RESTART NUCLEAR WEAPON ESCALATION IN THE RUSSO-UKRAINIAN WAR: 4/8: 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
⏱️ 8 minutes
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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.
2957 ZAOPERATION PLUMBOB
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is CBSI on the world. I'm John Batchewa Serhi Ploki. Professor Serhi Ploki's new book is |
| 0:07.5 | Nuclear Folly, a history of the Cuban Missile Crisis. He has transcripts from the tapes made by President |
| 0:14.3 | Kennedy in his consultation with his counselors before and after the excom committee of the NSC begins on the 23rd. |
| 0:23.4 | We have notes from the Presidium meeting. |
| 0:26.0 | Kosigen's there. |
| 0:27.0 | Brezhnev's there. |
| 0:28.4 | McCoyen is there. |
| 0:30.1 | And we will come to McCoyan because he, like Adley-Stevenson, is a man who represents |
| 0:34.8 | diplomacy and not war-fighting. |
| 0:38.2 | During the week of following the revelations, on the 19th brainstorming, I'm following the |
| 0:43.3 | professors reporting. |
| 0:45.1 | On the 20th, Rusk brings in Grameco, and they have a confrontational meeting with President |
| 0:51.3 | Kennedy. |
| 0:52.3 | Gromico has excuses claiming the R12 and R-14s are defensive missiles. |
| 0:58.1 | On the 20th again, later that night, the committee comes together and they vote for a blockade. |
| 1:04.3 | However, during the course of that day, the Joint Chiefs have spoken out. |
| 1:08.8 | They're ready for invasion. |
| 1:11.5 | Upland 312. Professor, who says Munich to the President of the United States, and why does he say it? |
| 1:19.2 | Well, Darryl LeMay, of course, is leading opposition to President Kennedy, And he's really quite, quite brutal and disrespectful in doing that. |
| 1:35.8 | He's challenging him in front of other chiefs and accusing him of appeasement. |
| 1:43.5 | And appeasement was something that was really very, very offensive for Jack Kennedy, |
| 1:52.0 | because his father, of course, Joseph Kennedy, who was U.S. ambassador in UK, |
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