8/8: How little both threatening and threatened sides knew of the other, 1962, 2023: 8/8: Nuclear Folly: A History of the Cuban Missile Crisis, by Serhii Plokhy
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 17 April 2023
⏱️ 10 minutes
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8/8: How little both threatening and threatened sides knew of the other, 1962, 2023: 8/8: Nuclear Folly: A History of the Cuban Missile Crisis, by Serhii Plokhy
https://www.amazon.com/Nuclear-Folly-History-Missile-Crisis/dp/0393540812/ref=tmm_hrd_swatch_0?_encoding=UTF8&qid=&sr=
Nearly thirty years after the end of the Cold War, today’s world leaders are abandoning disarmament treaties, building up their nuclear arsenals, and exchanging threats of nuclear strikes. To survive this new atomic age, we must relearn the lessons of the most dangerous moment of the Cold War: the Cuban missile crisis.
Serhii Plokhy’s Nuclear Folly offers an international perspective on the crisis, tracing the tortuous decision-making that produced and then resolved it, which involved John Kennedy and his advisers, Nikita Khrushchev and Fidel Castro, and their commanders on the ground. In breathtaking detail, Plokhy vividly recounts the young JFK being played by the canny Khrushchev; the hotheaded Castro willing to defy the USSR and threatening to align himself with China; the Soviet troops on the ground clearing jungle foliage in the tropical heat, and desperately trying to conceal nuclear installations on Cuba, which were nonetheless easily spotted by U-2 spy planes; and the hair-raising near misses at sea that nearly caused a Soviet nuclear-armed submarine to fire its weapons
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is CBS I On The World. I'm John Batsowith, Professor Serhi Ploki. His exciting, thrilling, |
| 0:11.0 | challenging, amazing new book is Nuclear Folly, a history of the Cuban Missile Crisis. |
| 0:17.1 | The world started again on October 27th. By October 28th, the perception in Washington |
| 0:22.9 | is that Jack Kennedy has won. The perception in Moscow is Nikita Kurschev to rationalize. |
| 0:29.9 | Well, I've made them promise they won't invade the islands, so we've saved Cuba. |
| 0:34.0 | Well, I've got the missiles out of Turkey, but Melonovsky, the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, |
| 0:40.0 | their equivalent, General-in-Chief, and other voices at the Presidium that would be Mr. Kosegan |
| 0:46.3 | and Mr. Brezhnev. Do not believe that it's a success, but that will wait two more years before |
| 0:51.8 | Kurschev is removed in a coup in the Presidium. Right now, we have to deal with Kurschev rationalizing |
| 0:58.9 | what's happening. He can. He does. He calls it a success to guarantee Cuba, but at no point as |
| 1:06.2 | the professor indicated, as he consulted with Fidel Castro, the passionate young man who is now in |
| 1:13.2 | charge of an island where there are still nuclear-tip missiles, tactical missiles, IL-28 bombers capable |
| 1:22.4 | of carrying nuclear warheads. Nuclear warheads parked in one particular ship tied up in Cuba. |
| 1:29.3 | Castro is in charge of all of this. Professor Kurschev did not pay attention to Castro. |
| 1:36.0 | He then realizes that Castro is going to be a problem. He turns to Mikhail and asks him to |
| 1:42.8 | solve this. Mikhail again is the hero. Does Mikhail at Mikhail at this point, does he feel |
| 1:49.0 | vindicated? Does he feel put upon? He's got family problems. |
| 1:58.7 | Castro believes that he's going down. So he sends the letter to Kurschev, advocating the |
| 2:07.4 | nuclear attack by the Soviet Union on the United States. So in all this crisis, |
| 2:13.4 | Kennedy and Kurschev are really, really frightened of the possibility of the nuclear war. |
| 2:19.2 | Castro is the one where at some point is actually pushing for the nuclear strike because he |
| 2:23.9 | believes that he has actually nothing to lose anymore. And his revolution is perceived, especially |
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