This is CBS Eye on the World. Here's John Batchelor.

It is the fall of 1962. John Kennedy is the president, and the meetings in the White

House over these last days have been in a crisis mode. We know it now is the Cuban missile

crisis. However, it has lessons in it that here all these decades later, we can review because

of the concern that we're in a new Cold War, Cold War 2.0, and review because we're not in the same predicament. There's a third player

on the field, the People's Republic of China. I learned this again and again with lessons learned

and things to know from a new book by Michael McFaul, the distinguished professor, who is the director

of the Freeman Spogley Institute on the Stanford campus,

also at the Hoover Institution. The book is Autocrats versus Democrats, China, Russia, America,

and the New Global Disorder. Michael, a very good evening to you. Thank you, Professor, for joining.

Immediately to October, November, 1962,

Jack Kennedy is faced with information that the Soviets under Nikita Khrushchev have placed

medium-range missiles with the possibility of delivering nuclear weapon warheads into Cuba and what is to be done. That was a

crisis at the time that you and your reporting correctly identify as one of the worst, if not

the worst moment in the Cold War. What did we learn then? What do we know now about that confrontation

that helps us here in the 21st century?

Good evening, Professor. Well, good evening, and thanks for having me, John. Good to see you again.

I think it's a great place to start, because it was, in my view, one of the most dangerous,

probably the most dangerous moment in the Cold War. And obviously, we still call it the

Cold War historically because it didn't become a hot war between the United States and the Soviet Union,

even though they did fight from time to time proxy wars. But that was a major crisis because,

of course, it involved nuclear weapons.

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