- “There is that saving thought that when people look down the cannon’s mouth of nuclear war, they cannot like what they see. We’ve now put behind us forty-one years since a nuclear weapon has been fired in anger, and those who really understand nuclear weapons understand that nuclear war is simply that war which must not be fought, because it not only eliminates all the answers, it eliminates all the questions….The idea of a limited nuclear war is nonsense. The idea of a prolonged nuclear war from which one side can emerge with some sort of advantage is nonsense. And some of this nonsense is drawn into official discussion.” (p. 180-181)
Lesson: Nuclear war should not be fought, and cannot be won; the idea of a limited nuclear war is nonsense.
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- “Moral and ethical considerations play a very important part, even though people don’t wear these things on their shirtsleeves….At the end of the day you find that you’re dealing with human beings, and human beings act in relation to their basic moral concepts.” (p. 182)
Lesson: During international crises, consider the moral implications of your choices.
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- “One must always remember that element of human fallibility.” (p. 183)
Lesson: Remember that the participants in the crisis are human beings limited by their own mortality and errors.
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- “I learned something during the Cuban Missile Crisis that has to do with the emergency plan for moving the top government to the hills in West Virginia. I’m sure that those plans are psychologically impossible. One has to have an alternative government in place made up of people who had nothing to do with the events which unfold. In the first place, people in the government are not going to abandon all their colleagues and their families to get in a helicopter and go charging out to West Virginia. They just aren’t going to do it. In the second place, the first band of shivering survivors who get their hand on the President and the Secretary of State following such a situation will hang them to the nearest tree.” (p. 184)
Lesson: Once a nuclear crisis is over, don’t expect a “golden parachute.” Emergency plans to evacuate top officials and reconstitute the government with people involved in the crisis are unrealistic.
Cited in James G. Blight and David Welch, On the Brink: Americans and Soviets reexamine the Cuban Missile Crisis (New York: Hill and Wang, 1989).
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