JAMIE RICHARDSON: The atomic gambit podcast is produced by the JFK Library Foundation and made possible with the help of a generous grant from the Blanche and Irving Laurie Foundation. The following episode's panel was pre-recorded with our guests on October 3rd, 2022.
MATT PORTER: Welcome to our final episode of JFK35 special series, Atomic Gambit, The Cuban Missile Crisis 60 Years Later. Today, we are joined by 3 distinguished guests to discuss the crisis' legacy and how it can still teach us lessons 60 years later.
Joining me for this discussion are Ben Rhodes, former Deputy National Security Advisor to President Obama. Ben is now a writer and a national security analyst. And he co-hosts his own podcast, Pod Save the World.
Also joining us, Alexandra Vacroux, Executive Director for the Davis Center for Russian and Eurasian Studies at Harvard University. Alexandra's work addresses Russian and Eurasian policy issues, including teaching courses on post-soviet conflict. And Jonathan Kaufman, Director of the Journalism School at Northeastern University's College of Arts Media and Design. Jonathan is a Pulitzer Prize winning reporter, editor and author with a long history in international reporting, including running the China Bureau in Beijing for the Wall Street Journal and Berlin Bureau for the Boston Globe.
Let's start with possibly the most pertinent example we have today of why the Cuban Missile Crisis remains important the ongoing war in Ukraine. What can the Cuban Missile Crisis teach us today when it comes to the situation in Ukraine?
BEN RHODES: I'll take that. I guess I'd say, the differences have to do with the geopolitical context of what Russia is doing. In the Cuban Missile Crisis, that obviously was taking place in the Cold War context. It did not involve Russia seeking to conquer controlled territory.
In that way, It. Was simultaneously very important. But it was not existential necessarily as what Russia is doing in Ukraine, where they are acting on their own view or Putin's own view of what should rightfully belong to Russia and be Russian territory. And when you mix nuclear weapons with what you are claiming as your own borders, it obviously introduces a different element of risk.
I think we're also dealing with a leader and Putin. And Alexandra will have I'm sure really good thoughts on this. But who-- he's not representative of a system. Khrushchev was the leader of a Communist Party that existed to perpetuate itself and to stay in power. And therefore, there was perhaps a ceiling on the kind of risk that somebody could take on its behalf.
Putin is really a one man one rule that is separated from any kind of broader organizational ideological project. It's Putin's ideology. It's Putin's impulses that have driven this whole conflict. And there's a degree of unpredictability there because nobody knows quite what's in Putin's head.
And I can get into later my own experiences in dealing with Putin. It was always hard to know what was a justification or a conspiracy theory that he was stirring up or that he actually believed. I think the commonality though, is that once again, you need to have insight into to what the motivations of your potential adversary, what those motivations are, what lines of communication you can maintain, and how you can signal both concern about things that you're seeing and potential warnings about lines not to be crossed here? So there are lessons to be drawn even though the situations are different.
MATT PORTER: Alexandra, do you want to continue on that thought about Putin? What makes him different than other leaders in the past, particularly maybe when we're thinking of Khrushchev versus Putin?
ALEXANDRA VACROUX: It's an interesting question because when we think of the Cuban Missile Crisis it was really Khrushchev versus Kennedy. It was very much seen as a direct confrontation of the younger, less experienced American president by the well-established, let's call him an apparatchik supported by the system as Ben said. Here, in a way, Putin has been trying to set it up so that it's Putin versus Biden.
Again, two superpowers confronting each other over the nuclear threat. But that's not really what's happening. For one thing, Putin is as Ben suggests, at the very top of a system and much less dependent on the system for his authority or for his credibility in Russia. And then secondly, it's not really Biden on the other side.
The United States has framed this as being the West which is to say NATO and the United States. And the Biden administration has been quite careful not to engage directly as if this is a man-to-man negotiation. And rightly so. For one thing, the Ukrainians are in the middle and Zelensky is certainly no wallflower. But also, it's not the same confrontation where you have two people looking at each other and one has to blink. I think we're in a much more complicated situation here.
JONATHAN KAUFMAN: I think from a media perspective, it's happening over there. It's very much I think on the periphery of media attention, and I would argue the American public's attention. And I think that gives Biden and the administration in a way, a lot more running room.
The American focus right now is on the elections coming up. It's on Trump. It's on all these domestic issues. And so, I think that it doesn't have that kind of white hot center that the Cuban Missile Crisis had at the time. And so I think in a way, it gives Biden and the administration more freedom to figure out exactly what is the most effective strategy. He's unlikely to come under a lot of sharp analysis or criticism at least right now because the media is focus is in so many other directions.
MATT PORTER: That's interesting. And Ben, I kind of want to point this at you as a response to that. Is it sort of a double edged sword with the public not sort of invested in Ukraine, like maybe the way the Americans were fearful in Cuba? Is there also a negative to that, the fact that maybe Americans don't see it as an existential threat in the way they should?
BEN RHODES: Yeah, in a way. I mean, I think it's absolutely right that the tension is over there. I mean, the Cuban Missile Crisis was very much a play from the Soviet side that was about us. And this was a threat directed at us. Whereas in the Ukraine crisis, this is a war. Unlike the Cuban Missile Crisis is an act of war, in Ukraine that is far away over there.
And I think Americans, this many months in, have kind of been numbed to the reality that there are some horrific things happening but they're happening very far away. And America's involvement is limited. And I think part of what is I think challenging for Americans, is that President Biden has set the ceiling on US involvement, which is essentially no direct military confrontation between the United States and Russia, which I think probably enjoys broad public support. But at the same time, we're very involved.
We are pouring weapons in. We are probably involved in helping to plan Ukrainian offensives. We are marshaling the resources of the West. We're basically engaged in kind of economic warfare through our sanctions. And again, I think those policies and that pretty hard edged approach to the conflict enjoys a lot of support.
But I think the risk is the danger to the US thus far has been kind of second order effects, like gas prices. This could sneak up on us very fast. I've actually thought about this recently. I mean, a year from now, if there's been a tactical nuclear weapon used or there's much more mass indiscriminate efforts at economic sabotage from Russia of energy infrastructure, this thing could have much more of a direct impact on Americans than the kind of current level of public debate has.
Another interesting thing here too is that in addition to the media component, there's very broad bipartisan support for the policy. So you see overwhelming congressional majorities for arming the Ukrainians, providing them with assistance. And when you're the White House, that's great. That's what you want.
But it also means that there's not a lot of scrutiny of the policy. And again, I say this as someone who supported it. But there's not really-- there's not that pressure from the media. There's not that pressure from opposing polls politically. And so we're kind of on this trajectory of escalation without necessarily knowing how this ends.
I don't think anyone can articulate how does this end. And again that's not a criticism of the administration. It's just the reality that we could find ourselves very quickly in a really escalatory situation without there having been a lot of public debate or scrutiny of how we got there.
MATT PORTER: Well, you mentioned that. And I'm going to bring it up. This October, Putin for the first time directly said that he might want to use a tactical nuclear weapon, a small nuclear weapon that would be used on the battlefield in Ukraine. And this is the first time since 1962, the Cuban Missle Crisis, that there was a threat from Moscow of using nuclear weapons in a wartime situation. I'd be interested in how all three of you think about that escalation and what that means from your particular expertise.
ALEXANDRA VACROUX: I can start on that one. The Russians have not changed their military doctrine. Since the 2000, their doctrine has been that they reserve the right to use a nuclear weapon if the existence of the state is in question. What has changed is the way that they're defining this idea of the existence of the state.
One used to think that meant OK, if Moscow is going to be surrounded or the president is going to be taken out, that threatens the existence of the state. But once you do things like annexing territory, especially territory that you don't control, then we have to ask what happens if those territories are taken? Is there-- are the Russians going to interpret that as a threat to the existence of the state?
And so far, they haven't. In Crimea, there have been attacks on some airport facilities, some planes, some munitions depots. And the Russians haven't ratcheted up the response and said, OK, now you're threatening the Russian state. So I don't think that they're inclined to do that.
The fact that they're talking about it though is new and is indeed as you say, the first time that they're threatening nuclear use. And that is something we have to take seriously. The question is, first of all, if Putin says, I'm not bluffing. That doesn't actually give us information about whether he's bluffing or not.
That in and of itself is not useful. But it does mean that at some point if he keeps saying that they're going to actually use those weapons and he doesn't use those weapons, then the impact of the threat falls. It just becomes less significant. And that could be threatening to him because then he needs to do something in order to keep people on their toes the way they originally were when he mentioned it. And it was the first time it was mentioned since the Cuban Missile Crisis.
So-- no, Putin himself might be backing himself into a corner where he has to escalate to prove that when he threatens something, he actually means it. And there seems to be a consensus that the way he would do that is by escalating over current military activities, so either a small tactical nuclear weapon over the Black Sea or over some unoccupied territory. And then there's different gradations of that going up to actually using it on the battlefield and killing Ukrainians or seriously damaging a city. The problem I see is that Putin is going to not be taken seriously if he keeps saying that they're going to use the tactical nuclear weapons and he doesn't.
JONATHAN KAUFMAN: Yeah. I mean, I think in the popular imagination, obviously, we'd be entering unknown territory. I mean, all the kind of thinking or movies or trashy novels about nuclear war are for-- are frankly about the Cuban Missile Crisis image of a massive nuclear war that becomes uncontrollable. If you have a small tactical weapon, what does that look like? What's the impact? How does the public respond?
We really just don't know. We know in the US, we respond to terrorism with a great national rallying behind the president and people tend to fall in line. I think one of the big differences from the Cuban Missile Crisis is that there wasn't the weaponization of the media that there is today. And you can envision a scenario where with politics being very polarized, if in fact, we reach a point where there is criticism of whatever the response might be to a tactical nuclear strike or some kind of escalation that Ben is outlining.
Then suddenly, Fox News and other outlets might kind of join in with say, Republican criticism. And then you have a very different media environment. I mean, my sense is in the Cuban Missile Crisis either the media or the press didn't know what was going on or was clearly behind whatever was being released to them and supported it. You could see a situation here where if the consensus breaks, then suddenly we become very polarized about this the way the country is polarized about just about everything else.
BEN RHODES: Yeah. I mean, I worry about it a whole host of things here. I mean, the first, including what both of you said, I mean, Alexandra's point about Putin maybe threatening nuclear weapons. And this has been my experience in when I was in government how Putin sometimes operated. He threatens the use of a nuclear weapon so that then when he uses chemical weapons or when he just starts wholesale pulverizing a civilian population, it somehow seems less extreme than this extreme thing that he threatened. That's one thing I worry about.
Then in terms of use, I worry about the pace of escalation. Because if Putin uses-- detonates a tactical nuclear weapon in some fashion, I think that the US response would be conventional, but it would be kinetic. There would be like US military force brought to bear against Russian targets. And it could be kind of a matter of hours in which things are ratcheting up. Does Russia respond to that conventional force by attacking NATO in some way? And we're still counting on the old Cold War mutually assured destruction to create a ceiling on escalation.
But it could happen fast and would be happening in the context of a very polarized society here where the support for Ukraine has been somewhat predicated on the limits to which the US would actually get involved. And when you saw just the political blowback to gas prices, it suggested-- I'm not-- I'm not-- I know how wide the support is for Ukraine right now. I'm not sure how deep it is in the case of a rapid escalation. And that's just something we have to think about.
And the last piece is just, the threats alone from Putin, never mind the use, I worry that it's just kind of normalizing or bringing back into discussion the use of nuclear weapons. It's breaking taboos. And so the India-Pakistan contingency or an Iran contingency or North Korea, it's just not good to have people threatening the use of nuclear weapons, because that can become contagious.
And we could be entering a period in which this idea that there's such a thing as a more responsible use of nuclear weapons because they're tactical rather than strategic weapons. Well, there are still nuclear weapons. And once you break that seal on something that hasn't been done since Nagasaki, I mean, I do think we're in a much more dangerous world. And Putin is just the threat, I think, is making that worse and use would obviously make it much, much worse.
MATT PORTER: And Ben, since you've been in that room with the president having to make these tough calls, and how does the president listen to his advisors. I want to connect this with Cuban Missile Crisis a little, being like when President Kennedy had those 13 days, he was getting a lot of pushback from say his military advisors urging him to take a military response first early on saying there are missiles in Cuba. We need to take care of them right away.
Or then later, there were planes shot down. And again, sort of military advisors saying we need to take an immediate-- it needs to be an immediate response. What is it like for the president when these escalations are made to-- in the sense of learning from Kennedy, maybe the act of patience on these type of scenarios?
BEN RHODES: Yeah. I mean, it's incredibly difficult because part of what you want to be cautious about is the momentum that can kind of take over to do something, to act. And oftentimes, some of the loudest voices at the outset of any debate are going to be the ones who want to do something, take an action. And so therefore, you need a process that guarantees that you're going to hear differing opinions.
And those differing opinions are both different equities in the US system. So instead of just the military equity, you're also hearing from diplomats and the intelligence community and others. But you want to make sure that you're also hearing differing views, so that you're not just kind of propelled by that overwhelming imperative to do something. But you add the media into this and the current political moment, there's not a lot of space given to presidents either.
Not that there was a ton of space for Kennedy in the Cuban Missile Crisis in part because the time was so short. But I think especially today, if this war escalates, Joe Biden's going to have no good options. They're going to be bad options and worse options. And then there's not going to be a lot of probably political running room for him. And so I think there's an imperative on making sure you're listening to different voices.
Some of those voices frankly-- one of the useful things about the current context is because this is a kind of a NATO collective response, there'll be voices from other countries. And I think it'd be important for Biden to have whoever that one, two, or three leaders whose opinion he really values, have them in this as well. So that he doesn't have to shoulder all of this himself but is rather working it through and calibrating a response.
And because the response as Kennedy so effectively demonstrated in the Cuban Missile Crisis context, it's probably going to have to have elements of a tough and firm response but coupled with restraint as well. That's usually where good foreign policy is made is something that is embedded with both an aspect of firmness and restraint and off ramps for adversaries as well as punitive measures for adversaries and trade offs that might be unappealing to some people around that table but are worth doing as Kennedy was willing to do around Turkey. So I think that's imperative. Different voices, different equities, and taking whatever time is necessary, although there might not be a lot, but to get it right and not just to do the first thing that has momentum in the room.
MATT PORTER: And Alexandra, this for you. Ben's talking about off ramps. And I think about, again, I think about Kennedy and Khrushchev.
Sort of once the missiles were exposed, Khrushchev as well, was sort of looking for an off ramp. How can I get off this carousel? With Putin, in your observations, is he looking for off ramps? Is he concerned about off ramps right now?
ALEXANDRA VACROUX: No, I think he finds the idea of an off-ramp insulting, that he would be the kind of person that would diverge from his original mission and choose to take a different path. What concerns me right now is that Putin has really lost control of the narrative in Russia. So just picking up on what Jonathan had mentioned.
We have, in the US, a pretty diverse media landscape. And there are lots of different voices and some of them might jump on the opportunity to make more noise or to be unhappy if a crisis really develops. And Putin is facing that situation right now, possibly for the first time. They've done such an effective job of cracking down on the opposition and the media for the past 15 or 20 years.
It's been a big surprise to see that the right wing, the more aggressive militant groups in, I wouldn't say the inner circle but let's say the outer circle, are coming out saying that Russia isn't doing enough. Kadyrov and Chechnya is saying, now's the time to use a nuclear weapon. And so Putin is unexpectedly facing pressure to be more aggressive.
So the possibility of taking an off ramp and being less aggressive is looking less attractive to him, because it's unclear that he would have any domestic, meaning elite support, for that kind of move. It's becoming a very delicate situation for him because he's more vulnerable. So I think as Ben suggests, any kind of negotiation is going to have to involve finding something that can offer him a face saving way to back down from the wall that he's up against.
MATT PORTER: And I think this easily takes us into our next sort of section here, which is about communications. And Jonathan, maybe for you to start, this is a much different media atmosphere than 1962. 24 hour media, social media, you have Volodymyr Zelenskyy almost running his country from a bunker using all the available technologies. Talk about what do you think are the positive and negatives for having this type of environment compared to 1962 for a nuclear crisis-- for potential nuclear crisis, perhaps as we've been discussing in Ukraine?
JONATHAN KAUFMAN: Well, I mean, obviously, I mean, there are so many more sources of information right now. Not just within the US but around the world. I mean, if there were some sort of an escalation or even a nuclear strike. I mean, people will be looking at their phones and seeing viral videos.
I remember at one point talking to Denis McDonough in the Obama administration. He said one of the things about terrorist attacks is that people are going to be looking at the impact of terrorist attacks on their phones and what does that do to people. And so this is a situation where the immediacy of that was going to will be very obvious. And will put-- will add to the pressure and add to the sense that you have to do something and do something quickly.
Also, there is the question of leaks. I mean, I still feel that the US is can still kind of control the narrative up to a point. But as Alexandra says, it's unclear whether Russia can do the same thing. And then as I said earlier, I do think the whole question of the polarization.
You can see Biden suddenly coming under attack from both the left and the right very quickly, saying we're doing too much. We're doing too little. And then people kind of fall into their silos. And there's Biden trying to kind of figure out what is the right decision.
And I think one of the challenges for him is he's been doing this for 50 years. He's been in politics for 50 years. And I don't doubt that he's got a schema in his mind about how to deal with this.
But as Ben points out, the decision will have to be made awfully fast. And then how do you persuade people? I mean, we're at the point now where even if he gives a very powerful speech the way Kennedy did, will 40% of the people just not even bother to pay attention? And what are going to be the consequences of that as he tries to move forward?
MATT PORTER: And Ben, going to you. We talked about the media in 1962. You had Walter Cronkite. You had these esteemed journalists sort of gatekeeping the information.
You talked about how Biden must navigate his advisors opinions. But what does he do with all that noise? Particularly, maybe coming from media outlets that say, don't necessarily tell the whole truth or have very specific agenda compared to what was around in '62?
BEN RHODES: Yeah, I think there are a couple of interesting ways in which that affects the landscape. I mean, the first [INAUDIBLE] thing Jonathan said to give a specific example, I remember when you had the ISIS beheadings, horrific murders of four American hostages leveraged maximum sensationalism. There was an overwhelming desire to do something and to just go to war.
And Obama slowed that train down. And we did go to war with ISIS but in a more deliberate fashion. But I remember seeing even studies that some academic researchers had done that you could have gotten Americans to support dropping a nuclear weapon on Raqqa after those videos were shown. And that was-- and I say this with all due obviously sensitivity to the horrific tragedy for the families of those four people, that was the murder essentially of four people that they created that dynamic in American politics.
So I do think the social media component is overwhelming. The imagery, you even saw in the day before Russia invaded Ukraine. I think, if you asked a lot of analysts and you ask the administration, I don't think they anticipated moving to a full oil embargo or to the full freezing of Russia's central bank assets. The imagery was so overpowering of those-- that initial bombardment of Kyiv, that it just it unleashed like a public opinion demand for action. And if the images are of nuclear fallout on civilians, I think that's going to be-- it's going to cut both ways.
Because it can be incredibly powerful and motivating to do something in response, but incredibly frightening to other people to think, well, we don't want to end up like that too. And so I think the social media thing is the first one. But then the second point to your question specifically, is we're living in an age of conspiracy theory.
And not only can Joe Biden not count on the fact that most Americans will consume what he says unfiltered. I mean, I remember this the beginning, as recently as 2009 when Obama became president, you could still count on most Americans, at least consuming some straight version of what Obama said through the evening news or the morning news or a local newspaper. By 2016, that was gone and now, it's totally gone.
And Americans are going to receive what Biden says to a filter. And there's going to be conspiracy theories that somehow we're responsible. Or the Russians are going to be fueling all manner of conspiracy theories about the origins of why this is happening and what even happened. And we can kind of chuckle those off. But the reality is that look at what happened with vaccines in this country. Look at the potency of QAnon.
So Biden is going to be dealing with a very corrupted media environment here where he's not going to get a straight shot to communicate. But I do think that means being as clear and plainspoken and straightforward as possible, giving people facts, providing lots of updates, having other credible messengers not just Joe Biden but Lloyd Austin, the Secretary of Defense, Tony Blinken, the Secretary of State, regular information. Again, something people can learn from Kennedy's kind of updates throughout the Cuban Missile Crisis. But the updates are going to be more frequent today.
Because when there's a vacuum of-- communications vacuum in this day and age, it gets filled by all manner of garbage really. And the Russians will be playing in that space too. They'll be trying to fill that vacuum.
MATT PORTER: Yeah, Alexandra, do you want to talk about how sort of internet communications make it either hard or easier for Putin to control his agenda on his side?
ALEXANDRA VACROUX: There are a number of interesting factors here. So the first is that from-- not from the beginning, but in an increasingly strident way the Russians have been being fed a diet of media that emphasizes that NATO is behind all of this. NATO and the US, we're going to set up military bases in Ukraine and attack Russia. So it's important for us to fight in Ukraine because we're defending Russia.
So it's going to be easy to say, NATO made us do it, whatever it was. The question that I've been asking myself is, who does Putin have to persuade? We know who Biden is going to be getting advice from. We know as, Ben said, that there are going to be some people who say, you just have to do something. You have to act fast.
But it's unclear that Putin is taking a lot of advice from people even from his generals or his chief of staff. So we don't really know who is going to be coming to him and what those different voices are going to be. Are there going to be voices of people who say maybe we should take a more measured approach, maybe we shouldn't escalate all the way? Or is he really making the decision on his own?
And then the follow up question to that is, who does he have to persuade that he took the right decision? To some extent, it is the Russian public because we can see it the reaction now to this mobilization or this draft is very unsettling for the domestic situation in Russia. So Putin has to do something to kind of keep people relatively under control. But there's also an inner circle.
The elites that are part of the pyramid of which he is the top have to also believe that he's got the situation under control, that he's not reacting very emotionally, which is already what a lot of people think. That Putin used to be seen as very cold and rational. And now, there's much more of an emotional content to why he believes Russia needs to be invading Ukraine.
And I think that's where the danger lies that we don't know that there are measured voices and alternative opinions coming to the table for Putin to decide. We don't think that there are people like there were around Khrushchev, sort of saying that this is a collective decision that we should take, and there's a Communist Party that has to be persuaded that this was the right decision. And we also don't know how important it is to him to be able to spin the decision once it's taken.
Because even if you look at the talk shows that are now dominating the Russian media, he's kind of lost control of those. That's where you're hearing a lot of people saying, why are the generals so bad? Why are we losing Kharkiv? Why are we not able to defend Lyman? So it's becoming very precarious for him to dominate the narrative in the way that he's used to. It's become actually much more like the American media landscape than something different which it was before.
MATT PORTER: All of that seems to make a more dangerous Putin maybe than a more predictable Putin, I assume.
ALEXANDRA VACROUX: Well, he's always been dangerous. But I think you're right. We kind of had a sense for how he took decisions. And there was a calculation to it.
And I think here, we don't understand what he's calculating. We don't understand how he's assessing a weight to different outcomes or to different risks. And that's what's unpredictable and more dangerous.
MATT PORTER: I love this discussion. But I do want to take us to a couple more things before we run out of time. Discussing the legacy of the Cuban Missile Crisis on a few issues, one diplomacy and obviously, Ben, this is coming to you. How does the handling of the Cuban Missile Crisis stack up when it comes to America's leaders today looking for good examples of navigating a nuclear crisis or existential crisis?
BEN RHODES: I mean, I think there are a lot of positive lessons that people can take from it. One is-- was in the identification of a third option between going to war in Cuba and-- or trying to some kind of direct US military action versus something that is a acquiescence to what the Soviets had done. I mean, it was creative option that was identified through a blockade and then a negotiation that could address some of the issues around it.
I think the other is in dealing with Khrushchev in my reading of it, I think Kennedy was very skillful. And he had different-- he was getting mixed messages from Khrushchev, like occasionally belligerent, occasionally conciliatory. And Kennedy and his team seemed to steer things in the direction to the more rational and conciliatory, and chose to respond to the more reasonable messaging from the Soviet side.
That's really important. And that's something that I felt in my own time in government in dealing with issues that kind of had echoes of the Cuban Missile Crisis whether it's Iranian nuclear issues or actually negotiating with the Cubans themselves, if you always cast your adversary in the worst possible light. And you might foreclose the opportunity to get something pragmatic done.
That doesn't mean to be naive either. It's always a balance. But I think Kennedy kind of handled Khrushchev's-- you took him seriously but not always literally in his threats. I think that's always an important lesson. Although, as Alexandra said, Putin seems to unfortunately be moving in a more wholly irrational direction.
I think the other last thing I'd say is that the lines of communication are essential here. You want to be able to ensure that you are communicating with an adversary so as to prevent miscalculation. If things are going to escalate, you want to be damn sure that that's not a mistake, that that's not because you misread something, that the other side is doing. So you need to talk. You need to have those communication lines as was the case throughout the Cuban Missile Crisis.
And that's not as leader to leader too by the way. In the Putin context we've been talking about, I think the Biden team which should make sure they try to have open lines with the Russian military, with the Russian intelligence, maybe you maybe get to someone in the chain of command. You may learn something. You learn you always learn something from some interaction. So that's important.
I think less applicable is in saying that, Jonathan can talk about, but you can't hide what you're doing. There's no way you could put off it coming out that you made a commitment on the US nuclear posture in Turkey. We're in a much more-- so it's-- some of-- there are some things that were important to the Cuban Missile Crisis that are harder to pull forward because of the nature of politics and geopolitics and media today.
JONATHAN KAUFMAN: Yeah. I think that the Cuban Missile Crisis, to me at least, feels like it was very much a Cold War crisis in terms of the stakes and how it was handled. I think 60 years from now, if we look back at the Ukrainian crisis, it may feel much more relevant to the kinds of crises the world is going to be facing in the next 60 years. I think for example, what happens with China and Taiwan may end up following a similar pattern of how do you deal with a great power, dealing with what seems to be or which they cast as an internal dispute.
It's not a direct threat to the United States but clearly has enormous implications taking place in a very different media environment. I think that we're now in a way trying out different approaches that people may look back on the way we're looking back on the Cuban Missile Crisis to see how are we figuring out 21st century responses to these kinds of challenges.
MATT PORTER: I'm glad you brought that up, Jonathan, because it comes up to my next question, which is, how do we prepare for whatever the next crisis is? And I'll just set it up by saying with the Cuban Missile Crisis, we saw preparations like duck and cover drills, which weren't necessarily-- would be effective in the crisis, but they made-- they were sort of cosmetic that made people feel like they were prepared. And how do we actually prepare so that we're not just doing a cosmetic preparation to make people feel comfortable but actually be prepared?
And we saw with COVID, that even when we think we're prepared, we're not necessarily fully prepared. So for all of you to reflect, how do we get ready for whatever the next crisis is, whether it be a military conflict or climate change? What do you guys think as a reflection?
ALEXANDRA VACROUX: I'd say one thing that's really important is to make sure that the important issues don't slip off the agenda. It's not that we need to have Ukraine above the fold every day for the next year and a half or 10 years or however long the conflict lasts. But it's quite important that we not lose sight of the fact that we are sort of on the precipice of potential nuclear conflict in Ukraine and that it not-- we not get distracted by other things that are happening, even though the other things are important too.
I would say the other important issue, which Jonathan alluded to is that we are living in a very globalized world now. And there are ways in which we can engage other world leaders, perhaps more effectively than we have in the past in this kind of conflict. So as Ben says, it's great that we're talking to the Russians or we hopefully are talking to the Russians, not just Putin to Biden, but at all levels down. But it's also important to be keeping an open dialogue with Turkey and with China and with Israel and the other countries that Russia might be listening to more readily than the United States, because that might ultimately be one of the more effective ways to get information into the Kremlin and also back out to us about what's going on there.
BEN RHODES: Yeah, I think that's an incredibly important point because on all these challenges, climate, Ukraine, Taiwan, it's not the binary context of the Cold War. There's so many stakeholders. It's foreign governments. It's also corporations, tech and media companies, in some cases, in some places, civil society. And I do think that the glaring elephant in the room, if you will, is our own political division and dysfunction right now, which just makes it that much harder to prepare people for things.
So ultimately, the gradual-- I don't want to be unrealistic about the pace of this could happen. But the kind of gradual detoxification of our own political media culture would make us much more prepared. And frankly, would give leaders space to be more straightforward with the people about what's happening out there and what the risks are.
I do feel like the Biden team which is I think handled this crisis quite well. I think one challenge they've had is being in-- the same is true for European leaders, being pretty straight with their people. This is not going to be cost free. This is-- and this is not going to be without complication or risk.
I think even today, that risk is not kind of fully articulated to publics. Because sometimes, there's a concern that if you tell people how bad this could get, they're going to turn against you. Well, I get that. But at a certain point here, we have to be laying this out for people.
And I think about Taiwan, which Jonathan brought up, that's a place where it's much more likely that America could get drawn into a conflict. And what percentage of Americans kind of could even identify Taiwan? And I'm not saying that to be glib but I just think they're-- talking about these things, climate change and its effects and what the mass migrations are going to happen or the danger of extreme weather events, we're clearly a bit behind the curve on that. Because it's a hard conversation to have in the context of our politics.
But ultimately, getting our own house in order is going to make it easier to do the necessary work of public education preparedness. In the absence of that, I think you have to work with whoever you can. Like I was saying, other governments, business, private sector, media, tech, making sure that other people with megaphones get it so that they might be helpful and passing that on.
JONATHAN KAUFMAN: I mean, I think globalization is a good thing. And I think we've got to see more of it in academics and corporations and governments and NGOs. I think we're unfortunately seeing a kind of pulling inward in the US, in China, certainly in Russia countries, turning away from each other for lots of complex reasons. And I worry that as a result when crises happen, we don't have people who understand or have kind of an intimate knowledge or know people in these countries.
And I think we've got to make sure that knowledge continues to be gained so that when a crisis happens, we have understanding. Otherwise, it's easier to make bad decisions when you don't really know who's in the other end of the phone line or the conversations. And then that's how you stumble into very serious crises, I think.
MATT PORTER: And thank you all. I have one final question for each of you with the same question. But from your experiences, what is the greatest lesson learned to take away from the Cuban Missile Crisis from 1962?
BEN RHODES: To me, the greatest lesson learned is that ultimately avoiding an unnecessary catastrophe is the most important objective of policy making. In a way, like it took real courage for Kennedy to not do something that might have appealed to his more hardline or hawkish advisors that he had it in his forefront of his mind, yes, we need to stand up to these guys and get these missiles out of Cuba. But my main job as president is to do that in a way that doesn't get an enormous potentially cataclysmic number of people killed.
And that may seem like an obvious lesson. But I don't know, I can tell you, it's not always obvious people when they're dealing with the context of politics. And so again, that combination of firmness and restraint, I mean, it was-- it's probably the best example of that in certainly the last 100 years. And we have to constantly remind ourselves, the performative nature of politics and national security and foreign policy can get us in a lot of trouble. And Kennedy, provides a template for how you can be principled and tough without losing sight of the fact that as leaders, you have a responsibility to protect human life.
ALEXANDRA VACROUX: I would add to that it's remarkable that we came out of the Cuban Missile Crisis without a crisis, that even when you've got what appears to be a deathly serious and dangerous confrontation, there is a way out if the leaders are willing to contemplate that and to take some political risk and make the hard decisions, either because they're hearing good advice from people, they're not doing the perhaps instantly more satisfying but ultimately more dangerous reaction. They're not necessarily playing to the crowd, but really focusing on the conflict and how to get out of that conflict.
And I think the Russians see the Cuban Missile Crisis in the same way, that it's an inspirational moment where we were on the precipice and we pulled back. And that's what we should remember that it is possible to pull back. But it takes a lot of self-control and dialogue and careful thinking.
ALEXANDRA VACROUX: No, I agree. I think the lesson is leaders matter and we could have imagined that crisis with different players, different leaders, with a very different and much more horrific result.
MATT PORTER: Well, I want to say thank you to all three of you for joining us for this really interesting discussion. And I appreciate your time.
ALEXANDRA VACROUX: Thanks for having us.
BEN RHODES: Yeah, thanks so much.
JONATHAN KAUFMAN: Thank
You.
JAMIE RICHARDSON: Thank you for listening to Atomic Gambit, a JFK35 special series on the Cuban Missile Crisis. We'll be back in 2023 with a new season with more behind the scenes looks at JFK's life and legacy. Along with Matt Porter and myself, Jamie Richardson, Atomic Gambit is made possible with the help from our co-producer, Rick King and Supervising Producer, Valerie Linson. Thank you to our research assistants, Sara Laroussi and Megan McKee and our independent fact checker, Ben Schafer.
Thank you to the JFK library's archives staff for assistance with researching and digitizing additional material. We also want to thank the Miller Center, the University of Virginia for providing the recordings of the White House tapes used in this program. A special thank you to Ambassador Caroline Kennedy for permission to use audio from Jacqueline Kennedy's 1964 oral history interview.
Our music is composed by Premium Beat. And podcast artwork is provided by Brian Kang. We also thank all of our guests for lending their voices and expertise to this podcast.