RESTART NUCLEAR WEAPON ESCALATION IN THE RUSSO-UKRAINIAN WAR: 2/8: Nuclear Folly: A History of the Cuban Missile Crisis, by Serhii Plokhy
The John Batchelor Show
John Batchelor
4.5 • 2.8K Ratings
🗓️ 24 November 2024
⏱️ 6 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
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.
1906 WAR OF THE WORLDS
Transcript
Click on a timestamp to play from that location
| 0:00.0 | This is CBSI on the world. |
| 0:04.7 | I'm John Batchel. |
| 0:05.9 | And Serhi Ploky's new book is Nuclear Folly, |
| 0:09.1 | a history of the Cuban Missile Crisis. |
| 0:11.5 | We come to a moment, a pause in the crisis at hand in the White House, |
| 0:17.0 | to ask Nikita Khrushchev, who was he at this moment? |
| 0:21.5 | Professor, my growing up, and our growing up, |
| 0:26.1 | Khrushchev was emphasized as something of a large clownish character, |
| 0:31.1 | banging his shoe at the United Nations. |
| 0:33.3 | But he was bloody-minded, he was successful, he was a peasant, |
| 0:37.0 | and he was a powerful actor, |
| 0:38.8 | often telling crude proverbs and overwhelming the better educated in the more ideological |
| 0:44.7 | presidium. However, what was he to Jack Kennedy? What was their history together that comes |
| 0:51.0 | to this crisis in 62? |
| 0:57.3 | First of all, about Nikita Khrushchev. |
| 1:04.3 | He was really mistook to be a clown by many people who dealt with him. |
| 1:12.6 | But the most important thing about Nikita Khrushchev is that he became successor to Joseph Stalin. He's not only survived under Joseph Stalin for decades, but he also was able to outsmart and then eventually to kill |
| 1:21.6 | the chief secret policeman of Joseph Stalin, his name was Lovren Tiberia. |
| 1:30.3 | So it was a very, very shrewd and experienced and kind of politician and political leader. |
| 1:38.3 | And he believed that Jack Kennedy actually owed him his presidential elections because he was sending the KGB officers |
| 1:48.6 | to the headquarters of President Kennedy, headed by, at that time, by Robert Kennedy, offering |
| 1:56.6 | help and assistance. So in today's language, we probably would call this collusion. But if |
... |
Please login to see the full transcript.
Disclaimer: The podcast and artwork embedded on this page are from John Batchelor, and are the property of its owner and not affiliated with or endorsed by Tapesearch.
Generated transcripts are the property of John Batchelor and are distributed freely under the Fair Use doctrine. Transcripts generated by Tapesearch are not guaranteed to be accurate.
Copyright © Tapesearch 2026.