Welcome to the Book Club with Jeffrey Sachs!
In this first episode, world-renowned economist and Columbia University Professor Jeffrey Sachs speaks with Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Martin J. Sherwin about his book Gambling with Armageddon: Nuclear Roulette from Hiroshima to the Cuban Missile Crisis, which explores the origins, scope, and consequences of the evolving place of nuclear weapons in the post-World War II world.
Professors Sachs and Sherwin discuss the choices of the Truman and Eisenhower administrations over the course of the nuclear arms race, Khrushchev’s and Kennedy’s positions during the Bay of Pigs debacle, and the often-overlooked role of US Ambassador to the United Nations Adlai Stevenson—and luck—in preventing a nuclear world war.
The Book Club with Jeffrey Sachs is brought to you by the SDG Academy, the flagship education initiative of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. Learn more and get involved at bookclubwithjeffreysachs.org.
Footnotes:
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➡️ Website: bookclubwithjeffreysachs.org
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Welcome to the Book Club with Jeffrey Sachs!
In this first episode, world-renowned economist and Columbia University Professor Jeffrey Sachs speaks with Pulitzer Prize-winning historian Martin J. Sherwin about his book Gambling with Armageddon: Nuclear Roulette from Hiroshima to the Cuban Missile Crisis, which explores the origins, scope, and consequences of the evolving place of nuclear weapons in the post-World War II world.
Professors Sachs and Sherwin discuss the choices of the Truman and Eisenhower administrations over the course of the nuclear arms race, Khrushchev’s and Kennedy’s positions during the Bay of Pigs debacle, and the often-overlooked role of US Ambassador to the United Nations Adlai Stevenson—and luck—in preventing a nuclear world war.
The Book Club with Jeffrey Sachs is brought to you by the SDG Academy, the flagship education initiative of the UN Sustainable Development Solutions Network. Learn more and get involved at bookclubwithjeffreysachs.org.
Footnotes:
⭐️ Thank you for listening!
➡️ Sign up for the newsletter: https://bit.ly/subscribeBCJS
➡️ Website: bookclubwithjeffreysachs.org
🎉 Don't forget to subscribe and share your favorite episode with your friends!
📣 Leave a rating and tell us what you thought about this episode!
Sachs (00:04):
Hello, I'm Jeffrey Sachs. And this is book club. In this episode, I will be speaking with Martin Sherwin, Pulitzer prize, winning author, and the world's foremost historian of nuclear weapons and the cold war in Gambling with Armageddon. Professor Sherwin offers the definitive history of the Cuban missile crisis, how we arrived at the brink of nuclear annihilation and the lessons we need to learn for our survival. It's a fantastic book. It's a thrilling read Marty it's gripping in every page and startling in the details with your mind exploding each moment. My God, could this be real.
Sherwin (00:49):
Well, thank you, Jeffrey. I'm delighted to be here and I appreciate your enthusiastic embrace of Gambling with Armageddon.
Sachs (00:59):
If I may, I want to start with a quotation of John F. Kennedy a year before the Cuban missile crisis. It's in your book. It's in his speech to the UN general assembly in 1961. He says:
JFK (01:12):
Every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident or miscalculation or by madness. The weapons of war must be abolished before they abolish us.
Sachs (01:38):
And what strikes me about that quotation is first of all, Kennedy got it. He knew how extraordinarily dangerous the world was, how survival was hanging by a thread. He said it, he knew it. He felt it. And yet he walked right into the nearest disaster that humanity has ever experienced.
Sherwin (02:08):
I really appreciate your beginning with a quotation because Khrushchev who didn't speak in such elegant language would have said the same thing in one way or another. And you're absolutely right about Kennedy having this understanding of the danger of nuclear weapons and the threat to humanity that they posed. Khrushchev shared that. Nevertheless, and this is the key. Nevertheless, understanding those dangers completely, they both embrace nuclear weapons as an instrument of diplomacy to advance their agendas.
Sachs (02:54):
If I could go back to the start. You are the Pulitzer prize, winning co-author, of a related fantastic book that should be read together with the Gambling with Armageddon and that is American Prometheus about J Robert Oppenheimer, the American physicist who leads the development of the atomic weapons. And in that book, you start when the idea of a nuclear weapon, at the beginning, the physicists are right to tell Franklin Roosevelt, that America should have it before Germany gets it. The project is started with the Oppenheimer's scientific direction. And then I want to start our discussion about that to Germany's defeat in May, 1945, and the weapon is not yet final. And some of the scientists are saying, okay, Germany is no longer a threat let's stop before we actually even finished the atomic weapon. At that moment, Oppenheimer says, no, no, no. We've been hired to do our job. Let's finish. Could you just pick up the story at that point, because that is the start of the atomic age.
Sherwin (04:05):
There's a wonderful interview and a film called The Day after Trinity: Robert Oppenheimer and the Atomic Bomb. In an interview with his brother, Frank Oppenheimer, who's also a physicist and was also at Los Alamos in the last year or so of the war. And he's asked why the project continued? Why he Frank continued, who was a very progressive fellow. And he thinks about it for a few seconds. And he says:
F. Oppenheimer (04:42):
I was impressed because most of the sort of fervor for developing the bomb came and it kind of anti-fascist fervor against Germany. But when D-day came along, nobody slowed up one little bit. No one said “it doesn't matter now”. We all kept working. It wasn't because we understood the significance against Japan. It was because the machinery had caught us in the trap and we were anxious to get this thing to go.
Sherwin (05:10):
They had started something and they had to finish it. Now that was definitely one reason. Another reason was Oppenheimer's idea that this incredible weapon was going to change how the world interacted, how nations, uh, behaved with each other. The threat of destroying humanity, he believed would be so overwhelmingly obvious. And so clearly requiring an international arrangement that made sure that nuclear did not proliferate, that it was important to demonstrate the power of this thing. So nations would say, Oh my God, we need to get together. We need to change the way we think. This did not prove to be very accurate. No, no, it was incredibly naive. But when you list all of the reasons for that thinking, there's no nuclear lobby, it's all brand new. It's going to be delivered to the world suddenly. How can sensible leaders not join together to avoid a nuclear arms race that can destroy the world? Well, the answer to that is our history.
Sachs (06:43):
Well, you you've written that history. And actually I'd say you're the leading historian of why the bomb was used initially after Germany's defeat. And then Japan on the verge of surrender Truman goes ahead and uses the nuclear bomb. Not even just once, but twice
Media (07:05):
Hiroshima, August six, 1945. The first uranium bomb exploded with a light so bright it could have been seen from another plane. More than 100,000 killed, 40,000 injured, 20,000 missing. Burns, blindness radiation sickness. It took only nine seconds. Today, even now the victims still suffer and die. Three days later, a second bomb, a plutonium bomb dropped on Nagasaki. 80,000 dead.
Sachs (07:44):
Could we spend just a couple of minutes about that decision? It's depressing reading, frankly, but I wonder if you could help us to understand. And for me reading about Truman in both the Oppenheimer book and in Gambling with Armageddon was really depressing because, uh, I have liked Truman, but not, not so much, I would say this moment. So maybe you could describe the decisions.
Sherwin (08:12):
Well, you know, Truman was in an awful box. He was dropped into that box suddenly, totally ignorant. He had been vice president for, I think it was 82 days. He had met with Roosevelt only once. He didn't know anything about the atomic bomb. He didn't know anything about foreign policy in general. And, he brought in an advisor, James Byrnes, and to make a very long story, short, Byrnes was a real hawk and in his view, which we have documented in interviews that are available on tape. I'm quoting Byrnes; we should end the war before the Russians came in. And Byrnes promoted the idea of using nuclear weapons. And Truman went along with that. And we had two different kinds of bombs, uranium and the plutonium bomb that was used on Nagasaki. And both bombs were used. The important thing for the Cuban Missile Crisis and for the story that I'm trying to explain is that the use of that weapon had a profound impact on Stalin. Stalin saw I Hiroshima and Nagasaki as events that were designed to frighten him.
Sachs 1 (09:57):
Not all wrong.
Sherwin (09:59):
Not all that wrong. And he immediately said, we just have to have a nuclear weapon. So Oppenheim his idea that by using nuclear weapons, we would alert the world to this terrible threat, had exactly the opposite effect.
Sachs (10:18):
So, let's go to Eisenhower who becomes a president in early 1953, January 20th of 1953. He is a level headed, shrewd capable bureaucratic manager, and yet ends up dramatically accelerating the nuclear arms race. Which one wouldn't necessarily have guessed that Eisenhower would do because he seems actually the consummate rational manager, in a way based on the World War II experience, but he becomes the agent of another acceleration of the nuclear arms race.
Sherwin (11:03):
Yes. Well, I think the first thing we have to emphasize, because you said it is that based on World War II experience. Dwight Eisenhower spent his entire life before the presidency in the military. He led the victory in Europe. He, in the summer of 1945, was against using the atomic bomb. He said that to Truman and possibly, he said to Simpson, the Secretary of Defense at the Potsdam Conference. And he may have said it to the President also. But in 1953, he comes into office. and for all the reasons you described in terms of his personality, so what am I facing? I have the Korean War. I have to deal with the Soviet Union. And the one thing we didn't know about Eisenhower is what an anti-communist ideologue he was. I mean, and I quoted it in somewhere in Gambling, that in 1946, he wrote in his diary something to this the effect. We are engaged in a race to the death with communism. And 1946, you know, in his diary, you know, a race to the death? We've just been allies for the last five years. Eisenhower looks around and well, we have superiority in nuclear weapons. The nuclear temptation is there and he asks how it turns to the nuclear weapon. And he says:
Eisenhower (12:52):
The United States, stockpile of atomic weapons, which of course increases daily and exceeds by many times the totally equivalent of the total # of all bombs and all shells that came from every plane and every gun in every theater of war and in all of the years of World War II.
Sherwin (13:17):
When Eisenhower came into office, there were about 1200 nuclear weapons in the American arsenal. When he left office, there were over 22,000 nuclear weapons in the American arsenal. The cold war and the nuclear arms race, as we know, it was structured by the Eisenhower administration and it became a blueprint for Khrushchev.
Sachs (13:44):
Yeah. One of the things that is also puzzling for me, Stalin dies in 1953,
Media (13:52):
Stalin is dead. And he cannot bequeath to anyone his prestige. A new era begins. An era in which the guiding spirit is Liberty, not enslavement. And when human relations will be those as fraternity, not one man’s domination.
Sachs (14:13):
Stalin's dead. And there's clearly outreach from the Soviet union to do something different. Even Eisenhower makes some initial peace gesture, but it ends up, it ends up not having any effect. Why?
Sherwin (14:32):
Well, that's the $64,000 question, not just for that moment in history, but for so many moments in history where that sort of inability for two sides who want something and cannot figure out how to get it, because they were afraid if side A makes an offer that looks soft, side B will say it is softening, so we can be tougher. And that's what's going on with the United States and the Soviet Union through most of the Cold War. But certainly in the 1950s, ignorance was the foundation of US / Soviet relations. During the fifties, Khrushchev was terrified that the Americans were going to attack the Soviet Union. The Americans were beating the drums that the Soviet Union was going to take over Europe and attack the United States. And it was flailing in the dark, even though both nations or the leaders of both nations, at least were seeking some kind of stability, both arrangements in Europe and certainly with respect to nuclear weapons, but the more they worried about it, the more they got deeper into the nuclear soup.
Sachs (16:11):
And isn't it, the case also that when each side says the other wants the worst, part of the problem is that there are some on each side that do want the worst. Yes. And on the US side, the idea of a first strike against the Soviet Union, wasn't a fantasy only of the Soviet Union. But it was a fantasy of Curtis LeMay maybe or others.
Sherwin (16:34):
Yes. Curtis LeMay became head of the strategic air command after he was very successful in Europe during the Berlin airlift 1948. And during the 1950s he developed this most extraordinarily efficient and dangerous service. The strategic air command was the nightmare of Khrushchev. Every thought about the United States, these ideas of striking the Soviet Union in order to prevent a war, you know, start a war to prevent a war. They were all over the newspapers. I remember when I was the air intelligence officer in my squadron from 1961 through the Cuban Missile Crisis. And I remember reading all of these confidential articles that would be sent to people like me about the likelihood that we are going to have, a war with the Soviet Union. It was more than likelihood, I remember one article that just talked about the inevitability of it.
Sachs (17:58):
The mindset is incredible. And that brings us to the immediate antecedents of the crisis, how we got to October, 1962. But, and I'd like to start with John F. Kennedy. Who's a great hero of mine. And I love so many things that he did, but he definitely played a role in stumbling into this crisis in several ways. One of which is during the 1960 campaign, he ran to the right of the right,
Sherwin (18:28):
Correct. He ran to the right of Nixon. He criticized the Eisenhower administration for allowing Castro to stay in power.
JFK (18:40):
I look at Cuba, 90 miles off the coast of the United States. In 1957 I was in Havana. I talked to the American Ambassador there. He said that he was the second most powerful man in Cuba. And yet even though Ambassador Smith and Ambassador Gardner, both Republican Ambassadors, both warned of Castro, the mocks just influence around Castro. The communist influences around Castro. Both of them have testified in the last six weeks that in spite of their warnings to the American government, nothing was done.
Sherwin (19:10):
And he talked about a missile gap, turned out the gap was the other way around. The United States was way ahead of the Soviet Union. And as you said, he boxed himself in completely. One of the most interesting stories, parts of the story of the Cuban Missile Crisis is the relationship to the Bay of Pigs. The Eisenhower administration, had secretly begun training anti-Castro Cubans to invade Cuba. And this was handed off to the Kennedy administration. And Kennedy looked at this and he said, Oh my God, this is, this looks stupid, basically, but how can I not do what I said Eisenhower should do when Eisenhower was getting ready to do it? He backed himself into the corner.
Sachs (20:09):
And then presided over this disaster. In addition to how stupid the idea of this invasion of Cuba was, when it happened, Khrushchev sent a letter to Kennedy, of course, saying, there are pirates in your government that are launching this illegal operation. And Kennedy writes back, but we have nothing to do with this. And Khrushchev writes back to Kennedy saying, don't ever lie to me this way again, basically paraphrasing. I don't know if it resonates what I'm saying, because it always struck me. It is a big problem of international affairs in general, but the amount of line is so pervasive. We lose track of how to reach agreements because of that.
Sherwin (20:56):
True. And one of the ironies of that is that Kennedy was hoping from the time he got into office to create a relationship with Khrushchev that was reliable. And in order to do that, instead of handling everything through the normal channels, he set up back channels of correspondence. He had his brother Bobby deal with a Soviet agent and he thought he was getting the straight skinny so to speak. You know, the back channel is the honest channel. In the public channel, we have to say what we have to say. Well, Khrushchev took advantage of this and then lied to Kennedy when he decided to put the missiles into Cuba, which was about the spring of 1962. He just kept saying, these are offensive weapons. Well, you know, he had a point that we had said that all of the missiles that Eisenhower had sent to Europe, the Jupiters that were in Turkey, the Jupiters that were in Italy, the fours that were in Britain, all of those were for defense. Those were not going to start a war with just those missiles are there to prevent the Soviets from starting a war. Well, Khrushchev said, well, that's what I'm doing. I'm putting the same kind of missiles in Cuba in order to prevent the United States from invading my new best friends territory,
Sachs (22:45):
It's striking in the book, how little Kennedy was really even aware of the Jupiter missiles. And he didn't really know why are they there? What are they doing? How something so salient in the adversaries mind was not even very conscious in his mind, even though it was at the complete center of these issues.
Sherwin (23:08):
You know, that is a very good point that you make the imbalance between how one side views, a particular issue and the other side views it so differently. That's true in Berlin too, which becomes central to the Cuban Missile Crisis. And the point that you make about Kennedy not understanding or not really being on top of the Jupiter’s comes out of the secret recordings of the EXCOM meetings. EXCOM was the executive committee of the National Security Council where the advisors that Kennedy brought together after he was told about the discovery of the Soviet missiles in Cuba, on October 16th, it is fantastic to watch Kennedy's mind the way he thinks about things that are so different from the rest of his advisors. And this is an absolutely unique document. We have secret recordings of the most dangerous crisis in human history. And we know exactly what these guys were all saying.
Sachs (24:30):
Yeah. And for all of the people listening, you have to read this book to see both the drama, the shape of the conversations and the incredible luck that we got out of this in one piece. It's such a powerful book.
Sherwin (24:49):
Well, one of the really interesting things that happens during the Cuban missile crisis in all kinds of different ways, is the role that luck plays. Just circumstance. It happens that on October 16th, when Kennedy is informed early in the morning by George Bundy, that the Soviet missiles have been discovered. And Stephenson, who's the American Ambassador to the United Nations is in Washington. And he's arranged for a lunch with the president after he does his business at the state department. After lunch Kennedy takes him up to the family quarters and shows them the photographs that he saw that morning. And that the first meeting of the EXCOM is over. Everybody has agreed. We're going to have to bomb or invade Cuba.
Sachs (25:47):
And by the way Marty, on all on the mistaken impressions of every detail, whether the weapons are already installed, how many troops there are every military assumption wrong, by the way, I think it's just worth underscoring.
Speaker 2 (26:03):
Yes. Yeah. The CIA reports, there are about 10,000 Soviet troops. There are actually 42,000. They do not know that the Soviets have tactical nuclear weapons. If we had invaded, it would have been a disaster that would've led to a worst disaster. Well, you know, war. In any case, Stevenson looks at this stuff and he's just as appalled as Kennedy was. And Kennedy says to him, well, we're going to have to bomb and raid to get rid of those weapons. And Stevenson says, Whoa, no, we don't. We can negotiate our way out of this. And we know what Stevenson said, because the next day he wrote a memo summarizing that whole meeting. And it is, I think pretty certain that Stevenson laid out the blueprint in this memorandum for how to end the crisis without a war. And he got no credit for that whatsoever. Quite the contrary. At the end of the crisis, Kennedy has a, a friend of his who's a journalist Bartlett. He encourages him to write an article about the Cuban Missile Crisis. And when he reads a draft of the article, he pencils into the margin, Stephenson wanted a Munich. And he just stabbed Stevenson in the back. So, you know, Kennedy is a very complicated guy.
Sachs (27:46):
This is what I mean about the problem of remembering history from knowing history. Because you know what really is, what we remember is what we believe, not what really is. And it does come through Kennedy's rationality, Stevenson's decency and diplomacy and autonomy. The Secretary General of the UN also playing a very constructive role and Khrushchev, I would say the four of them together bring about this near miraculous solution against the advice of almost everybody else that would have ended the world most likely. One question I have about this from a historical point of view that I can't understand at all, how was the trade of the Turkish missiles and the Cuban missiles? Why did the Soviets keep it secret? Why did Khrushchev keep it secret to the point of losing his premiership, losing his power? And it was kept secret from the American people for a decade. So we thought we had gone eyeball to eyeball, and it was toughness that did it where it was diplomacy. That's the real lesson, but we weren't even told that it's diplomacy.
Sherwin (29:02):
I just to try to frame the story for our listeners near the end of the crisis, in effect Khrushchev and Kennedy formed essentially a team to try and solve this crisis, giving everybody a little of what they needed. Kennedy had made it clear that he was willing to make a pledge. The United States would not invade Cuba. Okay. Khrushchev seemed to accept that. Then he came back with another demand that, that he made public, that the Jupiter missiles, 130 miles from the Soviet Union, had to be removed in exchange for his removing the missiles from Cuba. All of Kennedy's advisors were absolutely against this. They felt Khrushchev was holding a gun to their head. Kennedy said to them, we are not going to have a very good war. If people understand that all we had to do is take these junk missiles out by 1962 - junk missiles out of Turkey in exchange for Cuba, no, we can't do it.
Sherwin (30:20):
We can't do it. You know, the advisor said. It'll harm our credibility. And Kennedy was absolutely isolated from this. So he came up with the idea that he was sending his brother to the Soviet Ambassador in Washington, Dobrynin. And basically Bobby told Dobrynin that those missiles had to be out of there in three months, but they cannot in any way ever be associated with the idea that this was a trade. We'll deny it, you know, so on and so forth. And we'll leave the missiles there too. So why did Khrushchev keep that secret? This was a feather in his cap. He kept the secret because he looked forward to repairing the relationship with Kennedy, that his lying to Kennedy about putting the missiles in Cuba had destroyed. And this was the big, the foundation and effect of a new trusting relationship
Sachs (31:39):
That makes so much sense. And I had not made that link in my own mind.
Sherwin (31:44):
Yeah. And then Kennedy's assassinated. And . . .
Sachs (31:49):
But before that, I think it's crucial to reflect on one of the, I think the most powerful conclusion after this peaceful diplomacy was the ability of Khrushchev and Kennedy. The following year to come to the partial nuclear test ban treaty
JFK (32:08):
Yesterday, a shaft of light caught into the darkness negotiations were concluded in Moscow, on a treaty to ban all nuclear tests in the atmosphere and out of space and underwater. For the first time, an agreement has been reached on bringing the forces of nuclear destruction under international control.
Sachs (32:33):
And I always regard that as a miracle of good sense and rationality that after the almost destruction of the world, the two adversaries essentially made peace the following year. And these two who had come to see themselves as partners who were determined to get this right. And they did. And at least some argued that Kennedy's assassination was the payback of hard liners for that. Although there's many other reasons why hardliners and right-wing nuts may have been enraged, but they learned something of profound significance that redirected the world.
Sherwin (33:16):
Yes. I think the Cuban Missile Crisis was the fulcrum around which the cold war churned. The first 17 years of the nuclear age, from Hiroshima to the Cuban Missile Crisis was the period of time where the Curtis let's call it, the Curtis. Little General Curtis LeMays attitude could be presented upfront as an American potential policy. Afterwards, everybody learned, you have to be much more careful, you cannot threaten nuclear war and expect to be able to sidestep it with ease. The nuclear deterrent structure that is set up is actually very dangerous. And at one point in the book, I point out that the real problem is that nuclear weapons are very good for initiating the kinds of crises they're designed to prevent. And they're no good for preventing or resolving the crisis once they have created it.
Sherwin (34:38):
So what the heck are these weapons for? I mean, it's no more complicated in a fundamental sense then why are they there for the same reasons mountains are there, they're there. I mean, you know, right? Now those things are there and how do you get rid of them? That's the challenge of our future. How do we replace the imagined security that nuclear weapons provide? Nuclear weapons States with a security that will serve the same purpose without providing the horrendous danger of destroying civilization. To go back to Hiroshima on April 25th, 1945, Secretary of War, Henry L Stimson went to the new President, Truman, with a memorandum. And in that memorandum, he said, we are about to build a new weapon that can destroy civilization. He made it very clear. Even before nuclear weapons existed, these weapons can destroy civilization.
Sherwin (36:03):
And then he goes on to say in the memorandum that the United States, given its leadership, is morally responsible for any destruction of civilization that may occur in the future. We have to live up to that moral responsibility.
Sachs:
Marty. I not only am sure that all of us listening to you, agree with you, but I think that the first way to do this is to understand what you have shown and to read your books and to understand the profound lessons of them we have in front of us in the world, the UN Treaty on the prohibition of nuclear weapons. Most of the world recognizes that this makes no sense, but the nuclear powers, including the United States have not signed on, most of the world has signed on, but not the United States yet. And the lessons that you have that these weapons serve nothing. But to keep us under that sword of Damocles that President Kennedy talked about now, it's 60 years now, since he said those words remains absolutely true
Media (37:18):
Today, the UK has a total stock pile of 215 warheads and maintains a fleet of four nuclear submarines, each carrying 16 Trident missiles. France also seems to favor the sob. It has 300 warheads and most are deployed on submarines equipped with M 45 and M 51, Ms. Signs, Israel, neither confirm nor deny the existence of its nuclear weapons, stockpile, but it's estimated to have around 80 warheads and has the capability to build more Pakistan. Isn't quite so shy about its nuclear ambitions, a healthy stock pile of around 140 warheads. And it's working to improve its arsenal. The reason for that of course, is neighboring India home to an estimated 130 warheads. It's also increasing its stockpile and enhancing delivery methods. China has 270 warheads. It can deliver by a land and sea. Then there's a very secretive North Korea, just how advanced their nuclear program is remains unclear.
Media (38:20):
They claim to have a new type of Intercontinental ballistic missile that can hit the U S mainland experts think they have enough material for around 10 petroleum-based warheads, but there's also believed to be producing highly enriched uranium. Is that true by 2020, they could have between 20 to a hundred warheads, the United States, which is increasingly concerned about North Korea's nuclear program has the second largest talk pot in the world with 6,800 warheads in total, 2,800 of them are retired. They're still intact. They're just waiting to be dismantled. And to this day, the us is the only country to have used nuclear weapons in war. But in terms of pure numbers, Russia remains the biggest nuclear power in the world with 7,000 warheads and just over two and a half thousand retired. But according to icon, it's also in modernization mode. Perhaps what is the most chilling is that many of today's nuclear weapons are much more powerful than the ones dropped on Japan in 1945, a single nuclear warhead if dropped on a large city, could kill millions.
Speaker 7 (39:32):
Please join me next time when I speak with Richard Rothstein about his remarkable book, The Color of Law, a profound history of racial segregation and injustice in America and what we should do to right past wrongs. Thank you for joining in the conversation. Please subscribe wherever you listen to your podcasts.