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War and Peace in the Nuclear Age; At the Brink; Interview with Norman Cousins, 1986 [1]
Part of War and Peace in the Nuclear Age.
03/03/1986
Norman Cousins was a writer, an essayist, a citizen diplomat, and, for nearly four decades, executive editor of the Saturday Review. In his interview conducted for War and Peace in the Nuclear Age, Cousins recalls his shock upon first seeing the headlines about the bombing of Hiroshima. He challenges the Harry S. Truman administrations official rationale for dropping the bomb, and he discusses the duty of a democratic society to face up to everything in our history. During the Dwight Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy administrations, Cousins became an unofficial citizen diplomat, facilitating communication among the Vatican, the Kremlin, and the White House. Both presidents, he recounts, recognized the need to reduce tensions between the superpowers as well as the value of out-of-channel dialogue to advance diplomatic talks and strengthen ties. Following a visit to the Soviet Union in 1960, Cousins initiated a series of cultural exchanges between Americans and Russians that became known as the Dartmouth Conferences. The Cuban missile crisis unfolded at the beginning of one of these sessions. In his interview, he describes how the influential group he pulled together functioned as a clearinghouse for both sides as the crisis ran its course. The confrontation, he recalls, was both a personal and a historical watershed that gave both Khrushchev and Kennedy a blazing awareness of the implications of nuclear warfare and the understanding that both countries share the same lifeboat. When test-ban treaty talks stalled in 1963, Cousins visited Khrushchev and brokered a fresh start to negotiations. Striking to viewers of this interview is Cousinss ability, through the unusual access he had to the secretary general, to decode the Soviet leader. Through personal anecdotes, he illuminates Khrushchevs character, leadership style, national ambitions, and reactions to events and to domestic and international pressures. Cousins describes his personal conversations with Secretary General Nikita Khrushchev about the legacy of fear that still paralyzed the Russian people a decade after Soviet premier Joseph Stalins death. Cousins also recounts the 1956 controversy sparked when Khrushchev used the expression commonly translated as We will bury you at a Moscow reception for Western ambassadors.
License Clip
- Series
- War and Peace in the Nuclear Age
- Program
- At the Brink
- Program Number
105
- Title
Interview with Norman Cousins, 1986 [1]
- 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
00:57:10
- Asset Type
Raw video
- Media Type
Video
- Subjects
- Soviet Union
- Cuba
- Nuclear weapons
- Japan
- Catholic Church
- China
- John XXIII, Pope, 1881-1963
- Kennedy, John F. (John Fitzgerald), 1917-1963
- Byrnes, James F. (James Francis), 1882-1972
- Teller, Edward, 1908-2003
- Communism
- International relations
- Marshall, George C. (George Catlett), 1880-1959
- MacArthur, Douglas, 1880-1964
- Stalin, Joseph, 1879-1953
- Nuclear weapons -- Testing
- Reuther, Walter, 1907-1970
- Kremlin (Moscow, Russia)
- Johnson, Lyndon B. (Lyndon Baines), 1908-1973
- Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (1963)
- Hiroshima-shi (Japan) -- History -- Bombardment, 1945
- Nuclear arms control
- Nuclear warfare
- Truman, Harry S., 1884-1972
- Leahy, William D.
- Nagasaki-shi (Japan) -- History -- Bombardment, 1945
- Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (1963)
- United States
- Eisenhower, Dwight D. (Dwight David), 1890-1969
- Forrestal, James, 1892-1949
- Khrushchev, Nikita Sergeevich, 1894-1971
- Genres
- Documentary
- Topics
- War and Conflict
- History
- Science
- Global Affairs
- Contributors
- Cousins, Norman (Interviewee)
- Publication Information
- WGBH Educational Foundation
- Citation
- Chicago: “War and Peace in the Nuclear Age; At the Brink; Interview with Norman Cousins, 1986 [1],” 03/03/1986, GBH Archives, accessed April 24, 2024, http://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/V_329C06A5E8FA47C5AAE40EF0BD66C4BD.
- MLA: “War and Peace in the Nuclear Age; At the Brink; Interview with Norman Cousins, 1986 [1].” 03/03/1986. GBH Archives. Web. April 24, 2024. <http://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/V_329C06A5E8FA47C5AAE40EF0BD66C4BD>.
- APA: War and Peace in the Nuclear Age; At the Brink; Interview with Norman Cousins, 1986 [1]. Boston, MA: GBH Archives. Retrieved from http://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/V_329C06A5E8FA47C5AAE40EF0BD66C4BD