The Military Problem
The Reith Lectures
BBC
4.2 • 770 Ratings
🗓️ 1 December 1957
⏱️ 29 minutes
🧾️ Download transcript
Summary
This year's Reith Lecturer is American adviser, diplomat, political scientist, and historian George Frost Kennan. He is best known as "the father" of the USA Containment Policy and is a leading authority on the Cold War. In his series 'Russia, the Atom, and the West', he considers the relationship between the two superpowers Russia and the USA.
In his fourth lecture entitled 'The Military Problem', Professor Kennan discusses the military aspect of the West's conflict with Soviet power. He considers how atomic weapons have changed the relationship between East and West, and confronts the problem of the 'mutually assured destruction' doctrine.
Transcript
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| 0:00.0 | This is a podcast from the archives of the BBC Reith Lectures. |
| 0:05.0 | This lecture in the series Russia, the Atom and the West, given by George F. Kenan, was originally broadcast in 1957. |
| 0:15.1 | The BBC presents the fourth in a series of six wreath lectures on Russia, the Atom and the West, |
| 0:23.0 | by George F. Kenan. |
| 0:26.1 | Mr. Kenan, a leading American authority on Russia, |
| 0:29.6 | is now Professor of History at the Institute for Advanced Study at Princeton, New Jersey. |
| 0:35.7 | In this lecture, the military problem, |
| 0:39.3 | he speaks about the possession of nuclear weapons |
| 0:41.6 | by both Russia and the West, |
| 0:43.7 | and the effect it has on Western military dispositions. |
| 0:49.0 | Mr. Kennan. |
| 0:52.0 | What I have to speak about is the military aspect of our conflict with Soviet power. |
| 0:58.0 | It may seem strange and scarcely fitting that a civilian and common citizen |
| 1:03.3 | and a person not privy to governmental information should venture to speak of such things at all, |
| 1:10.2 | and I do so with some diffidence. But whoever |
| 1:14.4 | thinks seriously about the problem of our relations with Russia cannot avoid doing his best to |
| 1:20.0 | understand its military aspect and making certain assumptions with regard to it, and since I have |
| 1:25.6 | undertaken to talk about it at all, I think I should make |
| 1:28.5 | clear what those assumptions are. There are very few people, I'm sure, who would not agree |
| 1:35.5 | that never in history have nations been faced with a danger greater than that which now |
| 1:41.0 | confronts us in the form of the atomic weapon. Except in instances where there was a possibility of complete genocide, |
| 1:50.0 | past dangers have generally threatened only the existing generation. |
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