For Pacifica Radio, January 27th, 2019.
I'm Scott Horton.
This is Anti-War Radio.
All right, y'all.
Welcome to the show.
It is Anti-War Radio.
I'm your host, Scott Horton.
I'm the editorial director of Antiwar.com and the author of Fool's Errand.
Time to end the war in Afghanistan.
You can find my full interview archive, almost 4,900 interviews now, going back to 2003, at scotthorton.org.
All right, you guys, introducing John V. Walsh.
He writes regularly at Antiwar.com, Consortium News, and other places like that.
And he was, until recently, professor of physiology and cellular neuroscience at a Massachusetts medical school.
Oh, a Massachusetts?
That's a little vague.
Welcome back to the show.
How you doing, John?
Been a while.
I'm pretty good.
How are you?
I'm doing good.
All right, you don't want to say which Massachusetts medical school you're teaching?
We'll leave that alone.
I don't know.
They're probably happy I'm gone.
No, I bet they are.
No, I'm just kidding.
Well, we're happy to have you.
Um, hey, listen, so you read Daniel Ellsberg's Doomsday Machine.
Good idea.
Yes, and I know you've had him on.
It's a great book.
Yeah, well, you, sir, certainly happen to have a lot to say about what he wrote in there.
And so I'm very happy to have you on to talk about all of that.
In fact, you start off with a quote from Vladimir Putin, after Oliver Stone showed him Stanley Kubrick, Dr. Strangelove.
Yes, yes.
And I was amazed at what he said that, you know, he's, he said that the Kubrick got it right and not just to write down to some technical details, including the idea that these weapon systems are increasingly hard to control.
And this is from a guy who does have his finger on the button, and it's had it there for a long while.
So I thought there was a certain amount of nervousness and in that comment, and and it's too bad people don't watch those interviews.
They're very good.
And but but that I think is, you know, and here we are.
And the reason I wrote this is, we're a year away from Ellsberg's really good book.
And it seems like it, it hasn't, it got some publicity, but I don't think it's really served its purpose in waking people up that there's no, this question of nuclear weapons seems to be something that's just dropped off the radar.
And I think that's very dangerous.
Yeah, well, it's just not on TV.
I think most people, many people, I don't know the numbers, but many people growing up today might not know the first thing about an A bomb or an H bomb, or the difference or how big they might be, or which countries have them or why they should care at all.
Yes.
And my generation did grow up with the fear of nuclear weapons all the time.
And I remember as a child having mushroom cloud nightmares.
And I don't think that was all at all unusual.
And and now that's sort of been pushed to the back of our, our consciousness.
And maybe there's a certain responsibility to the generation that went through that, to remind people who are coming up that this is not gone away, this is still there.
And maybe that's a contribution this generation could yet make.
I don't know.
But I think somehow, the consciousness of this has to be reawakened.
And I know Ellsberg, when he talks about this, places a lot of emphasis on education, which is really very important in getting more information, which is really very important.
For example, he gives an estimate of number of people that would have been killed in the first 30 days as a result of fires and radiation and everything else first 30 days, after first strike a nuclear first strike by the United States in 1961.
That's the Pentagon, he got an estimate from the Pentagon, which surprised him when he's working in the Kennedy administration.
And it comes down to really one, I think it was 1.3 billion people when you look at it all together.
And that doesn't include nuclear winter.
That was one third of the population of the earth.
Now, what is that estimate today?
We have no idea.
The arsenals are smaller, yes, but are the weapons that are ready to go any less?
And are they more powerful?
We don't even know.
But I think we can be pretty sure that the functioning Russia and the United States as functioning societies, and a majority of the population would be wiped out right away.
That's bad enough.
I mean, you don't have to go to nuclear winter to say, you know, we don't want to risk this at every moment.
So information is important.
But I think, you know, somehow, as I was saying, public consciousness is also important, because there are a handful of experts that are interested in this general question of, of living on the precipice of disaster here.
But it is not a general, it's not out there.
It's not, as you say, it's not on TV.
And there are there are many reasons for that, I think, first of all, I don't think that the establishment, our rulers, whatever you want, or the military industrial complex wants this discussed.
They want they don't, they really don't want the populace to be up in arms over this, because there would be tremendous pressure for them to change things.
And other things that push this off the agenda.
And I think I don't think I mentioned this in the piece, but and this is a part of the Ellsberg strategy to leading up to the Reagan Gorbachev Accords, which abolished the intermediate nuclear weapons in Europe, or actually, completely for both sides, up to the moment when we're going back on it.
There was the freeze movement.
I don't know whether you were around or...
I was a little kid then.
But yeah, I mean, that is my experience with nukes is that it was the end of detente and the return of brinksmanship under Ronald Reagan, but then culminating with, as you said, massive nuclear reductions treaties, and in fact, the dissolution of the entire Soviet Empire.
Yes.
So what happened there is that there were, you know, there were millions of people in the streets, across the continents, calling for a nuclear freeze.
It was very simple.
Just don't build anymore.
Let's stop where we are now.
That was sort of an intermediate demand that seemed realizable, and it put the question on the agenda.
I think one of the problems we have now is that, and again, it's the best of intentions are involved here, but the only thing that's on the agenda with the present movement is absolute abolition of nuclear weapons.
And there are several difficulties with that.
First of all, do we have time to get there?
Because it's going to take a long time.
And secondly, it doesn't seem like it's a realizable goal.
Whereas Ellsberg is saying, listen, basically, what he's saying is, let's get rid of hair trigger alerts so that at any moment, we don't all go up and smoke.
You know, his point is, that's realizable, that can be done.
As a matter of fact, in certain respects, it can be done just by the presidents of the United States and Russia.
They could, there's a series of measures that they could take, if they were allowed to talk to one another, that could get rid of that.
And then we could go on to think about how we could abolish nuclear weapons.
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And now, speaking of Reagan, and this really ought to go to show a little perspective for people, that Ronald Reagan came within an inch, really, of making a deal to abolish all American and Soviet nuclear weapons at Reykjavik in, I think it's 88.
Yes.
And he didn't do it over bogus promises by his staff that the Star Wars program and the missile defense shield could be a real thing and that he couldn't abandon that.
But anyway, that's history.
But my point is, I think that's very important, because a lot of the antiwar movement and therefore a lot of the what there is of the anti-nuclear movement is liberals or progressives, whatever you want to call them.
And the idea is sort of embedded here that only Democrats can possibly bring about some measure of nuclear sanity.
Well, that's just not the record.
That's not.
Reagan did that.
And actually, Trump made the campaign promise to get along with Russia.
The prerequisite, we're getting into this now, but the prerequisite for any sort of nuclear controls or disarmament is for the presidents of Russia and the United States to sit down together.
And that's completely impossible.
The Helsinki summit occurred.
They haven't been able to meet again, really.
So this is a lack of historical perspective.
You can't write off a chance for peace because the guy is not in your party.
That's ridiculous.
Well, you know, when Nixon went to China, the New York Times and the nation and leaders in the House and the Senate, they supported it.
And when Reagan was trying to negotiate away and did successfully, as you said, negotiate away many of our H-bombs in deals with the Soviet Union, he was attacked by the likes of Norman Podhoretz and the neoconservatives.
But he was supported by the liberals and the Democrats, despite the fact that he was a Ronald Reagan, Donald Trump, 1988, they said, this is the right thing.
And they supported it anyway, and told the hawks to shut up.
And now here, where are we in the 2000 teens, when even the idea of dealing with the Russians, especially on something like this, would be considered the highest of treason by those same liberal groups, essentially, not by The Nation magazine, but by the rest of them.
Well, that's true, you know, and that's why, you know, that's why Stephen F. Cohen keeps saying, the situation now is worse than it has ever been.
It was, it's worse than it was then, because there was some open mindedness, some tolerance to the other side, even if we didn't agree with them, or even if some people didn't agree with them, but that in this Russiagate hysteria, that's gone.
So we're in a very dangerous situation, we're in a dangerous situation.
And it could get even worse.
Because one of the things that Ellsberg emphasizes is that the whole problem of living on the precipice comes about from the United States, and then the Soviet Union, having first strike capabilities, that is having a nuclear arsenal that can not only destroy the other country, but take out its deterrent.
So when you have your deterrent threatened, what do you do?
First of all, you build more H-bombs.
That's one thing you do.
So you always have some to send back, so that your adversary will know that you're not going to be, that there will be a price to pay for an attack.
And you put your weapons on hair trigger alert.
And you do all kinds of crazy things like delegating responsibility to unknown people to send off the weapons in case the leaders of your country get wiped out.
Well, all this derives from first strike capability.
That's the thing that Ellsberg emphasizes a lot.
So the thing about first strike capability is, it metastasizes.
That is, the Chinese don't have that now.
They've decided they're not going to do that.
So they're sitting there with a few hundred nukes, that at last I understood, are not on hair trigger alert.
But as they feel more and more threatened, and we do have a first strike capability, and we begin to say there that they're our main enemy, what are they going to do?
Build more nukes?
Put them on hair trigger alert?
And now we have three countries that are in that condition.
And who knows where it will go from there.
India may look at China and say, oh my God, look what they have.
We've got to have that too.
To perpetuate this is even worse than having it.
I mean, every day, it's not just that every day we could all get blown up.
But every day makes it more likely that other people will get this, will decide to get this capability, and the situation will become even more unstable.
So times are wasting.
And we should be glad that we, I don't want to get back into Trump again, but we should take every opportunity that we have to start these negotiations and get going.
And there are people on top.
There are people who, you know, there's a whole group of ex-military commanders and advisors, an international group, Russian, American, Chinese, all retirees.
People always get into these things once they're retired.
I don't know why they don't do that beforehand.
But anyway, who are in this group called Global Zero.
And including Henry Kissinger and George Schultz, and all of these guys that you could think of, of course, I don't know if Sam Nunn is still alive, but...
Well, they're in there, but there is a subgroup in GlobalZero.org.
But there's a subgroup that is actually ex-military internationally that is dedicated first and foremost to getting these weapons off hair trigger alert.
That's their goal.
They don't they're sort of like Ellsberg, except rather than trying to get rid of Minuteman missiles and high-level nuclear submarines, they want to go for the hair trigger alert.
And I think that's very wise.
There is a group like this.
It doesn't include the Kissingers and all the rest that are hovering around this organization.
So I don't know.
I don't know whether they have any capability of actually doing something about it.
But they have been the only group that I've found that isn't committed to abolition or bust.
The other thing too, is that there are people who don't want first strike capability, but they do want a deterrent.
North Korea is still around.
Qaddafi's government is gone.
Saddam Hussein's government is gone.
People look at that and they say, you know, you can argue that nuclear weapons are not a deterrent, but it looks like they are.
And so when you say, well, we're all good.
We want everybody to go to zero right away and just trust us or something like that.
They're not going to do that unless everybody has a deterrent and nobody has a first strike.
Then maybe some people will say, well, you know, we don't have to worry so much.
It's a step forward.
But you can't dismiss people's desire to have a deterrent when there's evidence that it has worked.
I hate to say that, but there's evidence that it has worked.
And so we have to take that into account too.
And it's not perfect.
But we don't have any choice.
Now, ultimately for our side, even with a small proportion of the military force that our government has now, we have a conventional deterrent.
USA could level your capital city wherever you are without any nukes in a few days time if it came down to it.
So I'm not saying I recommend that, but I'm saying for us, I think we could unilaterally disarm and dare the rest of the world to follow suit and do everything we could to convince them to.
I think that's a great idea.
I mean, that's yet another path.
Now, I'm undermining your great argument about, hey, let's just be reasonable here and get rid of the worst of these things.
You mentioned in your article Vladimir Putin's recent speech that he gave six months ago or something, where he talked about his new supersonic cruise missiles and nuclear power cruise missiles.
You know, it would be strictly speaking, I agree with you, it would be reasonable for us to say, you know, we don't we have such a powerful military, which I'd rather we haven't, we didn't, but that we don't need a nuclear deterrent.
Unless, unless, unless the other side, unless some other side has first strike capability, then we do.
So we're getting into this.
The problem is that, as Ellsberg points out, is that the United States has this first strike capability.
And it uses it in the sense that when things get tight, it uses it the way a robber uses a loaded gun to put to your head, he doesn't fire it, he has pretty good control of you once he does that.
Same way with the first strike capability.
It's really the source of this problem.
And our establishment, military establishment, and our political establishment has become accustomed to having it that's embedded in, in their way of thinking, it's going to be very hard to pull them away from that.
That was the great thing about Reagan, he was willing to toss that aside.
And maybe somebody else will come along who will be able to, who will be willing to do that, too.
It doesn't take much.
You know, it doesn't take a rocket scientist, I shouldn't use that.
It doesn't take, it just takes somebody with some simple common sense and some simple decency to do this.
I mean, not even, right?
Even Donald Trump could.
And without the whole Russiagate scandal, he would be in absolutely the perfect position to.
And here's a guy with no common sense or not a shred of decency whatsoever.
But in fact, any jerk, like the worst person that you've ever met could still think, you know, the Cold War is about 30 years gone now.
And I'm not sure why we need to have H-bombs at all anymore.
Right?
Like he could be a horrible person and still figure that out.
And I think Trump has, and I think that's probably a big reason for the motive for the Russiagate scandal in the first place is to just absolutely hem him in on those questions.
Of course, it's not Trump.
It's all the brilliant advisors, the best and the brightest around him.
That's the problem.
And, or the adults in the room, as they're called, that's the problem, really.
They're the adults in the room that haven't learned a thing in since they were children.
And so that's really our problem now.
But the other but the big problem is, I think, for us is to generate more awareness about this.
And I guess the Ellsberg made the first big step.
I mean, you know, I think, I think his book brought all this to the fore.
And I hope that we can somehow make use of it and make some progress on this.
Yeah.
I was talking about Physicians for Social Responsibility.
They're still around.
But if you look today, they're not saying we have to get beyond Russiagate and have the United States and Russia sitting down and talking.
They don't talk about that anymore.
They're quiet on that.
And so what is that physicians group doing today?
Well, they're still nominally interested in nuclear weapons, but they're mainly interested in the environment.
So we've lost and I find this all the time that all the organizations which were once concerned exclusively with nuclear weapons and nuclear disaster are now concerned with both that and the environment.
That's fine.
But those are both good concerns, as long as both are really represented.
But I don't find the other that the other has happened.
I don't find that the environmental groups are interested in nuclear issues.
So there's some sort of imbalance that's developed here.
And, and it's just that an imbalance.
And I think it has to be, it has to be brought back to a more balanced level.
But perhaps the idea that de-alerting the weapons, getting them off hair trigger alert.
Yeah.
As this global zero subgroup wants to do.
Right.
Hey, what's worse for the environment than thermonuclear explosions, huh?
Right.
But but I mean, that the idea of doing that, or the idea of doing the, the taking the couple steps that Ellsberg suggests, either of those would are intermediate steps that maybe they could be put in such a way that they would grab the attention of the populace.
I don't have a specific subject.
Well, I do have one specific objection.
You know, you could have, you know, step back, step away from nuclear disaster, the first step away, you know, called first step, but now we have, we just have first step legislation.
So we could there's those who get confused with, but something like that, the first step away.
And, and, and it had something like that, that would be as simple as the freeze, and could reignite the conversation, because we, once the conversation is reignited, I mean, it is not hard for people to see the danger, and to wake up to it.
So and, and, you know, that awakening has to occur, because even if I was in a discussion group, phone discussion group for a long while, with, I won't name the name, but a big peace group.
And there were several people on there who, you know, they've given a they've spent their whole lives in peace work.
And they were saying, well, this is not a concern that the military has war game to this out, I remember one saying, and we don't have to worry about it.
That is, that is, I don't know where that mentality even comes from.
But it is, it is from somewhere that somebody who's never had any interaction, serious interaction with technology, because nothing ever works forever, just the way it's supposed to be, or what's supposed to work.
It, that's not the way.
So there, we have to, there has to be some, something, maybe a work of art, like you suggest, like getting back to that movie, or there has to be something, and I think, preferably something that would move people.
The other thing is the INF, since the INF Treaty is being torn up, people in Europe maybe should be out in the streets saying, you know, in large numbers, we don't want any nuclear weapons put in our country.
But I don't see that happening.
And I'm not advocating a solution, because I don't have it.
But I am advocating that we start to look for one with some sense of urgency.
You know, whether somebody will come along and define, I mean, it always takes somebody to define the people, the status quo, the establishment.
That's what Gorbachev did.
I mean, he said, I've had enough.
None of this makes sense.
I'm not going to go along with this anymore.
He just said, forget about it.
I'm going to do what obviously should be done.
And he had the guts to do it.
And Reagan did too.
And I think actually, we don't know whether Trump has that in him, because we haven't been able to test that.
There hasn't been a Helsinki two or Helsinki three or four.
So we don't know.
So I don't know.
I think that's why we have to put this on the front burner again, in whatever way we can.
Yeah.
Well, in a way, at least there's the humor of the whole situation.
On one hand, I mean, you know, back in the 1980s, he had actually said he wanted Reagan to send him to Moscow to negotiate the deal to get rid of them all.
So we know he thinks along those lines.
He had an uncle that taught at MIT that he likes to, has repeated a few times, taught him all about nuclear weapons and what have you.
So, and he sees the greatness factor in doing something big like that.
And yet at the same time, what has he done?
He's taken Obama's policy of the $1.2 trillion dollar revamp of the entire nuclear weapons arsenal and industry, and he's made it the $1.7 trillion plan and counting.
And so he talks a good game and he admits that he knows better than he does the worst wrong thing almost every time, and including on nukes so far.
Yes.
People succumb to pressure.
You see that all the time.
And that's why I guess a lot of people, you know, like these retired generals who are on this global zero committee, nuclear reduction committee, nuclear risk reduction committee.
I think probably a lot of people, once they get out of the out of office or out of their careers in the military, they step back and they say, Oh, my God, look what I've done.
And I think there was, you know, Ellsberg talks about that too.
It came to him before he got into retirement.
It came to him because the Vietnam War woke him up.
And so it's a little bit too late then.
People have to do that when they're in power and they have a chance to really make a difference.
We haven't seen that yet since Reagan and Gorbachev.
We better see it soon.
Yeah, I'm telling you what.
And hey, so for listeners who, you know, have just grown up without this education, go to YouTube and look at some H-bombs.
And then, you know, think about somewhere, maybe squeezing it into your political priorities there.
The very future existence of the human race might be worth your time, you know?
All right.
Hey, listen, thanks so much for coming back on the show.
It's been a long time and great to talk to you again, John.
Okay.
Thanks for having me on.
All right, you guys, thanks very much for listening.
I am Scott Horton.
This is Anti-War Radio.
I'm here every Sunday morning from 8.30 to 9 on KPFK 90.7 FM in LA.
Find my full interview archive, almost 4,900 interviews now going back to 2003 at scotthorton.org.
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