Bruce Kent, ordained a Catholic minister in 1958, became general secretary of the Campaign for Nuclear Disarmament (CND) in 1980 and chairman in 1987, the year he resigned from the ministry. In this video segment, he challenges the damaging spin that secretary for defense Lord Michael Heseltine used to undermine CND rather than engage in public debate about nuclear policy. Kent also refutes accusations that CND was in support of 'one-sided,' full unilateral disarmament. Instead, he argues for 'sufficiency' to replace 'parity' of nuclear forces. In the interview Kent conducted for War and Peace in the Nuclear Age: 'Zero Hour,' he describes the forces that converged to revive CND and the rallies that drew hundreds of thousands of marchers to the center of London in the early 1980s. He recounts the spread of peace movements to other Western European capitals, the partnership among protest leaders from these other countries, and some of the differences in their national agendas. The 1983 Conservative Party's rise to power on the heels of the Falklands War, coupled with its forceful campaign to mischaracterize CND, halted the movement's momentum. At this point, Kent recalls, CND shifted its agenda to 'the long haul,' prioritizing long-term, international public education over large demonstrations. Kent critiques 'flexible response' what he calls 'the Achilles' heel' of the Western alliance. Nuclear war is so clearly unwinnable, he maintains, that 'parity' must yield to 'sufficiency.' As Kent sees positions like these echoed in public discourse and arms negotiations, he concludes that CND's key contribution is helping 'some serious rethinking of the basics of the whole business.'

Chandra Shekhar Jha was India's foreign secretary from 1965 to 1967. In this video segment, Jha explains why India cannot exclude the future possibility of owning nuclear weapons. The key to disarmament, he insists, rests with the nuclear nations that are 'adding to their stockpiles' and 'preparing for war. 'Jha's interview conducted for War and Peace in the Nuclear Age: 'The Haves and Have-Nots' begins with his recollections of his devastating post-war tour of Japan with Prime Minister Jawaharlal Nehru and their shared ideals of disarmament and economic development by harnessing 'Atoms for Peace.' Jha's interview also examines the dilemma of staying the non-nuclear course given regional security concerns: the 1962 Chinese attack on India, followed two years later by China's detonation of its first nuclear bomb, and ongoing tensions with its neighbor Pakistan. While prioritizing the country's economic development over diverting resources to acquire nuclear weapons, Jha rejects the Non-Proliferation Treaty as embodying 'nuclear colonialism' and objects to the preferential treatment granted other threshold states.

At age twenty-seven, physicist Philip Morrison joined the Manhattan Project, the code name given to the U.S. government's covert effort at Los Alamos to develop the first nuclear weapon. The Manhattan Project was also the most expensive single program ever financed by public funds. In this video segment, Morrison describes the charismatic leadership of his mentor, J. Robert Oppenheimer, and the urgency of their mission to manufacture a weapon 'which if we didn't make first would lead to the loss of the war." In the interview Morrison conducted for War and Peace in the Nuclear Age: 'Dawn,' he describes the remote, inaccessible setting of the laboratory that operated in extreme secrecy. It was this physical isolation, he maintains, that allowed scientists extraordinary freedom to exchange ideas with fellow physicists. Morrison also reflects on his wartime fears. Germany had many of the greatest minds in physics and engineering, which created tremendous anxiety among Allied scientists that it would win the atomic race and the war, and Morrison recalls the elaborate schemes he devised to determine that country's atomic progress. At the time that he was helping assemble the world's first atomic bomb, Morrison believed that nuclear weapons 'could be made part of the construction of the peace.' A month after the war, he toured Hiroshima, and for several years thereafter he testified, became a public spokesman, and lobbied for international nuclear cooperation. After leaving Los Alamos, Morrison returned to academia. For the rest of his life he was a forceful voice against nuclear weapons.

Ambassador Ryukichi Imai-journalist, nuclear engineer, and general manager at Japan Atomic Power Company-was Japanese ambassador to the United Nations Disarmament Conference from 1982 to 1987. In this video segment, Imai explains why he believes that Japan will never embark on a nuclear-weapons program. He also predicts that, while Japan stands alone in its reliance on nuclear energy, rising energy prices-even post-Chernobyl-will revive worldwide interest in nuclear power. In the interview he conducted for War and Peace in the Nuclear Age: 'Have and Have-nots,' Imai describes a career in which he became an expert on nuclear energy and non-proliferation in ways that paralleled Japan's stages of harnessing and expanding its reliance on atomic energy. Employed by Japan Atomic Power Company at the first commercial nuclear-power station in the country, Imai worked with the International Atomic Energy Agency to develop safeguards for nuclear technologies. He recalls that in the 1950s, few talked about the link between nuclear energy and weapons. He describes testifying on behalf of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT), which Japan debated for six years before ratifying. Debate centered on whether Japan should have the right to arm itself and on the high costs of safeguards that would handicap industry in the global market. Imai argued in support of the NPT, and he did not want to jeopardize the 1951 mutual-security treaty with the United States that he regarded as paramount to Japan's safety. When U.S. president Jimmy Carter opposed Japan's first reprocessing plant at Tokai, it was Imai whom the Japanese government sent to the United States. There he successfully negotiated a solution with former colleague Joseph Nye, then deputy to the undersecretary of state for security assistance, science, and technology.

Dean Rusk-the sole cabinet member addressed by President John F. Kennedy as 'Mr. Secretary'-was the second-longest-serving secretary of state: his service spanned the Kennedy and Lyndon B. Johnson administrations, from 1961 to 1969. This video segment illustrates Rusk and Kennedy's close relationship during the Cuban missile crisis and conveys the president's emotions and approach to decision-making as events unfolded. His interview conducted for War and Peace in the Nuclear Age: 'At the Brink' reveals Rusk to have been a very trusted adviser whose counsel was reserved for the president. While Rusk was part of the Executive Committee inner circle during the missile crisis, he was also a separate entity: he reserved his recommendation 'until the president and I heard from all of these working groups.' Throughout the two-week crisis, Rusk avidly pursued a diplomatic resolution, helped build consensus, and facilitated out-of-channel communications. Beyond the missile crisis, Rusk talks about European fears that the United States' commitment to the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) would be weakened by the 'flexible response' strategy.

Andrei Gromyko served as Soviet foreign minister from 1957 to 1985. Beginning in 1943, when Soviet premier Joseph Stalin appointed the 34-year-old ambassador to Washington, Gromyko was an indispensable formulator of Kremlin policy toward the United States. Ultimately, he dealt with nine U.S. presidents. In this video segment, Gromyko chronicles the arms race, beginning in the 1950s under General Secretary Nikita Khrushchev. At the time, each superpower had the ability to inflict "unacceptable damage" on the other. Still, neither side acted to stop the arms race until General Secretary Mikhail Gorbachev opened the new era in the mid eighties. Under the leadership of Gorbachev, Gromyko concludes, Soviets have embraced the "principle of rational sufficiency" and initiated unilateral steps to stop the arms race. The interview Gromyko conducted for War and Peace in the Nuclear Age is a wide-ranging reflection on nuclear strategy, foreign policy, and superpower diplomacy during the four-and-a-half decades since the dawn of the nuclear age. Gromyko begins the interview with a look at the Potsdam Conference, at which U.S. president Harry S. Truman informed Soviet premier Joseph Stalin that an atomic bomb had successfully detonated. Truman was perplexed by the non-reaction of the Soviet leader, who then submitted a private order to accelerate the Russian bomb project. Gromyko remembers how, following the war, it felt, at age 37, to challenge the experienced architects of the Cold War and the policies they conceived: the Baruch Plan, the Truman Doctrine, and the Marshall Plan. He recalls that Soviet proposals to ban all nuclear weapons and to place strict controls on facilities pursuing nuclear energy were "categorically rejected." Western powers, Gromyko asserts, missed the opportunity to stop the arms race before it began. He points to "a drastic hardening" of foreign policy, citing former Prime Minister Sir Winston Churchill's 1946 "Iron Curtain" speech as an "open declaration of the Cold War." Gromyko reserves his strongest criticism for the "doctrine of intimidation," the United States' classified National Security Memorandum 68, which marked a dramatic shift in U.S.-Soviet relations. His description of the 1962 Caribbean crisis stands in stark contrast to U.S. officials' accounts of the same episode, known as the Cuban missile crisis. He provides detailed recollections of his conversation with President John F. Kennedy during this period, concluding that it was "probably the most difficult meeting I experienced in all my 48 years of meeting presidents of the United States." Gromyko moves ahead to the period of detente. His retelling of last-minute changes prior to the signing of the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) I differs from that of national security adviser Henry Kissinger. Gromyko discusses the key Soviet objection to U.S. proposals during SALT II negotiations: the United States, which targeted the Soviet Union with forward bases around the world, demanded drastic reductions in the Soviet Union's principal deterrent-the heavy intercontinental ballistic missile. At Vladivostok in 1974, the two sides agreed on a basic framework for the SALT II Treaty, which was signed five years later. Reflecting on the trends he has observed during his long career as Soviet foreign minister, Gromyko sees more continuity than difference: each administration has tried to achieve military superiority, and the Soviet Union, always one step behind, has pressed to maintain "virtual parity" to safeguard its national interests. Much was achieved during detente, he recalls. While that term is no longer used, Gromyko sees parallels with-and holds out hope for-the current process of "deepening mutual understand and trust."

Dean Rusk came from barefoot poverty in rural Georgia and achieved black-tie success. He was the first assistant secretary for UN Affairs, in 1949; assistant secretary of state for Far Eastern Affairs, in 1950; and the country's second-longest-serving secretary of state (1961 to 1969), after Cordell Hull. In this video segment, Rusk voices his opposition to the Strategic Defense Initiative, commonly known as 'Star Wars' and first unveiled in March 1983. In his interview conducted for War and Peace in the Nuclear Age: 'Visions of War and Peace,' Rusk reflects on a wide range of political and nuclear issues spanning more than forty years. He discusses his recognition that the first atomic bomb introduced a 'new phase of warfare'; his opinion that Soviet premier Joseph Stalin's 'adventures' spawned the Cold War and the United States' 'containment' policy; how the past three decades created a vastly different diplomatic landscape against which to conduct foreign relations; and the urgency of domestic problems that threaten national security. Although known throughout his career for his hawkish views, in 'Visions of War and Peace' Rusk turns again and again to the dominant lesson of the nuclear age: nuclear war is 'simply that war which must never be fought.'

Dr. Randall Forsberg is executive director of the think tank she founded in 1980, the Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies. In this video segment, she recalls the moment during arms negotiations between the United States and the Soviet Union when she determined that the arms race is not driven by basic deterrence but by the imperative to gain superiority in threatening to win-without actually waging-nuclear war.In her wide-ranging interview for War and Peace in the Nuclear Age: 'Visions of War and Peace,' Forsberg explores war-and-peace issues, military doctrine, the history and economics of nuclear-weapons development and policy, war-fighting capability and force structure, scenarios and resistance to arms reduction, the history of relations between the superpowers, and their interactions with developing nations. Seven countries, she asserts, account for 99 percent of nuclear weapons. The dispersal of weapons-in the form of the Rapid Deployment Force, tactical weapons, and missiles fitted with multiple warheads-heightens the risk of war in a world moving toward becoming what she calls 'a global nuclear porcupine.' Forsberg asserts that 'threatening to commit genocide as a way of conducting politics' is one of the most 'deeply immoral and subversive acts of government in the modern world.' Moreover, she maintains, a conventional military crisis could easily cross that nuclear threshold. Forsberg advocates the three Rs: 'reduce, restructure, and restrain' conventional forces-the other side of the military coin-that consume 75 percent of the U.S. military budget. She compares disarmament with abolitionism: most people understood that slavery was evil and didn't know when it would end, but they realized that they had to work until it was eliminated. Forsberg's analysis of the country's 'defense dependency' and of the shortcomings of the nuclear-freeze movement she spearheaded is laced with her optimism about Soviet Union general secretary Mikhail Gorbachev's reforms. She has never abandoned her vision of an educated public that will prevail in 'demilitarizing international relations" to achieve a "secure, stable permanent peace.'