just months and 19 days after the supervisor of salvage was directed by the secretary, the navy, to conduct the salvage operation. the past have been done to commodore sullivan, us m captain v months us m captain pay i took her the supervisors, the divers and other workmen who were responsible for devising means for the actual accomplishment of the many of construction and other preparatory work on which success of the salvage depended goes credit for one of the greatest engineering of the century.

good morning, everyone. i'm marc selverstone, associate professor in presidential studies and chair of the presidential program at the university of virginia's miller center. and i'd like to welcome you to this discussion of nuclear brinkmanship. what we learned from the presidency. richard nixon.

now nuclear weapons are back in the news as we are all recognized. the doomsday clock. the device that the bulletin of the atomic scientists has kept since the early days of the cold war is. now at 100 seconds to midnight. it's a close it's ever been. it was there in 2020. and the bulletin of atomic scientists doesn't change the clock until january every year. it has not had a chance to do so. but if the current continues to ratchet, as it is now doing in ukraine, i think that it may indeed move a little bit closer. and of course, with every advance of the ukrainian army into those four territories that the have annexed claim to have annexed in eastern ukraine, the rhetoric from vladimir putin becomes strident and alarming.

and even last night, president biden said that we are now to armageddon since we are now closer to armageddon than any time since cuban missile crisis, 60 years ago. and we are now approaching that 60th anniversary of the cuban crisis. if that wasn't enough, we also have the episodes in northeast asia where the north koreans ballistic missiles over japan with the united states and south koreans conducting military exercises. it's a dangerous dangerous moment. and so fortunately, we have with today panelists who help us make sense of where are and how we got here and we're going to do so in conversation. that is by the publication of a recent volume as part of the miller center studies in the

presidency series with the university of virginia. and that is averting doomsday. arms control during the nixon presidency coauthored by our panel is aaron mahone so we're thrilled that aaron is with us here today to talk about her volume that she coauthored with pat garrity a beloved colleague ours who passed away last. pat had been with the miller center and the and the recordings for decades really and was just a mensch was, a wonderful member of team and a great collaborator with aaron. so i thought we'd start by giving you aaron a chance to to say a few words about pat, about your collaboration and about how the two of you put this book together. thank you, mark. and thank you. thank the miller center for having us.

and pat was good catholic, so i know he's in here with us in spirit and and both found the miller center for many years almost a decade almost like our our home. we both we became friends through and colleagues through working on nixon tapes. we collaborated the book idea was a mutual one kind of a natural outgrowth of listening to of 3000 hours of nixon recordings. only ken has done that, but by listening a great many especially on arms control. and that's where pat i had bonded. not very many get excited about talking about, throw weight or so many sarin in the realm. so so this is a bittersweet event for me. pat can't be here. he did finish the manuscript. he didn't get to see it with its glossy cover. but i hope comments today talking about the portions he

wrote do justice to a man who was just an immense intellect, often put to shame how much he knew he worked at los alamos just a really fine intellect and a wonderful, great thanks. well, let me more formally introduce everybody who's up on the stage today. erin mahan is, a nonresident faculty senior fellow at the miller center. she has another job, which is chief historian at office of the secretary of defense and director of the pentagon. so we're thrilled that she could be. she is the general editor of the secretaries of defense historical as well as editor of the salt volumes for the foreign of the united states series in terms of monographs, she's written kennedy de gaulle and western europe, and she's one of the original members of pr, i think original members of prp, certainly going back into the late 20th century, remarkably can use is also one of those

original members of of prp. ken is a research specialist at the center focusing, particularly on richard nixon. he is our in-house nixon specialist and has been such for a long time. ken has written two volumes on nixon chasing the nixon tapes the chennault affair and the origins of watergate and politics. the nixon tapes, the vietnam war, and the casualty of reelection. and now ken is turning his sights. john f kennedy writing on kennedy in covert action, something that i'm also interested in. and todd sechser with us to todd's is the todd is the edmonds discovery professor of politics at the university of virginia, professor of public policy at frank batten school of leadership, public policy and director of, the democratic statecraft lab at uva. he is also a faculty senior fellow at the miller center. todd is the author of weapons

and coercive diplomas c, as well as numerous articles on both themes nuclear weapons and coercive diplomacy as well. articles on deterrence and, military technology, writing for leading journals in the field, as well as for national publications as the wall street journal and, the washington post, and particularly for our conversation here today. prior becoming an academic, todd had been a nuclear policy analyst at the carnegie endowment for international peace. so we have a great group here to talk about the moment and we got here and i would start with aaron. you as coauthor of the volume, but also someone who had spent so time looking at the nixon administration and the saw process and thinking about where nixon had come from to that moment. could you lay out the landscape us in terms of where arms control had been up to that point? nixon came in january 1969.

what were the efforts that a variety of administration had taken to control the bomb? what the status of the bomb, the the proliferation of nuclear arms around the world, particularly with the superpowers and and how did nixon himself approach those matters on the one hand? but his thoughts about arms control on the other that your questions, of course, get at the very core of the book. so i'll try to just give a snapshot here. let me preface all my remarks today, though. i'm here in the capacity a nonresident fellow since i do have my position at the pentagon, i am obligated to to say that everything i say today or my own opinions and do not reflect those of the department, defense or the united states government. so that said, i will address your questions. of course, the atomic age was born at the end of world war

two. so by the sixties we had already been in their arms, an arms race with the soviet union for a couple of decades. but on the eve of the nixon presidency, the united states had approximately what the soviet union had approximately, i think, 2000 iq beams and todd can correct me on the numbers and this was a different scenario than what his predecessor had faced at the beginning of his first term in 1964, when lbj only confronted the soviet union 200. so just that alone showed nixon that there was now parity between the superpowers and that in and of itself changed the landscape. but over the decades before nixon became. president oh, i kind of an eclectic foundation of how to tackle the the arms race had emerged the technical the the the domestic political utopian.

there was a whole literature on arms control that had kind of been in the early cold war period and. nixon on the eve of his presidency can kind of inherited a cornucopia of agreements that were either already signed but not ratified in progress under negotiation. and these ranged from what would become salt there had been stirrings of that in the late sixties but the soviet invasion of czechoslovakia made that not happen the nonproliferation treaty had been pursued by. president johnson and it was signed. but right before nixon took office, he actually encouraged senate not to ratify it, only because he wanted to kind of see how the lay of the land was going to be. the landscape, so to speak. so the npt was signed, not ratified by any of the major

signatories, let alone other nations in the world, a treaty that would become called the seabeds. i think the official name is the prohibition on emplacement of nuclear weapons and weapons of mass destruction on the ocean floor and the subsoil and thereof. so yeah, just rolls off the tongue. so anyway, what getting at is there was a body of of agreements in the works and nixon and kissinger and his their administration had figure out what to do with these and and particularly regarding prolific action in the nonproliferation agreement from from 1968. as you mentioned, it's one of the things that they have to address when come in, how where are they on that? is this something that they want to embrace? aaron todd, you can chime in as well. it's this is one of the interesting themes of your book, aaron, is that while there is

some interest in supporting a nonproliferation, there is also a times in interest on the part. the administration in supporting nuclear powers, particularly if they're allies, facilitating their further acquisition of nuclear materials. so if either of you would like to address that, what does nixon really think about proliferation and go ahead. you want me to go first? well, nixon prided himself on realism. he thought it was unrealistic to it to think that the united states could prevent other powers if they were dead set on getting having a program from getting it. and we hear those debates today. i mean, how far we go to stop iran, how far can we go to stop north korea? so nixon felt like he had kind of a more realistic view of these things. and at the time, we forget that

germany was divided. we didn't want what an ally to go down that path as well. and that was a big thorn between the superpowers. so the npt and to do about the perennial german question was at the core of that in the late sixties. but then in other regions of the world at times kissinger and nixon would say that might not be such a bad idea of japan got nuclear weapons but in we'll talk at great length about the recordings and kind of is the disconnect perhaps between private utterances and what are actual policy initiatives. so you know naturally it's easy for me to fall back on. you need to read my chapter too because i try to take it nation by nation those that were trying to embark on nuclear programs and regionally. this is a time when packaged did not have nuclear weapons.

so when the pakistani government said, well, why don't you, the united states, help pursue a nuclear free zone like they were doing latin america? that was, i think, a missed opportunity. so in a nutshell, i think the nixon is a very mixed one on the nonproliferation landscape. yes, it was complex, but they had a whole government to deal with those complex cities and they preferred in many ways to hold that control and power in the white house to. what have you got to say about of that mixed signaling that we see from the nixon administration on that on that count? yeah, in terms of nuclear arms control, i you know erin's right that nixon was an arms control skeptic. i don't think there's really any way to put it. he didn't believe that arms control treaty would constrain truly adversaries from building

up their arsenals. he campaigned against the nonproliferation treaty. he told his staff, even when he sent it to the senate for ratification, told a staff to downplay it and and not to countries, especially west germany, to sign it and course, the irony is, as we now know part due to the great archival work of many historians is that one of the key motivations for soviets behind the npt, the nonproliferation treaty was to constrain west germany from acquiring nuclear. so i think it's right to say that his administration and i would not call the nixon administration as having an unvarnished record on arms control. they're quite skeptical of it. but at same time, i think also that at times it could be in the us interest to prevent certain countries from acquiring nuclear

weapons or to put a cap on the soviet nuclear arsenal. so for nixon, his interest in arms control, however significant it was, was part of a larger grand strategy as well. it wasn't just arms control for sake of arms control, it was arms control for american. the of u.s. national interests, the world. and ken, i'd like to turn to you, because i know that as part of your work on nixon, vietnam, we have this example of nixon engaging in some of this mixed signaling, forwarding empty treaty and saying some generally kind about it initially, nixon himself engages saber rattling with nuclear weapons in in the fall of 1969. can you say some more about this, this nuclear alert? what nixon was interested in doing with it and whether or not succeeded in realizing objectives. so nixon was hoping that

america's nuclear weapons would help him settle the vietnam war. in his first year as president, he thought that nuclear signaling had helped eisenhower settle korean war. and so thought he would try that himself. so through back channels, he sent threatening signals to north vietnam, saying if we don't settle by november 1st, the anniversary of the bombing halt, which lyndon johnson declared on first of 1968, then nixon would take and he made it kind of a vague threat measures of consequence of great consequence and force. and he would use any means necessary to settle the war. he he briefed some republican senators who he knew would leak. and so that there were there was a newspaper article saying that

nixon might actually invade vietnam. he stayed on a phone call with henry kissinger. henry kissinger is on the line with soviet ambassador anatoly dobrynin. and nixon was, you know, standing right beside saying the has left the station in order to give the russians an idea that they had better pressure their their client, north vietnam. the russia was the number one supplier of military economic aid to north vietnam to make a settlement and he made a very conspicuous nuclear move he staged a worldwide nuclear alert. the strategic air command put phantoms and b-52 at a heightened state of readiness by the end of october of 1969, the there were bombers flying over the arctic, american bombers

flying the arctic with the nuclear weapons that were bound to trigger the early warning systems in the soviet union, all of which was nixon's way of threatening to escalate the war a great deal. but what happened that when november 1st came and went, he didn't escalate in any way conventionally or of course, the nuclear weapons that was, you know, for a good henry kissinger told him that, you know, one of two things will happen if we escalate one. the first thing that could happen is they make a deal. and the second thing is they might not if they didn't if they didn't, then nixon would be stuck with escalating the war. he knew from a private paul that the public was ready to bomb north vietnam, get a deal and, get out. but the problem was he bombed north vietnam. they might not make a deal and

he'd be stuck with this escalation. that was clearly not working. so that was the first problem. second problem was and the off chance that it did work. then the american troops would all come home and north vietnam have the remaining three years of his first term to resume, infiltrate south vietnam. the deal would unravel and nixon would get the blame for losing the war after promising a peace with honor. so what he wound up doing? nothing. and the soviets noticed to that. and as did north vietnamese and nixon. i think, in his memoirs, tried to give the best spin on that, saying, well, there is a there is an english adviser who thought that vietnamization would work if we gave it a few more years. and that would be much more of great deterrent to north vietnam than a settlement. of course, nixon's own advisers,

the pentagon and state department and the cia said vietnamization would never make south vietnam capable of defending itself. so i think his his later claims with a grain of salt. but i think what nixon learned from that experience was that, you know, while have as president, he has this vast power to destroy world, but that doesn't turn into conventional power to influence parts the world to to make settlement with us that that we favor a turn back to aaron for a second we've been talking about nuclear weapons part of this triad of weapons of mass destruction and of the great virtues of your and pat's book is that you focus only on nuclear weapons. you also look at chemical and biological weapons as well. and i think even in an early

draft of the book germ and gas in the bomb were part of the title, which i actually really liked, but i wonder if you could say a few words about that as well, because nixon had to the issue of what to do, chemical weapons, what to do about biologic weapons and he his maneuver to kind of separate them, too, is separate. the two of them is fascinating. and given concerns that continue to about those, especially given what had happened in syria in the last few years and elsewhere maybe you can talk about the nixon legacy with regard to chem and bio as well. well, when i mentioned at the beginning landscape on the eve of presidency, i didn't at point talk about kim bio because that aspect was shrouded secrecy and the united states and in the public mind if had any awareness they may no distinction.

most people even in on the hill made no distinction chemical and biological warfare weapons. it was kb, bw and a series of but then a series of highly events in the late sixties kind of catapulted this onto the national stage. there there was, for instance, an incident at us in skull valley adjacent to dugway proving ground in utah where all of a sudden 6400 sheep dropped dead. and as a result of sarin testing, of course, denied initially by the united states army, which had the control of our cbw program. now, this preceded the nixon presidency by a year or but, you know, it takes time for these things to kind of gain momentum. and then there a series of in what was kind of a poorly named operation by the army called, operation chase cut them and cut

whole and sink them. and that was transportation of leaking chemical across the country and dumping them in the ocean and so over the course of time, there were just thousands of liters of of old, you know, not necessarily entirely viable. so men sarin, the x and and so you can just imagine this kind of got off around some safety and environmental concern, to say the least. but when nixon took office, he had said almost nothing. there's nothing other than a statement he made in the harvard forum about his position on biological weapons. and in that one public statement, he said said he basically endorsed, well, if we need to increase our strategic arsenal, then we need to have biological weapons as part of that triad.

nothing in kissinger's vast writings and kissinger had written a lot about nuclear weapons. but for the white house when events got the attention, it became a distraction and unwanted distraction for nixon. he wanted to focus on salt. he didn't want to have to deal with those germs. he often called them. and so i kind of ironically, because he wanted to focus on salt, he other parts of the bureaucracy, namely the department of defense take the lead and their secretary of laird was very adroit at working both sides of congress and. the bureaucracy and he knew that the military wanted to retain offensive weapons use for vietnam because that was the other thing that had gotten in the public eye napalm and. these ghoulish images in magazines like red book on not so much the evening news but it was out there in other parts of the media so layered kind of

worked the system and got cbw split so the united states and you got nixon to agree to renounce an offensive biological capability but retained a chemical and this was a compromise with the military so that they could retain cw in vietnam because there was also riot agents were considered cw they're not all the scary sahara and vieques and those kind of things so kind of going on and on because this chapter really animated me in researching and writing it and so i could talk and talk in the happy day answer questions about it. but did that shirt get it? and i was particularly struck by the bureaucratic maneuvering involved with with labor taking lead on this and layered understanding, because there was a fair amount of blowback on this and being a former member of congress understood those dynamics. but but the the bureaucrat

wrangling writ large is, really significant, particularly with regard to nuclear weapons and salt. and so i'm wondering if you can all three of you are welcome to answer it's going to address nixon and kissinger is interesting the salt process essentially out of the white house and sidelining several of those elements the u.s. bureaucracy, the defense department sidelining sidelining secretary of state rogers, sidelining george smith as head of the arms control disarmament agency. i mean, it's really quite extraordinary. the way that they approach. the salt process that is tabling whatever those elements of a deal would be, and then explaining it as so personally and i guess all of us as as students of the presidency, this is just a fascinating episode. so maybe can we can talk a little bit about that. and it's open to to anybody who

wants to jump in first on nixon in the bureaucracy here. go for it. no, go ahead, ken. what you. no, no. you sure? okay. oh, to begin. i think nixon was not the first president to try to send realized control in the white house. i mean certainly in the past before him jfk had in the pursuit of a limited test ban treaty, had relied heavily on his own special emissary. a seasoned diplomat, avery harriman and, you know, others. i think lbj was collaborative. the kilpatrick committee was an interagency that developed options for how to deal with nonproliferation. but so it's not so that we're talking about degrees of with nixon to me it's more about exclusion. so the white house often

dominates, but nixon dominated to the extent and kissinger to i think ken and i both often use the term nixon jr foreign policy because it's hard to distinguish whose ideas whose and and so they they did marginalize gerald smith and i think the impact of that is they missed out on a vast amount of expertise on things that were significant and the salt agreement didn't handle everything because kissinger you know as smart as he was, was not a guru on how on nuclear weapons. so missing elements had to be addressed and salt too. and then, you know, that's the topic another of another forum. but i want add to that the sheer hostility of the nixon and kissinger to the bureaucracy. i mean, they looked at it. they looked at state like enemy

territory. that's where kennedy tapes were, you know, and and two other liberal democrats and they just they there was no trust and a sense on their part which, you know, came mostly, i think, from nixon's personality that and you know his his career as a politician is particularly and a great critic of democrat on the cold war. but but but kissinger too i think kissinger kissinger just that hubris he wanted everything between in this backchannel between ambassador dobrynin and himself and the state partment has published and you can only get it on on the web but they have side by side translations of the backchannel the american the english version has been in the series but they translated russian and you see in that translation that you that are often overlooked and one is

there were attempts by dobrynin do what at to one to link different arms control agreements bw stuff was going on and there were negotiations that eventuated the biological weapons convention in 72. but nixon and kissinger were so focused salt, they just had this tunnel vision and a lot of it had to do about wanting their disdain and hostility. you're absolutely. kim so todd, what does cover and and how did they get to to agree on on what they agreed on how did they arrive at launchers and warheads and the dispersion between nuclear triad? what what does it entail? yeah, i mean, i'll let aaron talk about the details of the agreement, how those you details were arrived at. but, you know, i'll a little bit about sort of the broader context in which these negotiations taking place, which

i think also shed light on this question of, you know, why the white house tried to seize control of the process and the broader context, i think is a growing pessimism about us nuclear superiority. in the early sixties, the mid sixties. american officials believe that certainly the united states had an advantage in the nuclear arms race and maybe nuclear arms race was even over. robert mcnamara said in 1965 that there's no indication that the soviets are going to try to pursue a strategic arsenal as big as ours. that was basically done and we're going to have superiority the foreseeable future and already at the beginning of the nixon administration, it's clear that that is not true. the soviets had caught up in numbers of launchers, not warheads, but launchers and and direction was obvious. and nixon and kissinger were

concerned the us would not be able to maintain superiority, that it would undermine the credibility of us promise to protect western europe. and you know, one solution to that is to just continue the arms race and to build build a huge missile defense and more launchers. but they were concerned that they wouldn't be able to do that because politically it was problematic and that congress wouldn't go for it. so, again, you know, the motivation for arms control here are not the same as perhaps the motivations were on the left. nixon and kissinger were not worried about reducing global. they were worried protecting the credibility, the american deterrent, and preventing the soviets from gaining superiority. and so, you know, restrict the number of launchers restricting warhead is an insult, one is one pathway to doing this. when they believed that they couldn't respond to the soviet

pursuit of superiority by building more launchers and building more warheads on the of the united states. so understanding that sort of broader context is important. also understand why the white house wanted so much control over the process. it's again not that they were concerned that there would be left details that would create instability. it's that they didn't want to create openings that soviets would be able to exploit to cheat or to gain the advantage over the united states. and there was huge domestic political motivation also that nixon want it to appear that he had been taken advantage of the agreement. and so he was paying attention to details of that. otherwise, you know, in private conversations, he said he didn't care about, you know, the number of radar says doesn't matter. it makes no difference at all. but he didn't want it to appear that he had gotten taken

advantage and and concern of that he has with the right of american electorate is significant because also at a time when he is winding down the vietnam war and there were. who were not happy about that is concern about the conversation that are going on with the people's republic of what to do about taiwan and so that is that is coloring of this and i do want talk about the politics but but before we do that could you say something about the salt agreement as itself, since it was a landmark agreement. and one of the things that we remember about nixon, right. he wanted to be known as a peacemaker he wanted to end the war in vietnam achieve the peace. he's reducing number of nuclear weapons elements. this is this is a huge of what he sees as his legacy. what does it actually achieve? um, well, it's easy for me with to say that these were the

chapters that pat had said i did compile many documents on, on salt. one insult to in my head was always after pat because managed to make all that detail. and we have some headers saying negotiations, negotiations ad nauseum because the detail was did did matter and i mean i have to give nixon some credit. i mean, when you listen to the recording, he does have this intellectual. maybe it's not intellectual, but he has this interest learning some of the details. he winds up deferring a lot to kissinger and the other importance of salt, though it had its deficiencies and those would be tackled with the salt to process. but nixon and kissinger tie the offense of to the defensive so well. they pursued in and limitations on on the strategic they at the same time pursued the abm and

perhaps you can talk more about the kind of the lasting significance of that. but from historical perspective, that was admirable achievement because it it prevented and he took a lot of flak from the right. i mean, reagan was governor of california the time. and we know once he became president would push the idea of sdi and star wars. and i think nixon kind of had the foresight to want to prevent an arms race in the defense realm and and and in the offensive realm. yeah. todd, do you want to say some more about the defensive element here? yeah. and again, i think the broader sort of strategic political context is important to understand that in the johnson administration, there was at least some optimism that missile defense was plausible and that it could work well and that the united states would able to build a missile defense system

that could protect to protect the continental united states against a soviet attack. and in part because of the growth in the soviet during the late 1960s, there was increasing pessimism in late sixties, early seventies about whether this was even possible and that, you know, key people in the nixon administration believed, including eventually mcnamara, that that the always had the advantage over defense that the soviets could always counter counterbalance any u.s. missile defense system just deploying more missiles and decoys and in simple technologies that would for the missile defense system or overwhelm. so again i think but at the same time there was anxiety as we often see discussions about missile defense, skepticism about one's own capabilities. and a lot of alarm about the other side's capability.

iis there was concern that the soviets were trying to deploy significant missile defense around moscow, and again, that would undermine the credibility of the u.s. deterrence. and so there were strategic motivations here. the part of the nixon administration to try to reach an agreement that would limit the soviets ability to defend and to neutralize the american nuclear deterrent aaron, you noted in a spot in the book that nixon taped that mix of nixon's. about 200 hours of them involve discussions of arms control is extraordinary. think about because we've worked with the nixon the johnson and the kennedy recordings really only 260 hours of kennedy recordings. and here's nixon's opening 200 hours on arms control are the themes that stand out to you from those recordings and i had

a chance to listen them some of them as well but not as many as you on arms control on proliferation on the utility of nuclear weapons and do you see any evolution from the time that nixon turned on the taping system in of 1971 until the time it was turned off in summer of 1973. that's an hour of itself. i have actually listened to the 200 hours. so to try to summarize them, i would say there is an evolution in that always for the the last part, first, an evolution in the sense of of nixon's gained knowledge but in but there's definitely continuity in themes of of wanting to marginalize or jim or smith or melvyn laird wanting just this fixation with getting

credit. he wanted this big play and saul was going to offer the big play that would capture the public imagination and make him this piece. president he was going to in vietnam. he was going to negotiate this the big superpower nuclear agreement that would cap the arms race in some respects. so that theme just is dominate and is consistent. i mentioned earlier that with the recordings, you i always had to tackle the difference between a public utterance and a private musing. and we have to realize, you know, unlike president trump and i know pundits tried during his administration to make parallels with nixon and some of the things nixon would say. but i think that's a false analogy, because 11,000 tweets, those are all public.

nixon never intended for his tapes to be heard by anybody. hence so he was saying what he felt at that moment and i'm always would marvel at his ability to be so. and then turn around just minutes later and do kind of the right thing. i've given example. now the tapes don't a lot about biological weapons because renunciation of our offensive program had occurred before the tape system turned on. but the bw convention was still being negotiated. so he turns to connally the secretary of the treasury and his friend and he says, oh, you know that -- treaty on biological warfare? and he didn't to it. and the fence about he's not going to let the soviets rape over vietnam i mean it's just this ugly i mean, the tapes are the good the bad and the ugly. but then he walks into a room

where there's a public ceremony in state department room for the biological weapons convention. and he heaps all this praise it. and he is the first post. i mean, the first cold war president to to tackle what was a vast program in the united states mean. i mean, can we can get into that in the q&a, how large cbw is. and it's definitely has always been a triad. we think of the cold war as as nuclear. but a lot of chemical and biological activity. we're working on the fdr tapes now, and i was kind of shocked to listen to a press where fdr says, i've nothing to tell you, but i am going to a little tour of military installations and somebody goes, are you going to get aberdeen and, check out the chemical weapons there? and he goes, yeah, i'm going to do that. it was his all his press

conferences were not for attribution, so they couldn't put that stuff in there. but he was remarkable, candid. but i'm dragging us off subject with regard to nixon's, you know, the difference between him in private and in public. what i was most struck by with regard to arms control was his idea that he didn't care if the deal he made in his first term was correcting the president's language for sake of our of not getting banned from youtube but a half salt agreement. he said he wouldn't mind making one of those and if it turned out not to a good agreement, he was willing try another arms race like to to do what jfk had done to him in 1960 and say, okay, we're behind we have to we have to increase missile production because the soviets have been taking of us. so with with nixon, i think

there's there's are some issues that he engages in to to defang his adversaries. the the environment is one of those. he was you a he says, i'm so sick of the environment could die. but he's also the guy who puts together the environmental protection because he knows if he doesn't do that, congress will together an agency that's that that does things that he doesn't want to do as a republican president. i think there was some of that actually. that's a nice segway into a fascinating chapter that my coauthor wrote on nuclear testing and there was a series i mean we don't even think about we think about north korea today doing nuclear testing. but at this time, the united states was still doing underground nuclear testing that had not been banned in the limited test ban treaty and the jfk. so in pat's chapter, he about this code named series called the mannequin and the groups had

taken a case all the way to the supreme court to get an injunction to prevent the military from conducting these tests. and the supreme court knocked it knocked back down to the lower courts. but nixon is. pat, listen to the recordings. and nixon's talking to reagan and other kind of the right side. maybe it's bravado and he's boasting, well, i would have disregarded the court had they not done i wanted anyway. and it's just it's fascinating. it kind of feeds that mad man theory. but there's there's a political dimension to this. you're right. he needs reagan to know that is willing to buck the supreme court to continue testing to protect u.s. interests. right. that's and that's a theme that seems to run throughout a lot of his a lot of his thinking on nuclear weapons. so we've been talking a about

strategic nuclear weapons, tactical nuclear, which are in the news today. what do we know about nixon and tactical nuclear? there was a time in american back in the 1950s, eisenhower in the new look, massive retaliation the the threat to end the korean war perhaps in a dramatic fashion we know that eisenhower point thought it was just another it was a bigger bullet essentially. and that was the brinkmanship that he in the brinkmanship today is a little bit different tactic nuclear weapons seem to be the the weapon under discussion we know about nixon and tactic on nukes and you want to i feel i'm doing so much talking your book i mean this is not a topic per se that we wrote because it didn't fall into kind of we wanted to focus on the

arms control end. but that said and todd correct me if i'm wrong, the mutual balance force reductions agreements that were going on, those addressed tactical weapons in central europe and so i think that became part of kind of the nixon pursuit with with salt but much more kind of the the stepchild didn't give it as much concern. you know happy to have both alaska. i mean, one thing we do know about nixon is that he came into office and was very quickly briefed, the u.s. nuclear war plan, the psyop single integrated operational plan and was hugely dissatisfied. fred kaplan tells a great story about this meeting in his the bomb where he said that that psyop was presented as having

three options option alpha is the united states to attack all nuclear targets in soviet union china option bravo was to add a few military targets outside of cities to that list. and then option charlie included military targets in nuclear or not as well as something like 70% of industrial floorspace in the soviet and china and were the three choices for using nuclear weapons that he was presented with in the first week of his term. and he was horrified by this and hugely dissatisfied and especially schlesinger became secretary defense. you know, nixon pushed him to develop a nuclear doctrine that had more flexibility and more options. many of, of course, would involve using smaller yield,

shorter range tactical nuclear weapons. and again, he believed that was crucial to preserving the credibility of the us deterrent in an where the soviets had parity or maybe even superiority that he wouldn't be able to credibly threaten to use options. alpha bravo or charlie. an environment where the soviets could retaliate. against american cities and potentially even preempt the use of nuclear weapons by attacking u.s. nuclear forces, possibly wiping them out. so expanding and this idea of flexible response was talked about a lot in the 1960s. and it turns out that this a flexible response meant it was much more on than than was actually reflected in nuclear war fighting plans that in truth there was really very little flexible in the us nuclear war plan. and so nixon pushed to try to

create more limited which he believed would enhance deterrence and critics argued made the possibility of nuclear war more likely by the range of scenarios in which nuclear weapons could be used. so nixon i'm sure, would have been horrified to acknowledge that he and kennedy shared an interest, let's say, in response and doctrine. but his interest in in that flexibility was not necessarily because he was more inclined to to to use those weapons to make good on that. there was another it was another dimension of signaling of conveying american resolve, the u.s. commitment. this was all part of the game that that he was engaged in with with the soviets and then ultimately the chinese. and nixon also did that kind of signaling, i think, within his own administration, he had the joint and the military services opposed arms control just because was arms control. and they opposed salt.

they didn't definitely didn't want to give up by an offensive biological weapons program. so nixon would use that same kind of signaling. he would say, like, well, you know, why do we need the -- germs if someone uses biological on us, we're just nukem. and that was to kind of cater cater but to signal to the military know i'm tough if we need to we don't need your germs i'll use my bomb you know maybe not an icbm but a lesser one so is any sense that there's is there a magic number for nixon and maybe can even talk about that today? i mean, what what was it that nixon and kissinger thought that they needed to sufficiently convey that kind of credibility because they they do the numbers keep going down and maybe you can extend your conversation of salt into the subsequent agreements as as we start to build down forces. but there there is this moment

in in the book in which nixon, i think it's in a tape kind of off guard. he says, what the hell almost what do we need these for? and that was that a pretty arresting moment, because we have heard that from and from other american presidents presidents. and i was thinking when you're talking earlier how much they were building up at one point in 1962, mcnamara, kennedy are talking about the size of the arsenal and mcnamara says, well, let's let's figure out kind of what we need. they're just simply doubling. let's get twice as many because that'll certainly suffice. but does nixon have a flaw here. does he have a real sense of of their utility or is it just all part of the grand game. that's that's a hard one to to easily answer. i, i don't think he had a magical number i think he left he did leave those kind of details to kissinger to work out what was going to be acceptable,

what to bring in in the soviets through the back channel. you know, a paul who was representing dod did weigh in on on on kind of the count but think i grappled with that and so did pat you know what the utility nixon saw in a nuclear with nuclear weapons and i there isn't an easy answer i mean i think it remains kind of the great unknown that's part of his masterful you could look at it that way or or scary signaling i just don't know. might it be another aspect of his political positioning? i tend to take the political interpretation of everything that nixon always to be able to say that he was doing the toughest thing, the strongest thing, the thing that would keep us the safest. and that that meant criticizing anybody else's attempts to cut arms, including ronald reagan's. the 1980s, when nixon had a had

a meeting at the white house with reagan to try to try to argue him out of what became the the largest arms cutting deal in history, i think also in private, i was struck by and maybe you a different impression was that nixon the futility of nuclear war, he and kissinger would occasionally bring it up like during india-pakistan crisis. and he goes, you know, okay, then if we allow ourselves, then we're in a war and it's over. i mean, he comes quickly to the conclusion that that's, you know, just so beyond the pale that he has to has to avoid that is that fair? yeah. i mean, i to look at politics, but i guess he listening to so many hours of nixon's it's hard not to develop a certain pathos. i, i see nixon as a very very complicated president and not

all bad not good. and i think he did have some noble aspirations in the realm of of he would want to admit them but with biological weapons for instance. i mean, reading minutes of nsc meetings, there are there are not recordings, but there are exchanges as captured through kissinger's telecon transcripts, which are in kissinger's papers. and nixon terms, abhorrent. they didn't offer that kind of visible effect that a nuclear weapon would. so the utility wasn't. so i think. and he also wanted to known as the peace president now for political reasons for. sure. but he could have wanted to be the best at something else. i mean, want to be a peace president is a noble. so he's a complicated president and i guess all you debate his he's got many, many flaws once he makes a decision to do

something like death you know biological warfare, cutting down or eliminating he goes all the way. he's just a very person. he is like the president who did the most homework. so, yeah, i agree. i mean, like he you know, it's he could commit to a and do it. i just think politics always came first with him even on big things. the vietnam war and in nuclear arms, politics and i'd say vanity. i mean, i think if he didn't live in the shadow of jfk, he might have been far more generous toward. some of these agreements that were his his inheritance. but he's, you know, you have that those were all statements to kissinger. it's like, oh i don't want to be a soldier with that -- wall. i'm not supposed to say sorry, you tube. i don't want to be associated with the which he saw as a

legacy of kennedy's limited test ban treaty because they weren't his you know that vanity i had to do it himself. so in the 45 seconds or so that we have have left today, aaron, and i'll turn to you since it is your book, could you summarize for what you see as the nixon legacy and establishing kind of the broader architecture of the framework for arms control in the in the cold war into the post war era? how should we think about and his legacy there? 30 seconds. okay. well, i think nixon accomplished and under during his presidency more agreements were signed than almost any other cold war president. so maybe in spite of himself, he was greatly accomplished. but that said, he didn't look at wmd holistically enough. with this many agreements i that's a lot of missed

opportunities and i dissect those with i think great analysis where more could have been done more nuanced. he left a very, very mixed legacy. but i arms control as we know it came to maturity during his presidency for better or for worse. the book available for purchase outside. i encourage you to do so. thanks, aaron. and to ken to todd for the conversation this and thanks to you for your interest in. your question that i.