GBH Openvault
War and Peace in the Nuclear Age; At the Brink; Interview with Jerome Wiesner, 1986 [3]
Part of War and Peace in the Nuclear Age.
03/27/1986
Jerome Wiesner was a Science Advisor to Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy, and Johnson, and an arms control advocate. In the interview he discusses the nuclear arms race. He explains his ideal nuclear strategy, which involves a minimal deterrent, or a hundred bombs on a hundred cities, which should be adequate as long as the missiles are protected and precise, and which would greatly limit the number of nuclear weapons in the world. He also explains other nuclear strategies, including first strike, counterforce, and mutual assured destruction. He argues that the development of more precise systems has been destabilizing, and he provides reasons why he grew discouraged over the prospects for missile defense. He goes on to defend his arguments against an anti-ballistic missile (ABM) defense, an expansive civil defense program, and the B-70 bomber.
License Clip
- Series
- War and Peace in the Nuclear Age
- Program
- At the Brink
- Program Number
105
- Title
Interview with Jerome Wiesner, 1986 [3]
- Series Description
The first atomic explosion in the New Mexico desert on July 16, 1945, changed the world forever. This series chronicles these changes and the history of a new era. It traces the development of nuclear weapons, the evolution of nuclear strategy, and the politics of a world with the power to destroy itself.
In thirteen one-hour programs that combine historic footage and recent interviews with key American, Soviet, and European participants, the nuclear age unfolds: the origin and evolution of nuclear weapons; the people of the past who have shaped the events of the present; the ideas and issues that political leaders, scientists, and the public at large must confront, and the prospects for the future. Nuclear Age highlights the profound changes in contemporary thinking imposed by the advent of nuclear weapons. Series release date: 1/1989
- Program Description
In October 1962, the Soviet Union and the United States are at the brink of nuclear war, the 13 most harrowing days in the nuclear age.
“I remember leaving the White House at the end of that Saturday and thinking that might well be the last sunset I ever saw,” recalls former Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara of Black Saturday, the day the Cuban missile crisis pushed the world to the brink of nuclear war. Aleksandr Alexseev, Soviet ambassador to Cuba at the time, recalled, “We and the Cubans decided that, in order to avoid a United States invasion, we should supply Cuba with missiles.” The US effort to overthrow Fidel Castro at the Bay of Pigs was an expression of President Kennedy’s disbelief about the missiles in Cuba while it surprised Soviet leader Khrushchev according to his speechwriter,Feodor Burlatsky. Major General William Fairborne, speaks about how “We loaded whole blood and a hundred coffins onto the carrier Iwo Jima.” Looking back on those 13 days, former Secretary of State Dean Rusk reflects, “...we’ve got to find some way to inhabit this speck of dust in the universe at the same time.”
- Duration
00:30:04
- Asset Type
Raw video
- Media Type
Video
- Subjects
- United States. Joint Chiefs of Staff
- MX (Weapons system)
- Antimissile missiles
- Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald), 1917-1963
- Nuclear weapons
- Kaysen, Carl
- United States
- Mutual assured destruction
- United States. Department of Defense. Weapons Systems Evaluation Group
- Nuclear arms control
- Johnson, Lyndon B. (Lyndon Baines), 1908-1973
- U.S. Atomic Energy Commission
- McNamara, Robert S., 1916-2009
- United States. Air Force
- Multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles
- Soviet Union
- China
- Ruina, J. P. (Jack P.)
- Carter, Jimmy, 1924-
- LeMay, Curtis E.
- Locations
- Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT), Cambridge, MA
- Genres
- Documentary
- Topics
- War and Conflict
- Global Affairs
- Science
- History
- Contributors
- Wiesner, Jerome B. (Jerome Bert), 1915-1994 (Interviewee)
- Publication Information
- WGBH Educational Foundation
- Citation
- Chicago: “War and Peace in the Nuclear Age; At the Brink; Interview with Jerome Wiesner, 1986 [3],” 03/27/1986, GBH Archives, accessed April 19, 2024, http://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/V_25B22303410D4FEE918AE9E080AFDA39.
- MLA: “War and Peace in the Nuclear Age; At the Brink; Interview with Jerome Wiesner, 1986 [3].” 03/27/1986. GBH Archives. Web. April 19, 2024. <http://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/V_25B22303410D4FEE918AE9E080AFDA39>.
- APA: War and Peace in the Nuclear Age; At the Brink; Interview with Jerome Wiesner, 1986 [3]. Boston, MA: GBH Archives. Retrieved from http://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/V_25B22303410D4FEE918AE9E080AFDA39