American University historian Peter Kuznick
By Mohammad Memarian
On January 24, I had an appointment for an interview with Peter Kuznick, 73-year-old professor of history and director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University in Washington D.C. At the time, a war was brewing between Russia and Ukraine, and our talk on the history of imperialism almost inevitably touched upon current affairs, especially the prospect of a war which, as it turned out, started exactly one month after our talk.
For my part, I was hopeful that a real war was out of question, and I was not alone in that hope. A limited show of power and some muscle flexing? Maybe. But a full-fledged war which would not only cost many civilians their lives and displace many more, but also radically change the already uncertain dynamics of international power for many years – or even decades – to come, was not something I’d intimate. Perhaps I was in denial.
Kuznick, coauthor (with Oliver Stone) of a 10 part Showtime documentary film series and book entitled ‘The Untold History of the United States’, was much more sober in his initial analysis. When he said he was worried, I asked him if he could recall the last time he had not been worried.
“I’m always worried,” he said. “I was worried during the end of the Trump administration that he was going to try to start a war with Iran. That that was very worrisome, but he wasn't taking actions to do that. Right now, I’m even more worried as both sides seem to be taking actions that would actually cause a war.”
I asked him what made the situation especially concerning. Kuznick said, “This is the most dangerous moment we have faced as a planetary species, more than any time in the last 60 years, and maybe ever, especially since the relations between the US and China, and the US and Russia, are at the worst. It's definitely the most dangerous moment at least since the Cuban Missile Crisis.”
Kuznick made the point that such events might easily blow out of proportion: “As Kennedy and Khrushchev both learned, once a war starts, there is no way to control it because it goes out of control. Even Robert Gates, the super Republican hawk and top foreign policy figure as an official in the Bush and Obama administrations, when the United States was talking about bombing Syria, stood against it. I wonder if these people learned anything from Afghanistan, Iraq and Libya? Don't they understand unintended consequences? Don't they understand that these situations can boomerang and unravel out of control?”
For a bit of context on the current crisis, Kuznick made interesting observations on the double standards that the US employs in maintaining its interests.
“Look at Blinken, the American secretary of state. He supported the invasion of Afghanistan, he supported the invasion of Iraq, he supported the invasion of Libya, and he supported the bombing of Syria. And now he goes around, lecturing that the Russians had better pull out. He says that, ‘How dare they think about having a sphere of influence?’ There was an interesting op-ed by Peter Beinart in the New York Times, in which he talks about the Monroe Doctrine, which the United States declared in 1823, that no Europeans or others were allowed to have any military input into the Western hemisphere, or Central and South America for this is America's backyard. And as recently as 2018, you've got Bolton and Pompeo saying that the Monroe Doctrine is still operative. Meaning that, ‘Nobody can mess here.’ And when there was talk recently about Russia, putting missiles into Cuba and Venezuela, Sullivan says, ‘If they tried to do something like that, the United States would respond decisively.’ So we can do this in Russia's doorstep and in Russia's backyard. But the thought that they would try to do that here in America's backyard is so off-limits as to be preposterous. Well, we can go on with these double standards.”
I asked him about the role that the US could play.
“The United States could not control the world, but it could end the world as it has the ability to end life on the planet by itself,” Kuznick said. “The United States is, in a sense, a declining power, because militarily Russia seems to be an equal. And economically, China is going to soon dwarf the United States in terms of economic potential and power. So, the question is that how we're going to deal with this new era. Are we going to deal with it wisely in terms of realizing that this is a multipolar world, that there are other countries with their own definition of security and their own economic and political interests?”
Then he again turned to current crisis: “Or, are we going to allow this to be a kind of struggle that's already developing? You look at what's going on now with the battle with Russia or Ukraine, or the battles with China over the South China Sea and Taiwan. We're in a very, very precarious situation now, and this is leaving Iran out of the picture entirely.”
I asked him about the Cuban Missile Crisis, and how it was resolved.
“That one, we survived just by luck. There are people who try to credit statesmanship with having resolved the Cuban Missile Crisis. Scholars like Graham Allison, one of the earliest scholars to write about the Cuban Missile Crisis, say it was really Kennedy's great statesmanship that solved it. But Kennedy knew better. Ultimately, however, Kennedy and Khrushchev both knew that they lost control of the situation, which was partly what spooked them both into trying to make such dramatic changes in the last year of Kennedy's life.”
According to Kuznick, we need to appreciate the immensity of the danger we as a species face in terms of nuclear explosions, a thing that we should keep in mind in the current crisis.
“What we know about nuclear winter, is that even if a fraction of the nuclear weapons were used, it would cause partial nuclear winter. The latest scientific studies show that a limited nuclear war between India and Pakistan, for example, in which 100 Hiroshima-sized nuclear weapons were detonated to destroy the cities and send so much smoke and debris into the stratosphere, it would circle the globe and, within two weeks, block the sun's rays from hitting the Earth. Then, the temperatures on much of the Earth's surface will come below freezing, and much of agriculture will be destroyed. In that light, a limited nuclear war where 100 nuclear weapons were used, could cause as many as 2 billion deaths around the world. The reality is that we've got over 13,000 nuclear weapons, and most of them are not Hiroshima-sized: They're between seven and 70 times the size and the power of the Hiroshima bomb. So, if even a small fraction of those were used, we as a species, could be toasted. That's the insanity of allowing these crises to develop.”
And that’s a danger which Kuznick believed the US and Soviet leaders understood in the aftermath of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
“Khrushchev wrote Kennedy an extraordinary letter, right after the end of the Cuban Missile Crisis, which he said, ‘from evil, some good must come.’ He said, ‘Our people have felt the burning flames of thermonuclear war more strongly than ever before. We've got to turn this into a positive.’ And he added that, ‘We've got to eliminate every conflict between us that could cause a new crisis to develop.’ Kennedy initially resisted, but then he realized how true Khrushchev was. And they began to work together.
“When Kennedy gave his great commencement address in the American University in June of 1963, he called for an end to the Cold War and the nuclear arms race, and basically getting rid of nuclear weapons as well as solving peacefully all of the conflicts around the world. We haven't seen that kind of statesmanship since then in the United States.
“And that's the tragedy, and nobody else has provided that kind of visionary leadership. Gorbachev tried to do so. He's the closest we've had to a real statesman since the death of Kennedy in 63. And Khrushchev was ousted in 64, partly because he showed weakness in the face of the Cuban Missile Crisis.
“People ask me sometimes, to compare the situation now with what happened in the Cuban Missile Crisis. And I say there are certain similarities, the world is at risk of thermonuclear annihilation. But there's one big difference. In 1962, the United States had between a 20 to one advantage in terms of the number of nuclear weapons and intercontinental ballistic missiles. You know, 5000 US nuclear weapons to 300 that the Soviets had. What we've got now is that Russians are on a par with the United States. And if there's any fighting in the immediate vicinity in Europe, Russia will prevail. So that's a big difference.
“Khrushchev was forced to back down, partly because we were lucky. He said he couldn't sleep for days as he understood the danger. He said that once the nuclear weapons start to fall, what difference would it make if we're Communist or Capitalist, or Catholics or Muslims or Jews? You know, who could tell us apart? We'll all be corpses. Nobody could tell us apart. Khrushchev understood that and did whatever he could toward the end of his time in office to try to lower the tensions and eliminate the crisis. That’s the lesson we need to learn today.”
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