COLD WAR: MAD 1960-1972 {PART 12 OF 24} (TV)
Summary
Part twelve of twenty-four in this documentary series examining the events of the Cold War, from 1917 to the early 1990s. This series consists of interviews and archival footage, accompanied by historical narration by Kenneth Branagh. This episode focuses on the genesis and development of the idea of a capacity for MAD -- mutual assured destruction -- in the United States and the Soviet Union. It begins with U.S. secretary of defense Robert McNamara's description of MAD as "the foundation of deterrence." It moves on to describe the 1960 shooting down of an American reconnaissance airplane over Soviet airspace, an incident that revealed the tensions and suspicions between the two countries. Titan missile crew members Tom Denchy and Ray Hersey go on to describe the readiness in the United States in the early 1960s to launch missiles aimed at the U.S.S.R. Soviet bomber pilot General Mikhail Mokrinski explains the threat perceived by the Soviets -- and their resolve to do something about it. The general describes Khrushchev's response, the testing of a bomb in 1961 that contained more explosive than was used in all of the second world war. Increasing escalation of the American nuclear arsenal is then discussed, as well as the growing awareness in the Kennedy administration that these weapons were from then on to be seen mainly as a deterrent. The program goes on to discuss McNamara's "no-cities plan," which proposed that nuclear weapons be aimed away from major urban areas, targeting only military bases. General Valentin Larionov, a Soviet military strategist, expresses the doubts about this plan in his country and elsewhere, calling it "an attempt to deceive oneself." The program moves on to the Cuban Missile Crisis -- which, it argues, brought home to both the U.S. and the Soviet Union the closeness of nuclear war and the dangers each country posed to the other. It was after this crisis, the filmmakers maintain, that military strategists accepted the reality of MAD, arguing that the best way to prevent war was to continue to build up arms. The program moves on to public perception of the nuclear arms race, featuring a brief clip of British director Peter Watkins' 1963 docudrama "The War Game" as well as archival "person-on-the-street" comments about the unlikelihood of survival in nuclear war. Civil defense, viewers are told, was not viewed as practical -- and was therefore explored only minimally. Next, a 1966 incident in which American bombers exploded over the coast of Spain demonstrates the dangers of accidental radiation damage from U.S. and Soviet weaponry. The program then moves on to the Soviet innovation of anti-ballistic missiles (ABMs), a technology that American defense analyst William Lee describes as throwing the MAD system out of whack. Tension between the superpowers was further augmented, the filmmakers argue, by the 1967 six-day war in the Middle East. The American response to the Soviet ABMS is then discussed; U.S. scientists came up with a missile that could carry up to 10 warheads, each of which was aimed differently and therefore would have to be destroyed separately. Colonel General Yuri Votintsev and Nicolai Detinov of the Soviet defense ministry discuss the growing realization in their homeland that the arms race was becoming too costly. Detinov describes the necessity yet the difficulty of the first Helsinki SALT (strategic arms limitation talks) discussions. The program concludes with a brief discussion of the signing of the first SALT treaty in 1969, noting that the treaty cut back on ABMs but made only a small dent on the continuing escalation of nuclear weapons. Commercials deleted.
Cataloging of this program was made possible by The Blanche and Irving Laurie Foundation, 1999.
This selection from the Alan Gerry Cable Collection has been made available by the Gerry Foundation, Inc.
Details
- NETWORK: CNN
- DATE: December 13, 1998 Sunday 8:00 PM
- RUNNING TIME: 0:46:50
- COLOR/B&W: Color
- CATALOG ID: T:58477
- GENRE: Public affairs/Documentaries
- SUBJECT HEADING: Cold War; U S - Foreign relations - U S S R; U S S R - Foreign relations - U S; Nuclear weapons; Cuban Missile Crisis, 1962; Israel-Arab War, 1967; Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (SALT); She Made It Collection (Pat Mitchell)
- SERIES RUN: CNN - TV series, 1998-1999
- COMMERCIALS: N/A
CREDITS
- Pat Mitchell … Executive Producer
- Jeremy Isaacs … Executive Producer
- Vivian Schiller … Senior Producer
- Martin Smith … Series Producer
- Richard Melman … Producer
- Isobel Hinshelwood … Series Associate Producer
- Alison McAllan … Series Associate Producer
- Ted Turner … Series Concept by
- Karin Steininger … Editor
- Tessa Coombs … Research
- Svetlana Palmer … Research
- Steve Bergson … Film Research
- Miriam Walsh … Film Research
- Lawrence Freedman … Writer
- Carl Davis … Music by
- Kenneth Branagh … Narrator
- Tom Denchy
- Nikolai Detinov
- Ray Hersey
- Lyndon B. Johnson
- John F. Kennedy
- Nikita S. Khrushchev
- Alexei Kosygin
- Valentin Larionov
- William Lee
- Robert McNamara
- Mikhail Mokrinski
- Yuri Votintsev
- Peter Watkins