable. >> can you compare your low yield weapons? >> some are smarter's of our one - - are bigger. and those that have missiles that are aimed at russia. as the russians see it coming over the horizon there is no flash nobody is getting on the phone to say don't worry we would appreciate if you would respond to us. maybe.

>> but it is close enough to rush to reach russian territory? britain and france except for the 150 bomber weapons and those of south korea. it would be big-time stuff what they call strategic for the homeland that is something else with the low load weapon. where were these things being

aimed? targets inside russia. other people say we wouldn't do that. is somebody finally just admitted that's up to the president. >> is there a reason to be optimistic or pessimistic about the future of all of these nuclear weapons? >> we have a lot fewer that when trump first became president he brought them over to the conference room so there was a famous meeting

from this other book. but there was another moment nuclear weapons over the ages. when united states at 32000 nuclear weapons. was is meant to signify the value of the arms control treat treaty. he looked at the chart and pointed to the peak how many nuclear weapons as we had back then? the arms control treaty others think they are launching first strike and have more weapons

but then two weeks later add white house meeting with mcmaster he brings it up again. why can't i have as many as others? so there is a cavalier attitude and it shows. it has nothing to do with true national security needs. and then he brought up again add another reading. just to add insult or insecure or to feel tiny or something that he cannot have as many nuclear weapons as richard nixon had. >> the book is called the bomb and he will be signing copies of the book in the lobby. some of you already have it or

you can purchase it. let's give him a hand. [applause] >> thank you very much. join us in the lobby. [inaudible conversations] >> the press is still asking the question why did nikki say they were sanctions where the sanctions so i called multiple people in the administration, chief of staff, secretary of state kate state national security advisor bolton and i said we've got a problem. there is nothing wrong with the president changing his mind just go out and tell the truth. tell what happened but everybody was calling her office. you need to fix this and they said okay. that was monday. tuesday morning happens the level is rising.

i said okay. this is the deal you fix it by 5:00 o'clock p.m. today or i will and trust me it will go a lot better if you fix it. nothing happens. then i think it was for 45 or so and my friend larry cut logos out in front of the press of the ask the question about the sanctions and he says i think nikki got momentarily confused. so that was it. i happen to look at the television and the five was getting ready to come on fox. i called my friend dana perino can you call me real quick? i said i need to put out a statement. she said what is it? just say one sentence. with all due respect, i don't get confused. [applause]

she said that it? i said that's it. i will send it to you so that you have it in writing. she does it and within ten minutes larry calls me. nikki, i'm so sorry you know i love you i have my tail between my legs i am so sorry. i said larry, what point do you say i am confused? he said i know i should not have done it. trust me i will make it up to you. i said you will make it up to me and you will do it by going out there and telling them that you were wrong and i wasn't. he said i can't do that i said yes you can and you will. and he did and in fairness to him immediately went out to contact the reporter but what was surprising to me was that how it was a simple moment of me defending myself and how it went viral across the country

on t-shirts and mugs and everything how so many people have been in a moment and i hope the lesson you take from that is no one will protect your integrity but you. weekend. book tv, television for serious readers. >> good evening, everyone, welcome to the bookshop, we are happy you are here tonight to we are happy to have megan kate nelson with us with her new book, "the three-cornered war", the union, confederacy and native people and the site for the west. this is an engrossing narrative account which shows how the civil war, the indian wars in western expansion are all intercct