Agha Ibrahim Akram was a lieutenant general who served in the Pakistan Army during the 1965 and 1971 wars with India. In this video segment, Akram recalls 1974 as the watershed year when India detonated a nuclear explosive and took one step toward becoming a nuclear power in hopes of enhancing its global status. That moment also coincided with skyrocketing oil prices, which stiffened Pakistan's resolve to develop nuclear energy for electricity and, if need be, weapons. The interview Akram conducted for War and Peace in the Nuclear Age: 'The Haves and Have-Nots' concentrates on the history of tension and conflict between Pakistan and India. He reviews the three wars: the devastating bloodshed that followed partition in 1947, the pride he felt in 1965 as chief of staff of an infantry division along the West Pakistan border, and his bitterness toward India over the Bangladesh war in 1971. Despite the persistence of tension between Pakistan and India, Akram recognizes circumstances in which their perspectives and geopolitical positions meet. For instance, he fully supports India's critique of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty: that the major nuclear powers only selectively enforce and adhere to its provisions. He wishes that South Asia could be a nuclear-weapons-free zone but is willing to settle for India and Pakistan's interdependence: 'The two countries are the protagonists of South Asia. We'll actually cross the threshold together or not cross it at all.'

From 1969 to 1973, Paul Nitze served as a member of the U.S. delegation to the Strategic Arms Limitations Talks (SALT). In this video segment, Nitze describes the useful role that 'back channel' negotiations can play and discusses the particular problems with national security adviser Henry Kissinger's negotiations in the final days of SALT I. The second part of the segment addresses Watergate's impact on Nitze's participation in SALT II.Nitze's interview conducted for War and Peace in the Nuclear Age: 'One Step Forward' focuses on SALT I and SALT II. He recounts how he became part of the SALT I delegation, the key issues within the negotiating process, and the initial position statements he drafted for the Soviet delegation. Increasingly critical of U.S. arms policy, Nitze re-formed the Committee on Present Danger, which argued for a massive military buildup of U.S. forces in the post-Vietnam period. He spends considerable time in his interview going over the then-persistent threat of Soviet expansionism. Nitze explains his objection to President Jimmy Carter's nomination of Paul Warnke as his chief arms negotiator. He also explains his opposition to the SALT II Treaty, which he saw as codifying Soviet superiority in missile megatonnage and throw-weight.

Clark Clifford was special counsel to President Harry S. Truman from 1946 to 1950. In this video segment, he recounts the 1948 Berlin blockade-the first major East-West confrontation in which Western policymakers were required to grapple with choices that risked war with the Soviet Union, a power seen as capable of overrunning Western Europe. Clifford recalls assessing the risk of an unexpected escalation of tension if moves made by the West were perceived as provocations. He heralds the decision to airlift supplies to Berlin in order to fracture the Soviet blockade, although at the time, few believed the airlift could fully supply the city. In the interview Clifford conducted for War and Peace in the Nuclear Age: 'The Weapon of Choice,' he looks back at key moments of the Truman presidency. He recalls his role in drafting what became known as the Truman Doctrine, a founding speech of the "containment order" in which the administration generalized its obligations to Greece and Turkey into a commitment to resist Soviet expansionism wherever it occurred. Following his work on the Truman Doctrine, Clifford helped formulate the Marshall Plan speech, which outlined a program to aid in the rebuilding of a devastated post-war Europe. This speech was part of the United States' search for a new economic order at home and abroad. As the president's top policy adviser, Clifford was on hand for Truman's private reactions. They included shock, disappointment, and hopefulness, as well as anxiety about entering the nuclear age as hostilities with the Soviet Union were deepening and the electorate was becoming increasingly war weary.

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.'

Dr. Randall Forsberg is executive director of the Institute for Defense and Disarmament Studies, a think tank she founded in 1980 with the aim of reducing the risk of war and minimizing the burden of U.S. military spending. In this video segment, she describes the reach of grassroots activism at the height of 1982's national Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign, which called for a bilateral, verifiable halt to new production of nuclear weapons. In the interview she conducted for War and Peace in the Nuclear Age: 'Visions of War and Peace,' Forsberg describes the genesis of the movement, which was born from the failure of Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) II and from public awareness of the development of a new generation of war-fighting systems. Forsberg traces the town-by-town growth of the anti-nuclear petition, which began in 1980 with the four-page document 'Call to Halt the Nuclear Arms Race,' and the referendum process that fanned out across the nation but remained largely ignored by the national media. Forsberg details the negative reaction by President Ronald Reagan's administration and the ensuing support on Capitol Hill, which passed a freeze resolution. This was followed just weeks later by congressional approval of the MX missile by an equally large margin-a vote that Forsberg says 'tore up the movement.' Soon afterward, President Reagan suddenly announced the Strategic Defense Initiative-a program that Forsberg critiques at the end of her interview-and he agreed to negotiate with the Soviet Union, which was a key goal of 'Call to Halt the Nuclear Arms Race.' The lasting impact of the nuclear-freeze movement, says Forsberg, has been a shift away from public protest and toward grassroots, long-term education. She concludes that this new 'institutionalized peace movement' will re-emerge more informed and cohesive than the last, with the determination to change 'the direction of the permanent peacetime policy of the United States.'

General Gerd Schmuckle served in the Federal Republic of Germany's Ministry of Defense from 1956 to 1962 under defense minister Franz Josef Strauss. Strauss was charged with building up the Bundeswehr, the newly formed federal armed forces. In this video segment, Schmuckle describes Germany's reaction to the U.S. doctrine of massive retaliation, which de-emphasized a conventional buildup-one that Germans advocated-and depended on thousands of nuclear warheads deployed on German soil. When French president Charles de Gaulle returned to power in 1958, his main concern-developing an independent national deterrent-halted a preliminary treaty for Franco-German nuclear cooperation. Germany had little choice but to acquiesce to deterrence as formulated by the United States. In the interview he conducted for War and Peace in the Nuclear Age: 'The Education of Robert McNamara,' Schmuckle elaborates on these and other topics. In building up the Bundeswehr, Strauss pushed to have some voice in North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) decision-making, worked to overcome European mistrust of a rearmed Germany, and fought to regain its stature in Europe. Unsure whether exclusive reliance on a U.S. nuclear deterrent would be sustainable in the long term, Schmuckle recaps Germany's efforts to build a pan-European defense force-a proposal that failed to gain traction. He also supported NATO general Lauris Norstad's proposal that NATO become a fourth nuclear power. However, Britain's 1957 white paper Defense: Outline of Future Policy announced the island's intent to build an independent nuclear deterrent and reduce troop levels in Germany, which quashed the notion of NATO as a major nuclear power. The following year, de Gaulle proclaimed developing an independent nuclear force his government's highest priority. As a result, Schmuckle explains, Germans haven't significantly influenced the stationing of nuclear warheads and NATO decision-making. He recalls opposing U.S. secretary of defense Robert McNamara's theories of escalating warfare and preemptive strikes, and he protested against a dramatic increase in conventional forces, which he regarded as totally unrealistic. In the age of nuclear weapons, Schmuckle asserts, 'war does not make any sense any longer in Europe.'

Denis Healey was the British secretary of state for defense from 1964 to 1970 and chancellor of the exchequer from 1974 to 1979. In this video segment, Healey reflects on the period in which he was defense secretary under Prime Minister Harold Wilson. He recalls the opposing interests of Germany and the United States with regard to nuclear strategy, explains his 'Healey theorem' of deterrence, and clarifies France's position that alliances can't coexist with nuclear weapons. Healey also assesses U.S. defense secretary Robert McNamara's quest for tidy solutions to 'insoluble' nuclear problems. In his interview conducted for War and Peace in the Nuclear Age: 'The Education of Robert McNamara,' Healey begins with a comparison between Soviet and North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) conventional military strength. He elaborates on France's opposition to the notion of 'extended deterrence' and on his own role in persuading NATO to adopt 'flexible response' strategy. He traces the evolution of his military analysis of massive retaliation, describes his collaboration with McNamara in developing flexible-response doctrine, reiterates the expectation that SALT III would follow shortly after a ratified SALT II Treaty, and shares how he ultimately lost faith in flexible response. He also discusses the extraordinary growth of U.S. tactical nuclear weapons in Europe, Britain's response to the proposal for a Multilateral Force in the early 1960s, German chancellor Helmut Schmidt's distrust of U.S. president Jimmy Carter, and his own opposition to U.S. Euro-strategic missiles. As a fellow defense intellectual, Healey was encouraged by national security adviser Henry Kissinger's appointment: he was sure that detente could move forward. He admired Kissinger's boldness in dodging 'all official channels which he doesn't like anybody else doing,' but he was disappointed by Kissinger's failure to consult with allies. For the future, Healey believes that there should be fifty-percent reductions in strategic and conventional weapons, particularly when 'one side or the other has superiority.' He also advocates a 'nuclear-free corridor' to avoid accidental war.

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.

As staff secretary to President Dwight Eisenhower from 1954 to 1961, General Andrew Goodpaster was the person most privy to Eisenhower's thinking and key decisions during his White House years. Goodpaster began his long affiliation with Eisenhower as a staff officer under his leadership of the Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE), and he went on to become the president's right-hand man on security matters. In this video segment, Goodpaster describes the inter-service rivalries that led Eisenhower to reorganize and centralize the armed forces, reflecting his general belief in systematic, integrated planning. Goodpaster's interview conducted for War and Peace in the Nuclear Age: 'A Bigger Bang for the Buck,' provides an intimate portrait of Eisenhower's leadership style and approach to policymaking. He describes how the president handled immense pressure to intervene in South and Southeast Asia as well as demands for a crash military buildup in the wake of bomber-gap and missile-gap reports. Goodpaster recalls that Eisenhower always saw Europe as vital to U.S. interests and repeatedly advocated strengthening the European alliance. The administration ushered in what came to be known as the "New Look" to sustain containment over the long term at a tolerable cost. Goodpaster describes a president confident in his military judgment despite the criticism that his administration endured. The introduction of 'massive retaliation' became the most controversial policy of the Eisenhower administration, and the downing of a U-2 spy plane dealt the gravest injury to his presidency. Goodpaster returns several times to the impact that the introduction of thermonuclear weapons had on Eisenhower's thinking, fueling the president's strong interest in 'Atoms for Peace,' limited arms control, and negotiation.

Edward L. Rowny was the Joint Chiefs of Staff representative to the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT) from 1972 to 1979. From 1981 to 1984, during U.S. president Ronald Reagan's administration, he was chief negotiator for the Strategic Arms Reduction Talks (START). In this video segment, Rowny explores Soviet and American negotiating tactics and proposals. He also shares his frustration with U.S. concessions, process, and misconceptions of Soviet thinking, all of which ultimately led to his resignation after the SALT II Treaty was signed. In his interview conducted for War and Peace in the Nuclear Age: 'One Step Forward,' Rowny describes why the Joint Chiefs of Staff selected him to join the SALT II delegation. He also discusses his misgivings about Paul Warnke, chief negotiator during President Jimmy Carter's administration. Rowny supported the initial proposal that the United States presented in Moscow in March 1977, which would have reduced Soviet heavy missiles by half. Had the U.S. team persevered, he maintains, it would have secured the agreement and successfully closed the 'window of vulnerability' facing U.S. land-based missiles. Although he was not alone in his objections to the SALT II Treaty, others endorsed it as a modest but useful step to a further agreement. The tipping point for Rowny came in the 1978 Christmas negotiations, during which the Soviets retained the right to encrypt signals for their missile tests. In the end, Rowny viewed the treaty as a 'chasm' and an 'impediment' for three reasons. First, it granted the Soviets the unilateral right to heavy missiles. Second, it discounted the intercontinental capabilities of the Soviet Backfire bomber, which was the focus of a hotly contested arms-control debate that Rowny explores in his interview. Third, permitting the missile-test encryption created a loophole in U.S. verification of Soviet compliance. Rowny also criticizes the timing of opening relations with China, and he maintains the inevitability of some degree of linkage between arms control and other areas of U.S.-Soviet relations. He concludes his interview with his take on how to conduct successful negotiations with the Soviet Union.

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.

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."

For nearly half a century, Paul Nitze was one of the chief architects of U.S. policy toward the Soviet Union. In 1961, President John F. Kennedy appointed Nitze assistant secretary of defense for International Security Affairs. In this video segment, Nitze describes key issues confronting the incoming Kennedy administration. This transition period focused on the goals of the country's nuclear-strategic policy; how to approach crises in every region, from the Middle East to Vietnam; and whether to unify the armed services. Included are Nitze's recommendations regarding a conventional military buildup and a 'no-cities' policy, which would target military forces instead of civilian populations. Nitze's interview conducted for War and Peace in the Nuclear Age: 'At the Brink' moves the viewer through his work with the World War II Strategic Bombing Survey, which placed him in Hiroshima and Nagasaki soon after the atomic bombs were dropped. From 1950 to 1953, Nitze served as director of the State Department's Policy Planning staff, and from 1961 to 1963 he was assistant defense secretary. As his interview reveals, Nitze held key positions during the period after World War II when the United States emerged as a superpower and Cold War strategic policies were being debated and defined. His classified 1950 report, National Security Memorandum 68, remains a seminal document: it was initially designed to persuade President Harry S. Truman that an increasingly menacing world required major increases in spending on defense and foreign military assistance. Nitze was also a major contributor to the Gaither Report, which stressed the need for a survivable nuclear deterrent by citing the vulnerability of the U.S. bomber force. Nitze opposed the doctrine of massive retaliation from the moment John Foster Dulles announced it at a dinner party in 1954. He was involved in crisis contingency planning, including the Berlin blockade and airlift in 1948, construction of the Berlin Wall in 1961, and the Cuban missile crisis in 1962. During the missile crisis, Nitze recalls, he worked out the scenarios of increasing military escalation to pressure the Soviets to withdraw the missiles. Finally, he describes his disappointment that, although Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara initially embraced his no-cities strategy, following the Cuban missile crisis McNamara entirely abandoned the notion of winnable nuclear war.

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.'