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Make sure these are in our mapping. ||sorina||

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Look into this. ||sorina||

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test xyz

During 'Djokovic saga' I have been trying to see if AI in some future form (conceptually) would be able to explain or, even, manage Djokovic case, which is par-excellence 'thick' logical problem combining among others:

• legal aspects
• health policy
• public perception
• public policy
• media
• conspiracy theories
• mix of half-truths
• difficulty to get to necessary but sufficient conditions

It continues to more than 40 logical and conceptual aspects that I extracted so far from Djokovic case.

This article relates to a few of them, including law and statistics.

||Jovan||

A very valid! Do we expect from AI more than we can do in explaining our reality and decisions.

Our problem is that we cannot understand particular AI reasonong.

||aldo.matteucciATgmail.com|| You would love this principle.

Ai and Poetry.

Bi and Aldo, I know that you have been interested in poetry. Here is an interesting paragraph explaining that meaning of poetry could be reduced to AI challenge via limited possibility to explain our emotional experience while listening poetry.

||biscottATdiplomacy.edu||||aldo.matteucciATgmail.com||||Jovan||

Contextual 'weight'.

In the European legal tradition, it is tension between positivists (Kelsen) and naturalist (Grotious) on purpose and interpretation of law. Kelsen would be on the right side and Grotious on the left side of this debate.

Great statement!!!!

Was Australian court in this situation in Djokovic case?

Dreyfus wrote book What computers cannot do. He was republishing on each iteration of AI revolution showing limits of machines.

Early AI

Wittgenstein is in the core of the latest AI who shifted from initial ideas of mathematical causality towards resemblance.

the key challenge for comprehensive AI.

Can we have algorithm that would solve all aspects of Djokovic crisis?

We often forget history and geogrpahy!

It is the key problem with modernity. We naively thought of 'end of history' even beyond Fukuyama. I learnt hard way limits of permanence by seeing Yugoslavia disappearing. With all its difficulties, Yugoslavia was the only reality for my generation on, in particular, deep emotional levels from supporting national team to cherishing rich cultural life. It has all powerful symbols of the 4th army in Europe, relatively efficient bureaucracy. But, it disappeared as if never existed. One collateral advantage was the lesson in vivo of illusion of permanence. In a way, we got an early preparation for era of the end of permanence from states to economic, legal and societal structure. Fasten seat belt!

It is very interesting reflection. EU also helped Malta diversify economy from Italy and UK. It is seriously understudied aspect of the EU as power equaliser. Is it the case? Could it apply to Cyprus/Greece or dependence of Central European economies on Germany?

||victor.camilleriATgmail.com||

we have to handle inherent paradoxes.

Can governments accept their wrong-doing and/or mistakes? It would be interesting how they accept mistakes and learn from it?

This is a very soldi analysis of the current geopolitical and geeeconomic situation. I will reflect on it in the 2022 predictions.

There is an interesting qualification of three types of companies:

• globalist (keen to maintain global Internet in order to benefit from global market)
• nationalists (benefit mainly from big government contracts)
• techno-utopianism (trying to overcome traditional government-centered world).

He tried to put companies in these three 'baskets' but they belong in different baskets. Microsoft is globalist with its 'diplomacy' while benefiting from big contracts in its 'nationalist' role. Microsoft also started playing with 'utopian role'. I would be most sceptical of 'techno-utopian' role. With exception of bitcoin, it is not reality. Most techno-utopians in this classification are 'in bed' with governments (Elon Mask, Facebook, etc.).

All companies will gain. In particular, Facebook. I would not put Apple and Google in the same basket. Apple has much more diverse income with selling hardware. Google is after FAcebook the most vulnerable on any regulatory turmoil.

Is this narrative still 'holding'

A possible reason for 'global deal' in digital politics.

it is most likey but not certain development.

Interesting dilemma. Worth discussion.

It is typical 'mantra'. I am not sure it is such binary situation. Both GAFA and Alibaba prospered because of favourable regulatory space. Yes, they had an idea and innovation. But, it was nutured a lot. Innovation is not just a matter of genius in garage (if it ever was the case).

There is an interesting prospect here. But, it remains to be seen if big power players (tech and governments) will let 'automation of trust' as one of the key economic and political relations. I am pessimistic about it because 'automation of trust' could shaken basis of economic, political and religious life. In essence, it would shaken last 22 centuries of human history.

Not sure. Globalist are increasingly seeking regulation in order to fortify their power nationally and globally.

This was their view 10 years ago (definitely before Snowden) while they were 'grabbing' digital markets.

The media focus on Facebook ignored Microsoft's enormous influence. Most of the UN runs on Microsoft. But, Microsoft has much more experience than GAFAs in interacting with governments and international organisations (e.g. language, legal positioning, etc.).

It is true!

The third element should be bottom-up development of communiteis regaining control of their data and patterns (AI.

It is the key for new EU approach to digital policy. They succeded with Airbus. Why not to try with another high tech product?

This is fair and correct analysis.

It is fair and rare for American author to recognise that two systems in the way they operate are similar. The only difference is more chances for democratic control in the USA. Exactly, similar 'modus operandi' opens the risk for convergence and potential global duopoly.

this is simple and the key!

Governments are also back due to COVID-19. Everybody realsied what it means to control 'physical space'.

this is the major problem.

Govenrments can control. What would be the price of this control? Would they want to do it?

Currently, there is one 'experiment in vivo' with Chinese governments trying to limit children access to online games. It has to be followed carefully in order to see what governments can (not) do even if they have power as Chinese government have.

Good point. Penetration is much deeper.

It is valid point. Apple has market capitalisation of 3 trillion while whole GDP of Africa isn 2.6 billlion. Apple does not have to take care of health, educaiton, roads as African governments do. Should we just ask Apple to provide public good or tax them and keep this in hands of governments or...?

What is digital space? it does not exist legally and politically. What exists is dependence of society on tech companies and risks of curbing their power. There is no government that would allow to have thousands people on the streets if they stop access to Facebook or Twitter.

it sounds interesting. Let us see if it will bring something new or being just 'academic spin'?

Digital or cyber space does not exist in legal and political terms. Anything happening online is ultimately anchored into geography. Even data are 'physical' as they are carried by electrons. They go through cables which are under some national jurisdiciton. They are stored on servers in some national jurisdiciton, etc.

It is true. It is important part of my 2022 prediciton

It is not the case. Jack Ma disappeared. Chinese tech company never had 'authotone power'. They were let do things till the moment they had to be stopped as it happened last year.

Their reaction was 'efficient' without any legitimacy. if we argue for 'efficiency' it is informed choice with many consequences for democracy and ultimately human freedom and dignity.

You cannot 'cherry-pick' by dealing with 'Trump problem' with hope that it won't have other far-reaching consequences.

I am fine that we have 'mental game' of having tech companies running our society. Obviously, I am storngly against it. But, I am also strongly for clear cut decision when it comes to such important developments. We cannot slide into slavery. We should 'decide' (if we want).

This text will be annotated for our AI course.

Was it done on the purpose (click-bite)? It is a bit strange that Finnish-US cable strenghten trade between Europe and Asia.

Please check if it (un)intentional and change if it is needed.

||AndrijanaG||||StephanieBP||||sorina||

This is very scary.

SG could have used the opportunity to call on governments to speed up and beef up action (even if lobbying for status quo or minimal action is too strong)

Another tough criticism directed at social media companies and their algorithms

Urging action leading up to a Global Digital Compact. A sort of social contract. SG is trying hard, but he needs governments to act.

Very strong criticism directed towards tech companies

cyberspace is lawless, and is one of the 5 alarms sounded by UN SG

The reference to international terrorism skirts the issue of what the international community needs to do to counter this threat, which, as the article postulates, could result in "non state" actors becoming players in destabilizing the world including by using weapons of mass destruction.

I found four books useful to understand the context of what is called "jihadi terrorism" that is often said to emanate from the "AfPak"region.

These four books are

(i) "Lawrence in Arabia" by Scott Andersen (2013), which provides a detailed account of how "political Islam" was conceived of during the closing days of the First World War by the Kaiser's Germany and implemented in Egypt, from where it spread into the Middle East and up to Karachi in Pakistan.

(ii) "The Wrong Enemy" (2014) by New York Times journalist Carlotta Gall, who lived in the AfPak region from 2001 to 2014, and identified the role of Pakistan's Military Intelligence in using terrorism as a lever of state policy in Afghanistan and Kashmir.

(iii) "Directorate S" (2018) by Steve Coll, another New York Times journalist and Pulitzer Prize winner, which gives details of the complicity of the Pakistani state agencies in fomenting terrorism in Afghanistan and India.

(iv) "The Afghanistan Papers" (2021) by Craig Whitlock, a journalist with The Washington Post, which meticulously uses official records obtained under the U.S. Freedom of Information Act to reconstruct the role of the Taliban, Al Qaida and Pakistan's state agencies in ensuring that the "global war on terror" declared by the U.S. in 2001 ended with handing over Afghanistan to the Taliban, who never renounced their links with Al Qaida, in August 2021.

I think therefore that the response to the use of terrorism as a lever of state policy really requires a direct acknowledgement of the facts given in such published accounts, and measures using Articles 41 (economic sanctions) and 42 (armed force) of the UN Charter by the UN Security Council to prevent international terrorism from threatening to disrupt the declared global objective of peace, security, and sustainable development.

This reference to the "Quad" grouping of the U.S., Australia, Japan and India has been linked in strategic analysis with the framework of the "Indo Pacific". However, both the "Quad" and the "Indo Pacific" have inherent divergences which impact on any possible "direct conflict" with China.

Within the "Quad", three countries are linked by military alliance treaties (the U.S. with Japan, and the U.S. with Australia), which make the U.S. the dominant decision making partner for any allied action. India does not belong to any military alliance, and is at a disadvantage in decision-making for military "conflict" with China. Since all four countries are participatory democracies, domestic support for any decision on engaging in conflict in "alliance" cannot be taken for granted for a "Quad" military conflict with China.

This is compounded by U.S. Secretary of State Anthony Blinken's public comment during his official visit to India in July 2021 that in the case of any bilateral military conflict between China and India over their land border, the "Quad" will not be a player. Such a position makes India's participation in a U.S. led military conflict with China doubtful.

A second issue for this "Quad" is its scope of operation. The strategic framework of the "Indo Pacific" has two interpretations. Japan (and India) endorse the "Indo Pacific" as comprising the entirety of the Indian and Pacific Oceans, as articulated by former Japanese PM Shinzo Abe in his address to India's Parliament in August 2007 and Indian Prime Minister Narendra Modi in his speech at the June 2018 Shangri-La Dialogue in Singapore. On the other hand, the U.S. National Security Strategy of the White House published in December 2017 (which is yet to be superseded by the Biden White House) defines the "Indo Pacific" as the Pacific Ocean from the western coast of the U.S. to the middle of the Indian Ocean up to the coast of India. Australia too follows the U.S. definition of the "Indo Pacific".

This implies two things on the ground. First, the U.S. will use only its Indo-Pac Command based in Hawaii for conflict issues in the Indo Pacific, which would stop short of addressing conflicts in the maritime domain between the Red Sea/East African coast and India (which is the domain of responsibility of another U.S. theatre command, the Central Command). This gives primacy to China in the U.S. Indo Pacific strategic framework, but does not extend to China's land borders in the Eurasian landmass, including the disputed land border with India which is currently volatile.

Secondly, the strategic interest of India as a part of the "Quad" in the western "Indo Pacific" as defined by India - which is the maritime and littoral space between the Red Sea and the west coast of India, is left vacant. This is the space which is vital for India's national security interests, with two sea lanes of communication choke points (the Bab al Mandab connecting the Indian Ocean/Red Sea to Europe, and the Straits of Hormuz transporting the bulk of India's and Asia's energy imports from the Gulf). An added factor for India is the fact that over 8 million Indian passport holders are employed in the Gulf region, who remit about $35 billion annually directly into the Indian economy. There is no comparable Indian presence so far in the eastern "Indo Pacific".

In operational terms, the driving force of the U.S. initiative for its "Quad" in the "Indo Pacific" seems to be to increase the exports of U.S. naval equipment to the partner countries, for which the U.S. has already put in place a military alliance supportive structure for inter-operability and use of U.S. military equipment. For this reason, too, the priority of the U.S. has been to enter into a bilateral interoperability military agreement with India.

All this leaves India's immediate interests to secure its land border with China, and the volatility in the littoral of the Indian Ocean where Pakistan and Iran are situated, in the air as far as the "Quad" and "Indo Pacific" are concerned.

To add to this complication, the U.S. has last week announced the formation of another "Quad" to address the region between the Red Sea and India. This grouping consists of the U.S., the U.K., the UAE and Saudi Arabia. India is conspicuously absent from this grouping, which will impact on its participation in the Indo Pacific Quad in both operational and policy terms.

it is an interesting idea to use again 'contact groups'. Most likely they will happen in G-20 context, which is the last example of successful diplomacy during financial crisis.

In highly interconnected world without 'control mechanism' against conflicts, 1914-Sarajevo scenario is very likely to happen.

This is a good explanation of the current arm-race.

Good analogy

It is common point but false. AI cannot determine outcome of nuclear war conflict. it can enhance power during peace-time. Robots and AI could be used in the case of traditional conflicts. But, AI cannot stop missiles, especially hyper-sonic ones.

limited nuclear war is very likely to happen

Great point that there are serious trade-offs in any energy and environmental policy

It is very valid point and the reason why I think major conflict is inevitable.

It is one of the major problems since all actors with internal instability and, in particular Russia and `USA, will try to 'export' internal instability via external conflicts that may galvanise population and bypass internal tensions.

this is the major problem. There are not any more 'proxy wars' as buffers. They area heading against each other in Ukraine and Taiwan. It reduces room for manouver and space for signalling and de-escalation.

It is not the case according to the World Bank Report.

||StephanieBP||||Pavlina|| We will need to follow emergence of DMA carefully.

||sorina|| Let us use Web3 in our survey of technologies

||JovanNj||||anjadjATdiplomacy.edu|| It is our hope to develop AI on small set of data (data generated by Diplo via textus interaction, etc.)

||sorina|| Most likely developments will go in tow direction:

• on front-end side there will be new devices - glasses, IoTs, ec.
• on back-end side there will be powerful processing systems using quantum computing, etc.

it is behind Gartner curve and hyp

This is new acronym MAAMA ||sorina||||StephanieBP||||AndrijanaG||||VladaR||

Freedman gives a good example of both, I think, in describing a situation during the Cuban Missile Crisis, the actions of the Generals using a "Deliberate" Script, based on standard procedures (shoot the missiles in Cuba down immediately!), to a more "Intuitive" script of Kennedy and McNamara, who were much more careful.

More to the point, in regards nuclear strategy, Freedman says that there can be no script, if escalation gets to a point where nuclear weapons are even mentioned in an exchange.

33:49 Now this of course is what John Kennedy 33:52 and McNamara feared. 33:53 Not so much the military disobeying 33:55 orders 33:56 um as following their standard scripts, 33:59 whatever the consequences 34:01 in the circumstances of the time just as 34:04 he had found with tactical air command 34:06 when they described the vast numbers of 34:07 strikes they would need to launch 34:10 to do the job.

Testing how it would be to get transcripts from YouTube videos and then annotate that.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fYHxIgl7w4k&t=744s

The 12th Annual Kenneth N. Waltz Lecture in International Relations

“Nuclear Scripts: Stories of War and Deterrence”

Sir Lawrence Freedman, Professor Emeritus of War Studies, King’s College, London

Commentary by Richard K. Betts, Leo A. Shifrin Professor of War and Peace Studies, Department of Political Science

Moderated by Keren Yarhi-Milo, Columbia University Director of the Arnold A. Saltzman Institute of War and Peace Studies

February 12, 2021

Kenneth Waltz is among the most celebrated International Relations (IR) Scholars. His book, "Theory of International Relations," is among the most influential IR books of all time.

In this lecture, Sir Freedman, a professor at King's College London, takes stock of nuclear strategy from the dawn of the nuclear age, in a bipolar world, to today, with the opening of a new multipolar world.

Freedman uses the idea, borrowed from Cognitive Psychology and Sociology, of "Scripts," which are ‘a predetermined stereotypical sequence of actions that define a well-known situation’.

He notes that, though "scripts mutate through time," they provide powerful insights, especially when thinking about nuclear strategy. Interestingly, he says, "anytime historical analogies are reaised, scripts are in place."

He divides these scripts into two main ones: Intuitive, and Deliberate.

Transcript (from auto-generated closed-caption on YouTube):

00:21 hello everyone 00:22 and welcome to the annual kenneth watts 00:24 lecture on international relations 00:27 uh my name is karen jorge yarimilo i am 00:30 the arnold saltzman professor of war and 00:33 peace studies 00:35 um in the political science department 00:37 and in cipa 00:38 i'm also the director of the arnold 00:40 saltzman institute of war and peace 00:43 studies as you know many you know 00:46 during the year the saltzman institute 00:49 hosts 00:50 dozens of events book talks panels on 00:53 different 00:54 issues but it is once a year that we 00:56 come together 00:59 as a community to honor one of 01:01 colombia's most 01:03 famous product and one of the most 01:05 eminent international relation 01:07 theories of the past century kenneth 01:10 waltz 01:11 uh we do so uh in this 01:14 uh seminar the lecture the kenneth waltz 01:18 lecture in international relations 01:21 it was established by the saltzman 01:23 institute in 2008 01:25 in celebration of dr kenneth wald's many 01:28 outstanding contributions to the field 01:31 of international 01:32 relations theory and nuclear weapons and 01:35 proliferation among other things 01:38 um since nine since 2008 01:41 we've had prominent uh professors 01:44 scholars coming 01:46 to talk to us about um issues of 01:49 war and peace international strategy to 01:52 national security 01:54 irs theory and today i am really truly 01:58 honored to have 01:59 with us uh sarah lawrence friedman 02:02 uh one of the most interesting prominent 02:04 scholars on 02:05 um the study of war and peace and st uh 02:09 more peace and strategies and today 02:13 what we'll um will do i'll start by 02:16 introducing 02:16 sarah lawrence and i'll introduce um the 02:19 moderator for today's event our own 02:22 professor dick betts 02:24 um and then we'll turn back to professor 02:27 sir lawrence to talk um about um 02:30 nuclear scripts stories of war and peace 02:33 i'm sorry stories of war and deterrent 02:36 and then we will 02:37 hear a little bit from uh professor dick 02:39 batts 02:40 in form of comments and then we will 02:42 open it up for q 02:44 a so sarah lawrence friedman thank you 02:47 so much for being with us today 02:49 sir lawrence friedman is a professor 02:51 emeritus of war studies 02:53 at king's college london where he taught 02:55 and conducted research 02:57 from 1982 to 2014 03:01 and was vice pres principal from 2003 03:05 to 2013. before 03:08 joining king's college uh sir lawrence 03:11 uh 03:11 held research appointment at oxford at 03:15 isis and the royal institute of 03:17 international affairs 03:19 he was elected as a fellow of the 03:21 british academy in 03:22 1995 and awarded the command of the 03:25 british empire 03:27 in 1996 and was appointed official 03:30 historian of the falkland campaigns 03:32 in 1997 he was 03:35 awarded and we cannot say this about how 03:38 many many scholars in our field he was 03:41 awarded the ninth commander 03:43 of stan michael and saint george in 2003 03:47 uh we're all familiar with sir lawrence 03:50 scholarship 03:51 uh we've grown up i mean educated on 03:54 on this significant box that you wrote 03:58 um about um kennedy's war 04:02 berlin cuba laos and in vietnam from 04:05 2000 04:06 um the evolution of nuclear strategy 04:08 which will be part of the discussion 04:10 today 04:11 um um the terrence the book on 04:14 deterrence from 2005 04:16 and to a volume of the official history 04:20 of the falkland campaign 04:22 and most recently he published in 2003 04:25 that 04:25 uh a book strategy a history 04:29 and that book uh won the award of the 04:32 w.h mckinsey uh book prize but the 04:35 international studies association 04:37 and this is just kind of a preview 04:40 of uh sir laura's contribution to our 04:43 field and significant contribution 04:45 so as i said i am very honored and 04:47 pleased and 04:48 uh grateful that he's with us today uh 04:51 normally we would have this hosted in 04:53 the 15th floor 04:55 and we will have a nice buffet and a 04:57 nice gathering 04:58 and i'm sorry we cannot do this today 05:00 but i i am very hopeful 05:02 that we will be able to do this next 05:04 year 05:06 also with us today uh to moderate the 05:09 discussion 05:10 is our own professor uh richard betts 05:14 he's the leo schifrin professor of war 05:16 and peace studies in the department of 05:17 political science 05:19 um and the director of the international 05:21 security policy program 05:23 at cipa um professor beth served as a 05:27 director of the salesman institute for 05:29 over 24 years 05:31 and i am still very grateful for his 05:34 mentoring and advice 05:36 not just as a student but currently as a 05:38 director 05:39 um i am very very grateful that he's 05:41 also with us today 05:43 to moderate this so without 05:46 uh further ado i will turn to sarah 05:49 lawrence to share 05:50 with us his lecture um 05:53 again the topic of nuclear scripts 05:56 stories of war and deterrence 05:58 i am very excited uh to hear the talk 06:01 and i'm very excited that he's with us 06:03 today 06:04 thank you so much well thank you very 06:07 much 06:07 uh it's the great genuine honor to have 06:10 been asked to do this 06:11 um it's pretty alarming seeing the faces 06:14 that have suddenly popped up on my 06:16 screen 06:17 uh given the uh the distinguished nature 06:21 as well as seeing 06:22 quite a number of of old friends so 06:24 hello to you all 06:25 um i got to know ken waltz uh when he 06:28 was a visiting fellow at king's 06:30 uh in the 1980s and when he was in 06:32 london 06:34 thereafter we'd get together with our 06:35 wives for dinner 06:38 luckily we were often able to meet up in 06:40 new york 06:41 normally hosted by bob jervis 06:44 ken was always good stimulating company 06:49 even if you would not give an inch on 06:51 any matter in which you had a strong 06:53 opinion 06:54 which covered most topics but the 06:56 arguments were great 06:58 um i think you could make a case that 07:00 ken stimulated 07:01 those who disagreed with him even as 07:03 much as he stimulated 07:04 those who agreed because i'd never 07:08 studied 07:08 uh actually studied international 07:10 relations at university 07:12 i sort of picked it up as i went along 07:14 one of i eventually belatedly read 07:17 ma'am the state in war i kicked myself 07:19 for not reading it 07:20 earlier our main point of contact 07:22 however was not so much ir theory 07:25 but which to be honest i've always been 07:26 a little wary but nuclear strategy 07:30 ken knew his way around the more 07:32 technical debates 07:33 but suspected that i think that they 07:35 were beside the point 07:37 nuclear weapons deterred because being 07:39 on the receiving end 07:41 represented a terrifying prospect 07:45 they had made countries more cautious at 07:47 least in circumstances 07:49 where there was any prospect that they 07:50 might be used ken was convinced of the 07:53 transformational 07:54 and generally benign effect of nuclear 07:56 weapons on the conduct of international 07:58 affairs 08:00 on that basis he was prepared to follow 08:02 the logic of his convictions 08:04 into a contrarian position on the 08:06 question 08:07 of nuclear proliferation this year marks 08:11 the 50th anniversary 08:12 of the publication of one of his most 08:14 influential works 08:16 the adelphi paper on the spread of 08:19 nuclear weapons 08:20 with the provocative subtitle more 08:23 may be better from his theoretical 08:27 starting point that states and the 08:29 leaders of states are largely motivated 08:31 by a determination to survive 08:33 he argued that there was no bigger 08:35 challenge to the survival of a state 08:37 than a nuclear attack and that therefore 08:39 states would avoid getting into 08:41 situations 08:42 where that became at all likely the 08:45 spread of nuclear weapons 08:46 would lead to a spread of caution and so 08:49 would be a boon 08:50 for the cause of international peace 08:53 ken offered a straightforward 08:54 cost-benefit analysis the states he 08:56 noted 08:56 are not likely to run major risks for 08:58 minor gains 09:00 he noted the risk of escalation but if 09:02 the costs go up then states will look to 09:04 de-escalate 09:05 if states can score only small gains 09:07 because large ones risks 09:09 retaliation he wrote they have little 09:11 incentive to fight 09:13 because those states relying on 09:14 deterrence would be defending their 09:16 territory 09:17 their will would be stronger than an 09:20 attacker trying to take someone else's 09:21 territory 09:23 there could be no excuse for 09:24 miscalculation 09:26 unlike with conventional weapons the 09:28 outcome would be much 09:30 easier to predict it was true he 09:32 accepted 09:33 that new nuclear states may show more 09:35 bitterness towards their enemies than 09:37 the established nuclear elite 09:40 but states do not go to war because of 09:42 bitterness 09:43 the old nuclear powers had been bitter 09:45 in their own time 09:47 it was also true that new nuclear states 09:49 might be run by authoritarian leaders 09:51 given to wild xenophobic rhetoric but 09:54 that did not mean that they'd be more 09:56 moderate 09:57 in word indeed when faced with severe 09:59 punitive 10:00 measures he noted 10:03 in uh in passing the imperial attitude 10:06 implied by the idea that third world 10:09 leaders 10:10 were inherently irrational nor was he 10:13 convinced that it mattered that in some 10:15 states the military 10:16 were in control rather than civilians 10:19 soldiers may be more cautious than 10:20 civilians after all 10:22 they do not like uncertainty and they 10:25 could not know 10:26 what a nuclear battlefield would look 10:28 like 10:29 so the key point uncertainty about the 10:32 course that a nuclear war might follow 10:34 along with the certainty that 10:36 destruction can be immense 10:38 strongly inhibits the first use of 10:40 nuclear weapons 10:41 this is how he summed up the argument 10:44 when the active use of force 10:46 threatens to bring great losses war 10:48 becomes less likely 10:50 this proposition is widely accepted but 10:53 insufficiently emphasized 10:55 nuclear weapons have reduced the chances 10:57 of war between the united states and the 10:58 soviet union 11:00 and between the soviet union and china 11:03 one may expect them to have similar 11:05 effects elsewhere 11:06 where nuclear weapons threaten to make 11:08 the costs of war immense 11:09 who will dare to stop them nuclear 11:12 weapons make it 11:13 possible to approach the deterrent ideal 11:17 now the wisdom of ken's 11:20 pro-proliferation case has been 11:22 hotly debated and was robustly defended 11:24 by him 11:25 in some fascinating and illuminating 11:27 exchanges 11:28 with scott sagan who i was delighted to 11:31 see 11:31 in the audience if he would still if he 11:34 was still with us 11:35 he'd no doubt be pointing out that the 11:37 adelphi paper was written 11:39 a quarter of a century into the nuclear 11:41 age 11:42 and another half century has now passed 11:45 and still there has been no no major war 11:48 between nuclear powers 11:50 his core proposition is thankfully still 11:53 going strong 11:54 now there are two standard responses to 11:56 this situation 11:58 according to the first this is a 11:59 remarkable achievement and the 12:01 conditions which made it possible 12:03 are still in place according to the 12:06 second this is luck 12:07 and height of fundamental failure of 12:09 political leadership 12:10 in refusing to take seriously the need 12:13 to abolish these terrible weapons 12:15 whatever the restraint and control shown 12:18 in the past 12:19 it will only take one lapse for 12:21 catastrophe 12:22 to result and this is where the stories 12:25 of war 12:26 and peace and deterrence come in the 12:28 abolitionists 12:29 have a story of the fragility of 12:30 deterrence but also of how the weapons 12:33 can be delegitimized uh and eventually 12:36 prohibited 12:38 there are many reasons not to go to war 12:40 other than the fear of nuclear weapons 12:43 yet when one looks at the cr the 12:45 archives of crises and memoirs of 12:47 political leaders 12:48 it's hard to argue that nuclear weapons 12:51 have not affected 12:52 their behavior they have stayed 12:54 circumspect and careful 12:56 in their presence meanwhile the 12:58 deterrers can cast doubt on the 12:59 abolitionist 13:00 abolitionist project and point out the 13:03 problems of synchronizing 13:05 global disarmament so that one 13:07 recalculate 13:08 is not left with a crucial advantage 13:12 but then they still have a problem with 13:13 explaining why deterrent threats are 13:16 more than bluffs 13:17 if it is the case that any nuclear use 13:20 will lead to retaliation in kind 13:22 how can it be threatened with 13:24 credibility and if it cannot be 13:26 threatened with credibility 13:27 how can it deter the only nuclear strike 13:30 that seems to be credible 13:32 is the one launched in retaliation 13:34 though this depends more on assumptions 13:36 about 13:36 vengeance and fury than calculated 13:39 rationality 13:41 and ken's claim was not just that 13:42 nuclear weapons neutralize each other 13:45 but they lead to a cautious approach to 13:47 all war 13:49 so to explore this more i want in this 13:52 lecture 13:52 to look at the stories told about when 13:55 nuclear weapons might be used 13:56 and how they would be used first let me 13:59 explain what i mean about 14:01 scripts scripts are not generally used 14:04 as a term of art amongst those 14:06 formulating strategies in government and 14:08 business though it happens 14:09 occasionally i find them a useful way to 14:12 think about and evaluating 14:14 and evaluate strategies broadly speaking 14:17 they come 14:18 in two different forms intuitive and 14:21 deliberate 14:22 the first of mental maps that shape our 14:25 expectations 14:26 about what to expect when we enter a 14:29 given uh 14:30 situation in cognitive psychology 14:34 uh shank and abelson to describe the 14:36 scriptures quote a predetermined 14:38 stereotypical sequence of actions that 14:41 define 14:41 a well-known situation they provide a 14:45 guide to how events 14:46 are likely to unfold and these 14:48 expectations 14:50 shape actions if the expectations are 14:53 not met 14:54 they cause confusion and lead to adapt 14:57 adaptations to use the language of the 15:00 moment 15:00 scripts mutate over time 15:04 in international relations of course the 15:06 fish the situations faced at moments of 15:08 crisis and conflict 15:10 are rarely stereotypical in many aspects 15:13 they will always be 15:14 quite unique the available scripts 15:17 therefore are often 15:18 sketchy based on loosely analogous 15:21 situations from the past over time 15:25 they have become not so much metaphors 15:27 as metanym's 15:28 a shorthand way of making a point 15:32 references to neville chamberlain at 15:34 munich in 1968 15:35 in 1938 for example are not based on 15:38 assessments of the 15:40 policy of appeasement and the quality of 15:42 the alternative options open to the 15:44 british government 15:45 at the time but just a way of warning 15:47 about being weak and spineless 15:49 in the face of a challenge from a 15:51 dictator equally with 1914 15:54 the lesson is don't allow military 15:56 timetables 15:57 to set the pace let an otherwise 15:59 innocuous trigger 16:01 lead to a global conflagration before 16:03 the diplomats get a chance to 16:06 exercise restraint these illustrative 16:09 scripts 16:10 offer lessons to guide strategic choices 16:13 to allow us 16:14 um to explore possibilities supposedly 16:17 inherent 16:18 uh in situations such as the ones we're 16:20 facing as soon as a historical analogy 16:23 is raised 16:24 the script is in place but these scripts 16:28 drawing on the lessons of history 16:29 can obviously be misleading when someone 16:32 says people have been 16:34 frequently saying in recent years this 16:36 reminds me of the last days of weimar 16:39 they're implying that we're on a path 16:41 that could end with dictatorship 16:43 war and genocide but the point of the 16:45 matinum is not to insist that we're 16:47 bound 16:47 to follow the same scripts in the in the 16:50 2020s as in the 1930s 16:53 but there are sufficient similarities to 16:55 require that we think hard 16:57 about next steps at best they get you 17:00 thinking 17:01 even when they start with strained 17:03 analogies they can help identify 17:05 what is different this time and what 17:07 needs to be done 17:09 to avoid the pitfalls of the past 17:12 other scripts take a more formal 17:15 developed form 17:16 these more deliberate scripts are more 17:19 thought through 17:20 possibly checked against available 17:21 evidence and are set down in a form 17:24 that can be communicated these are 17:26 scripts that in principle 17:27 we will be followed when the triggering 17:31 conditions occur 17:33 to the extent the deterrence depends on 17:35 a threat of nuclear use 17:37 then these are the scripts that explain 17:39 to enemies and allies 17:42 when threats will be implemented and 17:44 give them credibility by showing 17:46 how the nuclear weapons will be 17:49 employed thus the uh the war plans 17:53 surrounding nuclear weapons 17:55 describe the options available to the 17:56 national command authorities 17:59 what they can achieve by way of effects 18:02 on enemy capabilities 18:03 and intentions during the first years of 18:07 the 18:08 nuclear age it was assumed that 18:09 operational war plans could be developed 18:12 that would produce a credible path to 18:14 nuclear victory 18:15 this was the mission of strategic air 18:17 command 18:19 the one the plans that had been 18:21 developed by the end of the 1950s 18:24 involved attacking every possible target 18:26 in the warsaw pact and china 18:28 as well as the soviet union the plans 18:31 addressed 18:32 issues of pre-delegation so that 18:33 commanders of air bases 18:35 will be ready to have their aircraft 18:37 take off 18:38 if they thought the us had been attacked 18:42 but with a growing risk of retaliation 18:44 they became 18:45 increasingly dependent upon getting in 18:47 the first strike or even 18:49 launching on warning they also faced an 18:52 alternative script 18:54 that counted optimism in cam that 18:56 counted any 18:57 option optimism albert walstetter 19:00 and his team at rand showed how the 19:03 soviet union might disarm the us 19:05 retaliatory capability with the first 19:07 strike 19:08 to make it work of course he had to make 19:10 certain assumptions 19:11 about soviet risk-taking propensities 19:14 and the sort of cost they would be 19:16 prepared to accept 19:17 if there was even modest retaliation 19:21 over time this particular script lost 19:23 credibility with the introduction 19:25 of submarine launch ballistic missiles 19:28 just as the air force's script 19:30 increasingly appeared reckless 19:33 in his valedictory speech as secretary 19:36 of defense 19:36 in september 1967 robert mcnamara 19:40 provided 19:41 uh his script which explained how the 19:43 two superpowers 19:44 had each acted on worst case assumptions 19:47 in what he called an action reaction 19:50 phenomenon 19:51 but in the end he pointed out this had 19:53 been an exercise 19:54 in futility neither had a way of winning 19:57 a nuclear war 19:59 both could assure the destruction of the 20:02 other 20:03 yet in his speech mcnamara had to 20:05 acknowledge that he was caught up in the 20:07 action for 20:07 reaction phenomenon himself he ended it 20:11 surprisingly by announcing a new 20:14 anti-ballistic missile system as 20:15 president johnson had demanded 20:18 this was soon described as a missile in 20:20 search of the mission 20:22 because there was no settled view about 20:24 what could sex 20:25 be successfully defended and the 20:27 difference it would make 20:30 it was will stetter again who argued for 20:32 a rather fanciful 20:34 script involving soviet attacks on 20:36 american icbms 20:38 which left only counter city slbms 20:42 with which the u.s could respond 20:46 the u.s president supposedly would be 20:48 reluctant to retaliate 20:50 against cities despite the notionally 20:52 counterforce 20:53 attacks having already killed millions 20:56 of american people 20:58 but it was not clear how abms could 20:59 solve this problem and then they were 21:01 prohibited 21:02 at least for a while in the 1972 abm 21:05 treaty this led to extraordinary efforts 21:08 to reduce the vulnerability of icbms 21:11 until the implausibility 21:13 of the presumed scripts became apparent 21:15 was pointed out 21:17 by the recently departed brent 21:20 go craft in one of his many active 21:23 public service 21:25 the reason there was desperation 21:29 to find a plausible nuclear script was 21:32 as if their use could not be threatened 21:34 then this had important implications for 21:37 the commitments made to allies 21:39 to use nuclear weapons on their behalf 21:41 if they were victims 21:43 of aggression from the start the whole 21:46 idea 21:47 of a balance of terror as it was first 21:49 described 21:50 mutual assault assured describe 21:52 destruction as it was later described 21:54 was recognized as a threat to the 21:57 credibility 21:59 of the alliance in practice 22:02 there was no good answer to the 22:03 frequently posed question of whether an 22:06 american president uh would sacrifice 22:09 new york or chicago on behalf of paris 22:13 or berlin 22:13 noticed today the same question was 22:15 being posed 22:17 by the former french ambassador on 22:18 twitter again 22:20 it's not a question that goes away 22:23 and the answer in private if not 22:26 necessarily 22:27 in public was not encouraging again to 22:30 quote mcnamara 22:32 after leaving office he reported that 22:34 lord louis mountbatten 22:36 british chief of defense staff had 22:38 remarked to him that 22:39 quote under no circumstances even with 22:42 the great superiority of nuclear weapons 22:44 that nato had at that time should we 22:47 consider the use of nuclear weapons 22:49 and mcnamara added that he had agreed 22:51 and subsequently 22:53 recommended such a policy to president 22:56 kennedy 22:57 president nixon put it more bluntly in a 23:00 1969 national security council meeting 23:03 nixon commented that flexible responses 23:06 quotes 23:06 baloney a map with respect to europe the 23:09 nuclear umbrella 23:11 is no longer there we must face facts 23:14 in a separate meeting nixon referred to 23:17 the nuclear umbrella in nato as 23:19 a lot of crap close quotes 23:22 the lack of confidence in the 23:25 possibility 23:26 that nuclear use could retrieve a losing 23:28 position 23:29 rather than make it irretrievably worse 23:33 was reflected in the whole pressure for 23:34 flexible response 23:36 to look for limited options of nuclear 23:38 weapons must be used 23:39 or at best to delay a nuclear's decision 23:42 in the hope that the problem could be 23:45 solved through a combination of 23:46 conventional forces 23:48 and diplomacy before the crunch point 23:50 came 23:51 the nuclear guarantee was never 23:54 withdrawn 23:54 still there but regular reaffirmation 23:57 and the 23:58 occasional iterations of nato's 24:00 strategic concept 24:02 hardly count as rousing proclamations of 24:05 intent 24:06 the negotiated language uh of 24:09 international communiques 24:10 often makes it difficult to to realize 24:13 that we're talking 24:14 about threats of mass death rather than 24:17 just ticking off 24:18 an occasional offender 24:21 it has been and remains very difficult 24:24 to devise a scenario 24:26 in which nato leaders especially the 24:28 american president 24:29 would deliberately introduce nuclear 24:32 weapons 24:34 however bad things appear during the 24:35 course of the war there would be a 24:37 natural reluctance 24:39 to make it worse because the decision 24:42 makers would have some terrifying images 24:44 in their heads about how it would all 24:46 end that was ken's point 24:49 now the key thing here i think is that 24:51 when 24:52 we start to think about a major war 24:54 between nuclear powers 24:56 we don't actually start with flexible 24:58 response with the first tentative 25:00 opening steps into a confrontation 25:04 uh what where we start is with the 25:05 devastating 25:07 conclusion we haven't any experience of 25:10 nuclear war 25:11 between two nuclear powers but we do 25:13 know that even relatively 25:15 small yield nuclear weapons are horrible 25:18 in their effects because of what 25:20 happened in hiroshima 25:22 and nagasaki everything we have found 25:24 out since 25:25 about the effects of multi megaton 25:28 weapons fire blast 25:30 radiation and fallout provides no 25:32 confidence that our societies 25:34 could survive this leads to what has 25:37 been described as the crystal ball 25:39 effect 25:41 with the previous world wars parties 25:43 might enter the war with confidence 25:45 that they would find a war-winning 25:47 strategy although they 25:49 could have no idea how i would all end 25:52 up 25:53 um that's my daughter ringing 25:56 um that could have no idea how it would 26:00 all end up 26:02 uh if they had known then they might 26:04 have done more to avoid war 26:06 but when the crystal ball showed them a 26:08 thermonuclear war 26:10 there was an even greater incentive to 26:12 hold back 26:14 if that if that was how this story ended 26:16 then there was not much point worrying 26:18 about the intervening stages 26:23 to explain how we get to this 26:24 cataclysmic conclusion from the first 26:27 clash of arms 26:28 we have a compelling and tragic concept 26:31 escalation 26:33 escalation warns of conflict spiraling 26:37 out of control 26:38 through both emotional and automatic 26:40 responses mocking attempts 26:42 of rational decision making now 26:45 confusingly 26:46 escalation can also refer to a 26:48 deliberate strategy 26:50 intended to put more pressure on an 26:52 opponent by moving a war 26:54 onto a more dangerous level but not to a 26:57 complete 26:58 loss of control this was the idea first 27:00 developed 27:01 by herman khan with his escalation 27:03 ladders 27:04 but i think it was the tragic concept 27:06 that came first enough 27:07 and also the one that remains most 27:10 influential 27:12 the tragic concept of escalation arose 27:15 out of the debates on so-called tactical 27:17 nuclear weapons 27:19 in the 1950s these weapons were the 27:22 result of a move to mass production of 27:24 nuclear warheads 27:26 in an attempt to demonstrate that 27:28 nuclear use did not have to mean mass 27:30 attacks against cities 27:32 but could still involve regular battles 27:34 every type of conventional munition 27:37 was found a nuclear equivalent including 27:39 mortars mine depth charges 27:41 and torpedoes as if they were ordinary 27:44 weapons 27:45 just with more firepower during 27:48 exercises which sought to work out the 27:50 difference between these weapons 27:53 the difference these weapons would make 27:54 on the battlefield it soon became 27:56 apparent 27:57 that rather than help contain nuclear 27:59 use they would devastate those doing the 28:02 fighting 28:02 and also those supposedly being defended 28:08 there had been an idea that keeping 28:09 nuclear use confined to the battlefield 28:12 would remove the need to move into 28:15 strategic exchanges 28:16 but in practice they just moved the 28:18 threshold that led to catastrophe 28:20 to an earlier point indeed there seemed 28:23 to be so 28:24 few stages from the first shots to 28:26 nuclear calamity 28:28 that to avoid nuclear war all war 28:31 had to be avoided and this was the 28:35 purpose behind nato's deterrence posture 28:38 in the 1950s 28:40 it seemed to depend on an almost 28:42 automatic uh move to nuclear use 28:45 the role of new of conventional forces 28:48 was to act as a tripwire 28:51 with both supervised both superpowers 28:53 taking a similar view 28:56 anxiety quickly surrounded the situation 29:01 with both sides hovering on the brink 29:03 and engaged in an intense and dangerous 29:05 arch 29:06 arms race uh searching for technological 29:09 advances to gain even a temporary 29:12 advantage 29:15 the situation also contained dangers 29:17 quite separate from the normal urges to 29:19 war 29:21 terrible misadvan misadventures such as 29:24 an early warning system mistaking 29:26 flocks of geese for incoming missiles 29:28 malfunctioning 29:30 furl safe systems planes crashing with 29:32 nuclear weapons on board road commanders 29:35 taking it upon themselves to destroy a 29:38 hated enemy 29:39 some of these fears had an empirical 29:41 basis 29:42 others were developed in novels in the 29:45 movies 29:45 of the time escalation became twinned 29:49 with 29:49 miscalculation as an explanation 29:52 of how nuclear powers might foolishly 29:56 feel of uh feel and need 29:59 um to uh use their weapons 30:02 one person who took these concerns 30:05 seriously was john kennedy 30:08 unlike the more phlegmatic eisenhower 30:10 kennedy truly feared facing 30:12 uh fateful decisions about nuclear war 30:16 uh about while these uh and 30:19 how these might arise because of his 30:21 international 30:22 obligations for example over berlin 30:25 but he also feared that they might arise 30:28 because of some fundamentally 30:30 irrational process he mentioned his 30:33 concerns to nikita khrushchev at the 30:35 vienna summit 30:36 the soviet leader was not going to 30:38 accept that he might uh 30:40 miscalculate of course he was soon to do 30:42 so rather badly over cuba 30:44 kennedy later recounted that when he 30:46 used the word was calculation 30:48 khrushchev went berserk he started 30:51 yelling this calculation was calculation 30:53 miscalculation all i ever hear from your 30:55 people and your news correspondents and 30:57 your 30:58 friends in europe and every place is 31:00 that damned word miscalculation 31:02 you ought to take that word and bury it 31:04 in cold storage and never use it again 31:06 i'm sick of it 31:07 and kennedy didn't use that word again 31:09 at least in his communications 31:10 with khrushchev but he still spent a lot 31:12 of time making sure 31:14 his communications were clear to moscow 31:16 and that he did not box 31:18 khrushchev into a corner esquinet 31:21 escalation was another word that he used 31:23 a lot 31:23 especially during the missile crisis and 31:26 again not everybody approved 31:28 after he met with the joint chiefs and 31:31 had departed but with the microphone 31:32 still on 31:34 major general david shoop uh exploded 31:37 with a burst of profanity 31:38 complaining about kind of the 31:40 continually talking about escalation 31:43 which he thought to be all about doing 31:45 the quote goddamn thing piecemeal 31:47 piecemeal his recommendation was to 31:50 was quotes and i'm quoting do this son 31:52 of a and do it right and quit 31:54 freaking around 31:55 the chief wanted to take the missiles 31:56 out kennedy was going to start with a 31:59 limited blockade 32:01 it even with his attempt to frame the 32:03 blockade as narrowly as possible 32:05 he was still anxious that there might be 32:07 a major incident at sea 32:10 this led to some worried conversations 32:12 on the evening of the 23rd of october 32:15 1962 the day before the quarantine was 32:18 supposed to come into effect 32:20 he feared that the soviets would not 32:22 back off be aware by this time they'd 32:24 already backed off 32:26 so these conversations were to some 32:28 extent 32:29 unnecessary but they didn't know at the 32:30 time so he feared that the soviets would 32:32 not could not back off and that their 32:34 vessels would sail on regardless 32:36 quotes they're going to keep going and 32:39 we're going to try to shoot the rudder 32:40 off 32:41 and we're going to try to shoot the 32:42 rudder off or the boiler and then we're 32:44 going to try to board it 32:45 am i going to fire again then machine 32:47 guns and they're going to have one hell 32:49 of a time getting aboard that thing 32:51 this would be a major military operation 32:53 and he wondered whether once a ship was 32:55 disabled 32:56 it might be just to leave it floating 32:59 rather than try 33:00 to board that evening mcnamara was 33:03 instructed to go to meet up 33:04 with admiral george anderson chief of 33:07 naval operations 33:08 and in charge of the quarantine the two 33:10 got involved in a testy exchange 33:12 which ended with mcnamara insisting that 33:14 you're not going to fire a single shot 33:16 at anything without my express 33:18 permission is that clear 33:20 anderson got angry waving the 1955 laws 33:23 of warfare 33:24 which had all authorized destruction of 33:26 warships actively resisting search or 33:28 capture 33:29 he waved it to mcnamara's face quote 33:32 this is none of your goddamn business we 33:34 know how to do this 33:35 we've been doing it ever since the days 33:37 of john paul jones 33:38 and if you just get back to your 33:39 quarters mr secretary we'll take 33:42 care of this this was literally a 33:43 career-ending outburst 33:45 uh as he lost his position the next year 33:49 now this of course is what john kennedy 33:52 and mcnamara feared 33:53 not so much the military disobeying 33:55 orders 33:56 um as following their standard scripts 33:59 whatever the consequences 34:01 in the circumstances of the time just as 34:04 he had found with tactical air command 34:06 when they described the vast numbers of 34:07 strikes they would need to launch 34:10 to do the job when kennedy might have 34:12 been persuaded 34:13 that something genuinely limited was 34:16 worth the risk 34:18 later on black saturday 27th of october 34:22 we have a grim soliloquy from mcnamara 34:25 he describes the escalation process 34:29 uh it starts with your u.s surveillance 34:31 aircraft being fired upon 34:34 then the us would have to respond there 34:36 will be losses of aircraft 34:38 aircraft and quotes we'll be shooting up 34:40 cuba 34:41 quite a bit this position could be 34:44 sustained 34:45 not be sustained for very long quotes so 34:47 we must be prepared to attack cuba 34:48 quickly 34:50 this would have to be an all-out attack 34:51 with lots of daily sorties 34:53 quotes and i personally believe this is 34:56 almost 34:56 certain to lead to an invasion i won't 34:59 say certain too but almost certain to 35:01 lead to an invasion 35:03 the next step would be a tit-for-tat 35:04 reprisal from khrushchev 35:06 probably against the u.s missiles in 35:08 turkey and then 35:11 quotes if the soviet union attacks the 35:13 turkish missiles 35:14 we must respond we cannot allow a soviet 35:17 attack 35:18 on the jupiter missiles in turkey 35:20 without a military response 35:21 by nato and i would say that it is damn 35:24 dangerous 35:25 to have had a soviet attack on turkey 35:27 and a nato response 35:29 on the soviet union something of an 35:31 understatement 35:32 this is all of course wholly speculative 35:34 but against the backdrop of the 35:36 situation 35:37 whether the administration felt it had 35:39 no choice but to 35:40 add to the pressure on moscow to get the 35:42 missiles 35:43 out of cuba there's no reason to suppose 35:48 that events would have followed this 35:49 script there were alternative 35:51 possibilities 35:52 including doing nothing but and of 35:55 course by defend 35:56 by describing a possible imminent 35:59 uh future in such lurid terms mcnamara 36:03 was making a case to do something less 36:06 dangerous to look 36:07 for example for the the possibility of 36:09 trading 36:10 the turkish missiles for the missiles in 36:12 cuba 36:13 now this was almost 60 years ago 36:16 it's telling that we keep on coming back 36:18 to the missile crisis 36:20 this is in part because we have such 36:23 rich detail 36:24 about those 13 days but also and as 36:27 important 36:28 we've not seen anything comparable since 36:31 furthermore constant investigations into 36:34 the crisis 36:35 i'm aware of three new books on the 36:38 topic over the last 12 months 36:40 uh have revealed all sorts of 36:42 alternative scripts 36:44 in which kennedy acted on his first 36:46 thought nor did an airstrike 36:49 or an invasion of uh cuba was ordered 36:52 only for the americans to discover 36:54 that the soviets and cuban forces were 36:56 far better prepared 36:57 than assumed including the tactical 37:00 nuclear weapons 37:01 or that the soviet submarine which found 37:04 itself under an american destroyer 37:06 trying to force it to the surface uh did 37:09 actually 37:10 use as was contemplated its nuclear 37:12 torpedo 37:13 or if castro had managed to get some 37:15 control over the medium missile uh 37:17 medium range missiles and so on 37:20 in this way cuba fed into later scripts 37:23 because it was a story of resolve and 37:25 restraint 37:26 uh of protecting vital interests while 37:29 engaging in imaginative 37:31 diplomacy but also because of paths not 37:34 taken 37:35 with far more alarming outcomes 37:40 the lesson of cuba was that if you 37:42 wanted to avoid world war iii 37:44 you must prevent an eruption of violence 37:46 at the first encounter 37:48 and not once fighting had already begun 37:53 invoking world war iii early in the 37:56 modern crisis 37:57 this has become another metronome not 37:59 that different to invoking july 1914 or 38:02 munich 38:03 by introducing it it introduces a script 38:05 of escalation 38:07 and i wanted to take two contrasting 38:10 examples of the use of this trope uh the 38:13 first is general matthew ridgeway 38:16 explaining his mission career in 1950 38:19 at the end of 1950 in contrast to 38:21 douglas macarthur's view 38:24 president trumany noted quotes had made 38:26 it unmistakably clear 38:27 that his primary concern was not to be 38:30 responsible for initiating 38:32 world war three then almost 50 years 38:34 later 38:35 here is british general mike jackson 38:38 arguing with general wes clark 38:40 then sakura over clark's order to take 38:43 direct action 38:44 to stop the russians using pristina 38:46 airport in kosovo 38:48 in kosovo quote sir i'm not starting 38:51 world war three 38:52 for you waving his red card 38:55 now in the first case it was possible to 38:58 write the script that took you from the 38:59 situation 39:00 in korea in december 1950 to world war 39:03 three 39:04 the previous month the us army and its 39:06 allies had moved towards the yalu river 39:08 separating china from north korea 39:11 chinese forces had poured into north 39:13 korea 39:14 and pushed the u.s army into full 39:16 retreat 39:17 macarthur had wanted to take the war 39:18 into chinese territory 39:20 but truman and the joint joint chiefs 39:23 didn't want this 39:24 a wider war with china could well have 39:26 drawn in the soviet union 39:28 although this time it wouldn't have led 39:30 to a nuclear war 39:31 so the script was not implausible 39:35 now in 1999 john jackson was vindicating 39:39 that 39:39 he understood the situation on the 39:42 ground in 39:43 pristina better than clark and his 39:46 warning was widely considered prudent 39:48 yet it's extremely hard to see how of 39:52 uh following clark's orders would have 39:54 actually led to world war three 39:57 it was simply a way of warning against 40:00 escalation 40:01 the same tropes around with korea look 40:04 at the more alarmist 40:06 articles before donald trump and kim 40:08 jong-un 40:09 began their brief but intense affair in 40:12 singapore 40:13 there were regular references to how the 40:16 nuclear standoff between the u.s and 40:18 north korea 40:19 could lead to world war iii 40:23 while his boss was still tweeting about 40:25 fire and fury 40:26 here's trump's sidekick uh steve bannon 40:29 in august 2017 40:32 with some hyperbole uh not even assuming 40:35 nuclear use quotes until somebody solved 40:38 the part of the equation that shows me 40:40 that 10 people 40:42 in seoul don't die in the first 30 40:43 minutes from conventional weapons 40:45 i don't know what you're talking about 40:47 there's no military situa 40:49 there's no military solution here they 40:51 got us 40:53 this leads to two observations the first 40:57 is here we have a reminder that while 40:59 the presence of nuclear weapons on the 41:01 enemy side 41:02 provides a reason to avoid war the 41:04 possibility of an enemy 41:06 acquiring nuclear weapons has been a 41:08 reason to justify war 41:12 uh in in my original quote uh from 41:15 ken's uh adelphi paper he mentioned the 41:18 possibility of a war between 41:20 uh soviet union and china we forget 41:22 about this now but it was a big deal 41:24 at the time and in 1969 uh preemption 41:27 seemed 41:28 a real possibility it was this prospect 41:30 obviously that was ostensibly behind 41:33 the 2003 war in iraq and more recently 41:36 the pressure 41:37 on iran as well as on north korea now 41:40 can of course argue that this was the 41:41 wrong response 41:42 the leaders of these countries would no 41:44 more want to be involved 41:46 in nuclear exchanges than any others but 41:49 that leads to the second 41:50 observation the issue with these states 41:53 was not whether nuclear weapons would 41:56 lead them into a nuclear war 41:58 but whether the comfort of their own 41:59 deterrent would 42:01 lead them to become less risk-averse in 42:03 their general foreign policy 42:05 uh and ready uh and in their readiness 42:08 to take 42:08 military action that's what bannon was 42:11 pointing to when he said 42:12 they got us and that was exactly the 42:15 same problem 42:16 that was supposed to come with mutual 42:18 assured destruction 42:20 it gave the superior conventional power 42:23 uh or the one with the greatest stakes 42:26 in a in an issue 42:28 in case the soviet union greater 42:30 latitude now we know 42:32 that moscow was not as convinced about 42:35 the incredibility of nato nuclear 42:37 threats 42:37 as many on the nato side uh and the 42:41 soviet leaders shared the same caution 42:44 we can argue that this has continued 42:46 with russia 42:47 under putin it fought with non-nato 42:50 countries 42:51 georgia and ukraine but not with nato 42:54 members 42:54 such as estonia in 2014 it used its 42:58 nuclear deterrent 42:59 to warn nato countries against getting 43:02 involved 43:03 on behalf of ukraine versus crimea 43:06 was being annexed the head of the 43:08 kremlin backed news agency 43:10 observed on tv against the backdrop of a 43:13 mushroom cloud that quotes 43:14 russia is the only country that could 43:16 really turn the u.s 43:18 into radioactive ashes but august putin 43:22 said that other countries 43:23 should understand its best not to mess 43:25 with us 43:26 with a reminder that russia is one of 43:28 the leading nuclear powers and it's fair 43:30 to say 43:31 that the obama administration was 43:33 cautious when it came to providing 43:35 military assistance to ukraine 43:40 in his 1971 adelphi paper can stress the 43:43 importance 43:45 of bipolarity the 43:48 potentially looking largely the u.s 43:51 soviet 43:52 um relationship uh as another 43:55 equally important reason for peace in a 43:58 bipolar 43:59 world he argued responsibility is 44:02 clearly fixed 44:03 and relative power is easier to estimate 44:07 a multi-polar world he warned 44:11 was more likely to tend towards 44:13 instability 44:14 multipolarity meant it was harder for 44:16 powers to draw clear and fixed lines 44:19 between allies and adversaries quotes 44:22 in the great power politics of a 44:23 multi-polar world 44:25 who is a danger to whom and who can be 44:27 expected to deal with threats 44:29 and problems are matters of uncertainty 44:32 dangers are diffused 44:34 responsibilities blurred and definitions 44:36 of vital interests 44:38 easily obscured and certainly the world 44:41 is now much more complex than it was in 44:43 1971 44:45 two developments stand out first there 44:47 are now new nuclear powers 44:49 although not as many as thought likely 44:51 in 1971 44:53 but we have india and pakistan testing 44:56 the proposition 44:57 that nuclear weapons discourage 44:59 escalation 45:01 secondly while russia is still around 45:04 china is the most formidable peer 45:06 competitor 45:07 to the us and it's an explicitly 45:10 revisionist power 45:11 that is that is it does not accept the 45:14 territorial 45:15 status quo argue that it is challenging 45:19 the us 45:20 for global predominance some of those 45:22 that do 45:23 uh look to the cities for their 45:25 potential scripts 45:28 attitudes to war have uh also changed 45:32 1971 saw the first serious use of smart 45:36 bombs 45:36 in their campaign in operation 45:39 linebacker one in vietnam 45:41 the presumption now is that conventional 45:43 weapons 45:44 can be used with great accuracy so 45:46 there's no 45:47 need no excuse to target civilians 45:51 the mass air raids of the second world 45:53 war was one reason 45:55 why it's possible to see continuity when 45:58 considering the use 45:59 of the first nuclear weapons hiroshima 46:02 was not as bad as the uh in terms of 46:06 the number of casualties um as uh the 46:09 fire bombing of tokyo 46:11 that connection has been broken even the 46:14 terminology 46:15 of weapons of mass destruction cannot 46:17 hide the fact 46:18 that uh nuclear weapons and a category 46:22 are in a category of their own quite 46:24 separate from biological and chemical 46:29 in other respects there's a remarkable 46:31 continuity 46:32 the composition of the arsenals icbms 46:34 slbms long-range bombers 46:36 not changed much many of the systems in 46:39 use 46:40 are now decades old the concepts 46:43 developed during the golden age 46:45 of nuclear strategy put from about 1954 46:48 to 1965 first and second strikes 46:52 deterrence by denial deterrence by 46:54 punishment mutual assault destruction 46:56 limited war 46:57 arms control and escalation still shape 47:00 our thinking this is the period when the 47:03 nuclear taboo 47:05 the norm of non-use to code followed in 47:07 vietnam 47:08 as it had been in korea i guess this 47:12 continuity reinforces the idea 47:14 that these are weapons that none dare 47:16 use that they are kept in a separate 47:19 locker 47:19 away from the regular business of 47:21 international fair affairs the 47:24 continuity of non-use 47:26 has also left us with a merciful uh 47:29 lack of precedence no nuclear power 47:32 has yet to challenge the presumption of 47:34 escalation that one shot survived in 47:37 anger 47:37 the belligerence would be but a few 47:39 steps from armageddon 47:43 as if political uh and military uh 47:46 leaders would not be able to help 47:48 themselves that they are bound to follow 47:50 a script 47:51 of action and reaction the first to use 47:54 nuclear weapons 47:55 against another nuclear state would have 47:57 no reliable script to follow 48:00 they will be making it up as they went 48:02 along 48:05 this does not mean that this is a 48:07 situation that can go on 48:09 indefinitely there are a variety of 48:12 theories 48:13 about how new technologies cyber attacks 48:16 anti-submarine 48:18 um submarine systems hypersonic weapons 48:22 might upset the previous calculations 48:25 on these i'm unconvinced that i don't 48:28 think any of them 48:29 can remove the risk of retaliation 48:32 the new nuclear scripts are much more 48:34 likely to be the results 48:36 of political changes the walt sagan book 48:40 discusses how india and pakistan are two 48:42 nuclear powers 48:43 that have come to blows though so far 48:46 without it turning 48:47 into a full-scale war but that's further 48:49 than the us 48:50 and the soviet union went china's 48:53 calculations may be that its nuclear 48:55 arsenal 48:56 provides it with cover to take some 48:58 risks in pursuit of 48:59 its revisionist agenda 49:02 there are inherent problems with the new 49:05 u.s nuclear guarantee 49:07 to some of its allies which might be 49:10 exposed 49:11 in an asian crisis in a way that they 49:13 have not been particularly exposed 49:15 in the european crisis 49:19 new situations raise up new 49:21 possibilities 49:23 for new scripts they may not seem 49:26 they may not necessarily carry the risks 49:28 of the old ones 49:31 they may just be approached with a 49:33 greater degree 49:34 of recklessness but it's political 49:37 change 49:38 um that casts doubt uh on 49:42 the assumption that we can have 49:45 another 75 years of nuclear peace 49:49 to go with the past 75 years and it's 49:51 for that reason 49:52 that i think while it's possible to 49:54 embrace ken's case for a nuclear 49:57 piece and note how well it has stood up 49:59 you don't quite have to embrace the 50:01 conclusions 50:02 that more may be better thank you 50:12 well thank you uh lori uh 50:16 i was thinking back uh this morning 50:19 about the first time we met which you 50:22 probably don't remember but 50:24 i realize now it was just over 40 years 50:26 ago when you were at chatham house and 50:29 i was uh in europe doing interviews 50:32 around nato for my surprise attack book 50:34 uh and uh that was just a couple years 50:38 after 50:38 your first book was published uh and 50:42 was one of the very few serious 50:45 books about intelligence before the uh 50:48 avalanche that occurred later following 50:51 declassification 50:52 and uh events in the united states 50:55 but uh one of the things i always uh 50:58 admired about your courses that you've 51:01 written on 51:02 a number of different topics in 51:04 strategic studies 51:06 not just nuclear strategy 51:09 but i think it's interesting that uh 51:11 like some others 51:12 uh today you come back to nuclear 51:15 strategy 51:16 and i think it's quite appropriate 51:17 because the bad old days are coming back 51:22 anyway i wasn't quite sure what you were 51:25 going to talk about 51:26 under the title of nuclear scripts 51:32 in a way i think they overlap a little 51:34 bit with the idea of myths or legends 51:37 about what reality is 51:41 and a few things 51:44 seem to be consistent with 51:48 what you've been talking about 51:51 are in my view at least 51:54 uh the fact that fundamental dilemmas or 51:58 paradoxes 51:59 in nuclear strategy were never 52:01 satisfactorily resolved 52:06 but that a lot of people 52:09 most people including many of those who 52:11 count most 52:12 in government don't think that's a 52:16 problem 52:17 or don't think it's true and they don't 52:18 worry about it 52:21 and what worries me is the possibility 52:24 that 52:25 any of the scripts that have served in 52:28 the past 52:29 are more vulnerable to cracking under 52:32 the worst of circumstances 52:34 in ways that really haven't been tested 52:36 at all since 1962. 52:40 for example i think you pointed out 52:43 clearly what many in the business have 52:46 long believed and that is that the idea 52:49 of deliberate 52:50 uh escalation and first use of nuclear 52:53 weapons by nato 52:57 makes no sense but despite 53:01 that widespread recognition among people 53:03 who've thought about the subject 53:06 it's virtually taboo politically to say 53:09 so 53:10 the commitment to nato first use is 53:13 resilient 53:15 when it became an issue in the 1980s it 53:17 led to the whole 53:19 inf phenomenon and brolio 53:24 and whenever the subject comes up even 53:27 after the tables have been turned in the 53:29 balance of power after the cold war 53:32 it's not something that that can be 53:34 questioned 53:36 yet most people including government 53:38 officials 53:39 are not troubled by that uh 53:42 especially in the uh the hiatus 53:46 uh since the cold war the holiday we had 53:49 for a quarter century after a cold war 53:51 before the 53:52 return of great power conflict um 53:56 and part of this lack of being troubled 53:59 i think 54:00 overlaps a bit with ken's view about the 54:04 benign impact of nuclear weapons 54:08 i think among most americans who are 54:11 politically conscious but not 54:12 specialists on nuclear matters 54:15 uh there has been a fair amount of 54:17 nonchalance 54:18 or confidence that the problem was 54:20 solved after the cold war 54:22 with the exception of the extreme does 54:25 that you note going back 54:26 uh through the cold war uh 54:30 but they are politically irrelevant 54:32 because the logic of their position 54:34 really 54:34 makes it hard to escape from pacifism 54:39 but for the establishment 54:42 experts or elites i think the idea that 54:45 we arrived at a situation of stability 54:48 through the acceptance of mutual assured 54:49 destruction 54:50 is still widely accepted 54:55 and most don't go as far as ken did or 54:58 very few do in uh seeing this as a 55:00 warrant for nuclear proliferation 55:03 uh but they they tend to see it as 55:05 reassuring about the relations between 55:07 the major nuclear powers 55:10 and and this is where i would differ 55:13 with waltz and maybe want to draw you 55:15 out 55:15 a little bit more on the details of your 55:19 views on some of the policy matters 55:23 but various 55:26 attempts to resolve the old dilemmas and 55:28 paradoxes 55:30 as as i argue i think have not been 55:33 finally successful 55:35 and a question arises 55:39 about what scripts or myths or legends 55:43 or images will shape 55:47 first our own understandings and 55:50 secondly 55:51 the nuclear strategies of 55:55 new nuclear weapons states 55:58 in the evolving distribution of power 56:00 for example uh 56:02 the probable inadequacy of the dyadic 56:05 frame of reference which was the 56:07 the essence of traditional nuclear 56:10 strategy 56:11 uh the question of the recognition and 56:15 or acceptance of the canonical value 56:19 of crisis stability in 56:22 force structures 56:26 the question of the logic 56:29 of the stability of nuclear strategy 56:32 based on mutual assured destruction 56:34 when the illegality of targeting based 56:37 on mutual assured destruction 56:39 has become a more prominent assumption 56:43 throughout the world and even in the 56:44 united states 56:47 so whether india china 56:51 will or won't adhere 56:55 to the more restrained nuclear policies 56:58 they've had in the early phases of 57:01 their status's nuclear powers or uh 57:04 will evolve towards 57:08 dealing with some of the paradoxes and 57:11 dilemmas and 57:12 more ambitious uh alternatives 57:15 envisioned by critics of the old 57:17 strategy is 57:18 uh something i think we still have to 57:21 figure out 57:25 um thanks very much for that 57:28 um i do indeed remember our 57:32 early meetings um we were both 57:35 considered young turks at the time right 57:38 very cool um uh 57:42 so uh just to follow your point i mean 57:46 it's sort of myths and legends but it it 57:49 it's 57:49 uh it's it's ideas that are internalized 57:53 and taken 57:54 seriously now um by no means do they 57:58 have to be correct 57:59 there's a an old sociological axiom 58:02 which uh has been confirmed in spades 58:05 in recent years which is if something is 58:08 believed to be real it's real in its 58:09 consequences 58:11 uh and uh so these scripts 58:14 do have consequences they are taken 58:17 seriously 58:18 i think you're correct um 58:21 i very much agree that there's an 58:23 underlying problem 58:25 that the the issues of nuclear 58:28 strategy have never been satisfactorily 58:31 resolved 58:32 and i think the basic reason for that is 58:34 extended deterrence 58:36 at least for the united states um so 58:39 long as the united states 58:41 has obligations to its allies that in 58:44 principle 58:45 could lead to using nuclear weapons 58:48 you've got a problem 58:50 uh and i think it's actually a bigger 58:52 problem in asia than it was in europe 58:55 certainly a bigger problem now than it 58:57 is than it could be in europe 58:59 it's still an issue in europe but it's 59:01 not not as big 59:04 and it and the reason why 59:08 um there hasn't been a move to no first 59:10 use 59:11 is because allies are nervous about the 59:15 implications of that 59:16 not because they anticipate first use 59:19 because it would 59:20 indicate um a sort of downgrade 59:24 in the security status of allies um 59:27 because it is assumed that if the united 59:29 states was under direct 59:31 attack would be fewer inhibitions i mean 59:34 my issue with no first use 59:36 is that um if it was um 59:40 if that was the policy then people would 59:43 get quite alarmed 59:44 in a crisis and people said if it was 59:46 said don't worry 59:48 we've promised not to use nuclear 59:49 weapons first because the issue of 59:51 escalation 59:53 would still be present on the other hand 59:56 you'd rather 59:57 you weren't in a position where you 59:59 depended on first years but i think that 60:02 that's the conundrum that nobody's 60:04 managed to get around and it's one 60:05 that's 60:06 left um untouched 60:09 and spent any time which i wouldn't 60:12 particularly advise looking at nato 60:14 strategic concepts 60:15 you see the the way they they just work 60:18 around it 60:19 um because they don't want an extended 60:22 essay 60:23 on the topic um that they just want uh 60:26 it to be assumed that there's something 60:28 still there 60:30 um i think i mean it's an interesting 60:33 question and i don't 60:34 know the answer about the issue of 60:36 illegality 60:38 um it's obviously in many countries now 60:43 that the question of uh nuclear weapons 60:46 being illegal 60:48 not in any of the nuclear weapons states 60:49 but in many other states 60:52 um has become moot um 60:58 i think it's i mean even in 61:01 in the in the 60s um and certainly in 61:04 the 70s 61:05 uh the idea that our security depended 61:09 on threats of mass destruction was a 61:11 hard one to stomach 61:13 um and so it should be i think i think 61:16 it is 61:17 the problem we've got with nuclear 61:18 weapons is that they 61:20 exist as brony observed right 61:24 away that they exist um and the only 61:27 thing you can do because they exist 61:28 given that it's hard to see 61:30 how they can be abolished um 61:33 is uh unless you're more confident of 61:35 that is to try to find some 61:38 ways of uh avoiding their use 61:41 and that means detaching them 61:43 marginalizing them 61:44 from security policies i think that's 61:46 the the only way 61:48 to go i think the west should be able to 61:51 do that 61:52 uh by and large despite the problems 61:56 with with obligations but i think for 61:57 other countries it's tempting not to 62:00 um that's why sort of the 62:03 as you point out my final point the 62:05 dyadic relationship you 62:07 you that marked the the superpower 62:10 relationship 62:11 in china and britain and france playing 62:14 bit part 62:16 doesn't work when you're looking at much 62:17 more complex new structures for example 62:20 china pakistan india us 62:23 and so on so uh 62:26 i must that's why i think we have to be 62:28 cautious about the future 62:30 is our concluded with the lecture is 62:32 it's the political shift 62:35 of created new types of relationships 62:38 that bring up possibilities that 62:43 weren't there or very minor in the past 62:47 so i'm not sure we have a way of 62:48 resolving the problem it would be nice 62:50 to think 62:51 uh that we could uh but the tragedy of 62:55 nuclear weapons 62:56 in a way is the best you can hope for as 62:59 you hand it on to the next generation 63:03 thank you thank you so much sir lawrence 63:05 for a fascinating talk 63:06 we're now going to move to the q and a 63:09 portion of 63:10 of this event so i encourage you to 63:14 raise your virtual hand um 63:17 and the first we have uh is our own bob 63:21 uh bob jervis 63:25 uh thank you in from you know marvelous 63:29 talk and covered so much so well 63:32 that um first i just want to 63:36 pick up on one thing came up in your 63:40 response to dick's uh comments 63:44 and i i think it's absolutely right i 63:46 mean there is 63:48 you know there the area is just filled 63:50 with 63:51 not only empirical puzzles but logical 63:54 paradoxes 63:55 and they don't bother the decision 63:58 makers 63:58 as much as they bother us but let me 64:00 just mention 64:02 one i mean each administration does a 64:05 nuclear policy 64:07 review sometimes they're 64:10 classified sometimes public sometimes 64:13 one version or another 64:15 but but you just look if you look at any 64:18 of them for the 64:19 post-cold war era the really 64:23 um the crucial 64:26 question is do we want to seek 64:30 first strike capability against 64:34 china and or russia because that really 64:38 is the foundation 64:40 for the force structure you want well 64:42 that question 64:43 can't be asked because it's 64:47 politically explosive and so 64:50 it's never asked and so you get these 64:52 documents that 64:54 that really clearly avoid 64:57 central question uh but now i want to go 65:01 really the things that you said 65:05 and two points that i think are linked 65:08 one is on the caution of decision makers 65:12 and whether nuclear weapons makes them 65:14 more cautious 65:16 and the cuban missile crisis 65:20 brings up two examples that 65:23 cut both ways i mean the fact that 65:26 khrushchev 65:27 put the missiles into cuba 65:31 is certainly uncautious 65:34 and we can argue you know was he risk 65:37 accepted because he thought he was in 65:39 the realm of 65:40 losses i think that's probably right but 65:43 anyway he ended up 65:46 really taking a very great 65:50 risk without seemingly thinking it all 65:52 through 65:53 on the other hand in uh 65:56 right after kennedy's speech i believe 66:00 it is the first 66:01 night that the the meeting of the 66:05 politburo 66:07 one of the uh politburo members for 66:10 presidium camera 66:12 i can't remember who says 66:16 echoing kennedy's rio and the americans 66:19 real fears 66:21 they're going to screw around with cuba 66:24 we've got berlin let's reinstitute 66:27 blockade and cuba i mean 66:31 khrushchev cuts him off completely you 66:34 know he says 66:35 we've got one crisis on our hand you 66:39 want to start another 66:41 uh and so in that he's very 66:45 he is very cautious uh 66:49 on the american side not not in the 66:52 uh well yes in the cuban missile crisis 66:57 that um in the kennedy tapes 67:01 there's wondering one or two redactions 67:07 but i'm quite sure that one of them 67:11 refers to the soviets 67:14 having nuclear missiles 67:18 or nuclear warheads not only for the 67:20 irbms 67:22 but for short-range missiles 67:25 the general comes in he gives a short 67:28 thing 67:28 and i think it's pretty clear 67:32 he explains that they do have tactical 67:36 nuclear weapons in cuba 67:38 what's startling is what comes next 67:41 nothing 67:43 the executive committee ignores this and 67:46 goes 67:46 on you know this 67:50 really changes your should change your 67:52 calculation 67:54 on invading cuba and anything that 67:56 changes your calculation on invading 67:59 cuba 68:00 changes everything and they seem 68:04 barely to notice sort of which i'd call 68:08 being in cautious almost by um 68:12 inaction of the second example of 68:16 american 68:18 in caution is with nixon 68:21 and the crisis over 68:24 bangladesh when uh the indians finally 68:30 invade or liberate and 68:33 the administration nixon and kissinger 68:36 are worried also that india will turn 68:39 on west pakistan 68:43 and i was really amazed when i read the 68:45 documents 68:47 that we urge the chinese 68:51 to think about you know at least 68:55 but prepare and intervene 68:58 and we talk about 69:02 protecting them with our nuclear weapons 69:05 and indeed at one point 69:08 we get an indication the chinese are 69:10 willing 69:11 and nixon and kissinger and hague 69:14 because hague is going up to new york to 69:16 see the 69:17 chinese ambassador really talk about 69:21 being willing to use nuclear 69:25 weapons if the soviets 69:28 retaliate against china 69:31 i don't you know that strikes me now 69:33 maybe they're just posturing 69:36 but on breaking from the pattern of 69:40 caution this brings me 69:41 sorry to the very end and it's a qui it 69:43 really is a question 69:44 goes back to where you started look 69:49 you talked about the script of luck 69:52 which i think is very important but you 69:55 didn't 69:55 answer do you think that 69:59 we the reason we got through the cold 70:02 war was 70:04 because of luck 70:08 um good question good points 70:11 um let me um 70:15 let me just deal with it with cuba and 70:18 then bangladesh and then look um 70:22 with q i mean the the the the minutes of 70:25 the prizes or the reports of the 70:26 meetings of the price idiom 70:28 on the 22nd and 23rd of october are 70:30 fascinating 70:32 uh and uh uh 70:35 because they start before they know what 70:38 uh 70:38 kennedy is going to say they just know 70:40 he's going to give a speech they don't 70:41 know whether the speech is about cuba or 70:43 berlin 70:44 um um they think he's gonna if it's 70:47 about cuba he's going to invade 70:49 um so it's um uh 70:52 uh and khrushchev says uh we're just 70:55 trying to scare them you know he 70:57 he he he's clearly quite alarmed 71:00 the the the the he said this is a tragic 71:03 situation 71:04 at one point then then the speech comes 71:05 in and he's a bit more relieved 71:07 and they start talking about other 71:10 possibilities but the first thing they 71:11 do 71:12 um is to tell the ships that are 71:15 carrying 71:16 uh uh warheads and offensive 71:19 um uh systems uh to divert away those 71:23 those that are close to cuba 71:25 get there as quickly as you can but the 71:27 rest divert 71:28 um and for a reason which the uh 71:32 which never come had come up in the 71:34 american debates which is they just 71:36 didn't want 71:36 the americans nosing around their their 71:39 systems 71:40 apart from anything else um so it's a 71:43 fascinating 71:44 discussion and it's particularly 71:47 interesting 71:48 because you have the defense minister 71:50 malinowski um 71:53 uh echoing what he thinks khrushchev 71:55 wants to say and this is the sort of the 71:56 hawkish one 71:57 and mikhail coming in being incredibly 72:00 cautious 72:01 especially on command and control issues 72:03 and so on so it's a fascinating 72:04 discussion but the basic point is you 72:07 can tell from that 72:08 if if the americans have been listening 72:10 into that they would 72:11 be more confident that it would have 72:13 ended uh 72:14 as it did the bangladesh one 72:18 is um is interesting 72:21 because as it happens i've been i've 72:25 actually 72:25 talked to this quite recently uh not not 72:27 particularly because of that angle but 72:29 because 72:30 of um as an issue of 72:33 um of command in these pakistan 72:37 but the um the west pakistanis 72:41 were living in in a sort of uh it's 72:43 about myths the 72:45 the the they had this vague idea that 72:47 somehow the 72:48 the chinese and the americans together 72:51 um 72:52 were would uh uh would 72:55 come and rescue them from a situation 72:58 this mess that they got themselves into 73:00 an east pakistan 73:04 of um of taking west pakistan as well 73:07 they haven't 73:08 enough from their hands taking east 73:09 pakistan so the actual scenario was 73:11 unlikely 73:12 uh to arise but um and 73:16 uh what the the west pakistanis were 73:20 hoping 73:21 um was hoping was that the chinese would 73:24 get them out of a mess 73:26 in bangladesh um which was 73:30 which was a lost cause and at one point 73:33 there's a message to the commander 73:34 saying 73:35 the yellows and the whites will come and 73:37 help you um 73:39 uh but of course they never did so 73:42 um it's true that you have this 73:44 extraordinary conversations 73:46 between kissinger uh and nixon 73:50 um which is all predicated on the 73:52 assumption 73:53 the chinese the chinese will take an 73:56 extraordinary risk 73:58 which the chinese you know could first 74:01 the indian indians have picked their 74:03 time 74:04 um the winter when the china it would be 74:06 very difficult for the chinese to start 74:08 invading 74:09 um and it was unlikely um that they were 74:12 going to take that sort of risk when the 74:14 west pakistanis themselves 74:16 didn't seem that bothered about the loss 74:18 of east pakist 74:28 well you know atchison said after the uh 74:32 um after the cuban missile crisis when 74:35 he was uh 74:36 reviewing bobby kennedy's book that he 74:38 was playing dumb luck 74:40 um and uh it wasn't i mean 74:45 clearly we we know of things like you 74:47 know this soviet 74:49 submarine captain who thought for a 74:51 moment that he should unleash his 74:53 nuclear torpedo if he'd done that 74:54 we'd you know the story would have 74:56 looked very different just like you know 74:58 we have all the other stories of 75:00 uh people sitting in early warning 75:03 stations getting 75:04 red lights flashing and saying nah it 75:06 can't be that 75:08 i i'm not i'm not going to tell them to 75:10 launch uh 75:11 so um yeah i mean with different 75:13 personalities 75:14 then things could have been different 75:17 and that's the element of chance 75:19 and luck but we've lived through some 75:21 pretty strange characters in power as 75:22 well uh 75:25 and we've survived those so i think 75:26 there's there's something more to it 75:27 than luck 75:28 uh but obviously anybody who studies 75:30 human affairs 75:31 knows that factors of chance and 75:33 happenstance can never be completely 75:36 marginalized 75:38 great so we have a little bit over than 75:42 about 10 to 15 minutes so if you mind 75:44 keeping your the questions short 75:46 so uh more people can participate and 75:49 and and the answers also on the short 75:51 side scott 75:52 sagan is next well thank you lori 75:56 for that excellent um 75:59 thank you lori for that excellent talk i 76:01 have a question about 76:02 a script or a metaphor 76:06 that's um put it in even into one or two 76:08 words which is 76:09 the term escalation or escalation ladder 76:13 as you suggested escalation has a 76:16 feeling of automaticity about it you 76:20 you're staying there and 76:21 it's moving whether you really want to 76:24 or not 76:25 um ladder does not move 76:29 you have to go up and down the use of 76:32 the term escalation ladder 76:34 by khan seems contradictory in that way 76:38 at least in terms of its 76:39 emotional um feel 76:42 so so my question is what's the origins 76:45 of this 76:46 and and you've written so much about 76:50 strategy in other contexts whether it's 76:53 pre-nuclear strategy 76:54 or or business strategy is is there the 76:58 same 76:59 sense that you use a term a script that 77:01 has a sense of automaticity to it 77:04 or is that less um 77:07 are there other alternatives than than 77:10 that particular 77:11 word which has such a meaning to it 77:14 um well i mean the idea of script is is 77:18 comes from cognitive psychology and uh 77:22 uh in my book strategy i deal with it in 77:24 some length uh 77:26 as as a way of talking about strategies 77:29 i mean i think the strategies 77:30 is requiring scripts which have elements 77:34 of improvisation 77:36 to them um just to take your 77:40 the ladder versus the automaticity this 77:42 is deliberate i mean 77:43 the the idea of bizarrely though there's 77:46 a word we use 77:47 so much it's hard to find any use of it 77:50 before 77:51 the late 50s um and it and it was the 77:54 tragic concept 77:55 um until 1960 that's the only way people 77:59 talked about escalation as the move from 78:02 limited 78:02 mainly limited nuclear war to full-scale 78:05 nuclear war you know the metaphor is 78:08 very obvious it comes from an escalator 78:10 you get onto the bottom and you can't 78:12 get unless you're a small child you 78:13 can't 78:14 but in the other direction you're going 78:15 to get up to the top without 78:17 being able to do anything about it um 78:20 and it was chat i was challenged 78:22 actually because of cuba 78:23 uh argued that you know escalators go 78:26 uh down as well as up the they they take 78:29 you to one floor but not right to the 78:30 top you can get off you can 78:32 uh take uh see what you're doing 78:36 khan came up with his idea of ladders an 78:39 escalation 78:40 ladder as a challenge um 78:43 it was it was a counter to the idea of 78:46 the tragic concept 78:47 because herman khan believed um 78:51 that um if you i mean use his favorite 78:54 word sober 78:55 if you stayed sober in the face of all 78:57 this horror um there are all sorts of 78:59 ways in which 79:01 uh you could manage a conflict um you 79:03 know famously well 79:04 44 rungs on his escalation ladder and 35 79:08 of them came after the first use of 79:10 nuclear weapons 79:11 so he had all sorts of distinctions and 79:13 so on 79:14 um and interestingly his the subtitle of 79:18 his book on escalation 79:19 was metaphors and scenarios um 79:22 so i mean that that's what that was the 79:24 object 79:25 of the book um 79:29 and it lingers on only in the idea of 79:32 escalation dominance 79:34 which was a concept that comes from 79:36 herman carr 79:37 the idea that you could move up a step 79:40 and to to the level that suits you 79:44 best um but the the the ladder itself 79:48 just seems terribly dated now 79:50 uh yeah i don't think it works but you 79:52 do have this dual concept 79:54 um well and you hear it still when 79:57 people talk about escalation they'll 80:00 uh on the one hand it's it's something 80:02 that happens the 80:03 the that moves the situation more out of 80:05 your control 80:06 on another hand it's something you do 80:08 you escalate it to 80:09 you know it's a verb as well to escalate 80:12 um but it's normally considered a bad 80:14 thing to do 80:16 because you like to lose control 80:21 um i don't see that um any more hens we 80:25 have uh 80:26 two questions that uh that i can see in 80:28 the chat 80:29 um one is about your views on the treaty 80:32 on the provision of nuclear weapons 80:37 um well i mentioned this 80:41 um a bit um 80:44 when i'm talking to today um 80:48 i think 80:53 the problem with the the problem with 80:55 the illegality of nuclear weapons 80:58 um is the it's really you know the last 81:01 question 81:03 when you face it the last question 81:04 you're going to be asking is is this 81:06 legal 81:07 um so 81:10 uh there's sort of an unreality to it my 81:13 problem with it is 81:14 tends to be around some of the advocacy 81:16 um 81:17 uh in the in that 81:20 it's very strong on the uh on 81:24 nuclear deterrence not working on only 81:26 crazy people wanting this or 81:27 it's macho and so on uh if you read the 81:30 i can't remember her name now but if you 81:31 read the 81:32 the nobel prize winning speech um 81:35 it it it's um 81:39 uh it's an odd speech and until it 81:41 doesn't really 81:42 engage with the opposition it denounces 81:45 the opposition 81:46 so i think there's a problem with the 81:47 rhetoric it's a real thing i mean 81:50 it's uh i mean you can you know it 81:54 it doesn't uh it's not news that nuclear 81:56 weapons are horrible 81:58 and if used that they would cause mass 82:00 devastation and something terrible 82:02 um but uh uh 82:06 and it's interesting the extra the 82:08 amount of support 82:09 that is gradually being gained it's 82:12 still hard to see why it's going to 82:14 make a lot of difference to american 82:17 russian chinese 82:18 israeli india or pakistani policy 82:23 but it it it it encourages the view 82:26 which i would 82:26 encourage the the these these are 82:29 weapons best kept 82:30 uh to the side um so it you know it's 82:34 another element to the debate but i 82:35 don't think 82:36 the debate itself has actually been 82:38 enriched by a lot of the things sediment 82:40 in the name of the treaty 82:43 thank you next we have cynthia roberts 82:48 um thank you very much for this 82:50 wonderful talk and comments 82:52 i want to ask you i can't resist sir 82:54 lawrence to get your view 82:57 on what i think you identified as the 83:00 central paradox 83:01 especially for the u.s which is the 83:04 problem of extended deterrence 83:06 on the one hand it's it seems to have 83:07 worked quite well 83:09 and uh it also has uh 83:12 allowed the united states to be one of 83:16 the central players in non-proliferation 83:18 right we've squashed 83:20 several of our allies uh abilities to 83:23 to get nuclear weapons their attempts to 83:25 get nuclear weapons and so on so it's 83:27 been successful arguably 83:29 on two fronts but as you 83:32 and others tom schelling bob jervis have 83:34 pointed out it it's 83:36 questionable in its credibility and we 83:38 constantly do things to try and make it 83:40 more credible 83:41 so on balance um 83:45 maybe some of these countries should 83:46 have their own 83:48 uh small nuclear forces or is the 83:51 british and french experience 83:55 a cautionary tale in not doing that and 83:58 and as you answer that some of us who 84:01 actually 84:02 study this carefully uh have noticed how 84:05 the french have been 84:06 flirting under mercury with the idea 84:09 well maybe they will extend their 84:12 their deterrent to the rest of europe 84:13 and then maybe not 84:15 uh it's been an interesting flirtation 84:17 it hasn't gone anywhere 84:19 but it would make sense in a lot of ways 84:22 it would free up the us 84:23 in extended deterrence the europeans are 84:26 certainly 84:26 rich and powerful enough to have their 84:28 own nuclear deterrent 84:30 whether or not the reds want to 84:32 participate in asia 84:33 we have bigger problems so if you want 84:35 to comment on this trade-off further 84:37 i'd be very grateful thank you well 84:40 thank you i mean it's a really important 84:41 issue 84:42 because um uh 84:45 one of the reasons why uh and if 84:49 again going back to the previous 84:51 question it's one of the frustrations in 84:53 trying to 84:54 uh have debates about this as if 84:57 and you can see it with with the 84:59 question of what happens if iran gets 85:02 a nuclear capability is the 85:05 proliferation is still there it's just 85:08 systems uh understandings are in place 85:12 the the the limit the extent of 85:14 proliferation 85:15 and so uh as has been made pretty clear 85:18 and 85:18 it was you know part of the conversation 85:21 uh during uh 85:22 mr trump's presidency if your allies 85:25 start to think 85:27 that you will no longer honor your 85:29 obligations 85:30 then you look for alternative 85:31 arrangements 85:33 now the fact is in both asia and europe 85:36 these alternative arrangements look 85:38 expensive and dangerous potentially 85:41 and not as good as a situation 85:44 where you feel that you can rely on the 85:47 americans 85:48 but the question has been raised um 85:52 and uh if 85:55 if it came to be understood that the 85:57 american guarantee was no longer in 85:59 place 86:00 um then you would as likely as not you 86:03 would see 86:04 proliferation um 86:08 certainly or else you you would see uh 86:11 a vast shift in international alignments 86:14 as those who felt it might be too 86:16 dangerous to proliferate 86:18 uh would have to recognize um that their 86:21 options 86:22 security options have been limited so i 86:25 think it is a 86:26 it is an issue it's 86:29 like it's one of those scripts that that 86:31 is pretty evident i think 86:33 to those in the business but it is 86:35 surprisingly 86:36 not as much part of the debate uh as you 86:39 might imagine 86:40 as far as europe goes i mean there was a 86:43 moment 86:44 um and uh 86:47 under trump when uh he seemed so down on 86:51 his allies 86:52 um and clearly uh 86:56 i mean our then prime minister theresa 86:59 may 86:59 managed to get him to say the right 87:01 things about nato when she first met him 87:03 in 87:04 2017 but it's actually there's no 87:07 particular evidence 87:08 that she he he he 87:12 either understood or would have been 87:14 impressed by 87:15 the guarantees that have been made to 87:17 american allies you just saw 87:19 nato was a place where the us was ripped 87:22 off 87:23 um and they were the only americans only 87:25 once paying their dues 87:27 so uh 87:30 that led to uh a lot of thinking 87:34 within europe but well what do we do now 87:37 um 87:37 you know the fact that biden won the 87:39 election 87:40 has calmed that a bit uh but macron 87:44 as you mentioned uh who who has a habit 87:48 of 87:48 setting the hairs going without actually 87:50 chasing them um 87:53 has raised this question of strategic 87:55 autonomy 87:57 for europe but nobody's quite sure what 88:00 it means 88:02 or what involves i mean in the past the 88:03 uk has actually committed 88:06 its nuclear force to nato uh in a way 88:08 that the 88:09 the all the french say is its nuclear 88:12 force 88:13 um contributes to deterrence it hasn't 88:16 actually 88:16 when the uk has made a guarantee of its 88:19 own which i don't think that most of the 88:20 british population 88:21 are that aware of or would possibly care 88:23 for if they knew 88:24 but that's the that's the official 88:27 position 88:28 i mean the basic problem is germany um 88:31 there's the issue of germany um and 88:34 uh you know there are big discussions 88:37 going on in germany 88:39 about the implications of a world 88:43 in which whether it's obama 88:46 or trump there's clearly less interest 88:50 in committing great american energies to 88:54 a collection of allies who individually 88:57 never mind collectively individually 88:59 richer than russia um 89:02 so um there are big issues there 89:06 but you know going back to you know 89:09 previous discussions and what dick said 89:11 at the start 89:12 um there's a tendency to let sleeping 89:16 dogs life you don't absolutely have to 89:19 address these issues you'd rather not 89:21 because they're just too difficult 89:22 and the public don't like um and i think 89:25 is particularly true 89:26 in germany i mean there's some people in 89:28 the bundestag who are trying to get a 89:29 debate going but i don't think they're 89:31 finding it easy 89:35 thank you and we're almost the time but 89:37 i i wanted 89:38 to uh before we just wrap it up i wanted 89:41 to see if uh 89:42 professor uh uh our home professor 89:44 garwin 89:45 likes to say uh comment i saw something 89:47 in the chat 89:49 the floor is yours well i'd just like to 89:51 say hello 89:52 in a long time and i i i comment in the 89:56 chat on extended deterrence 89:58 that there are at least two meanings the 90:00 first is extension 90:02 of our nuclear weapon deterrence not 90:05 only to nuclear 90:06 attack by nuclear-armed opponents 90:09 but also to non-nuclear attacks and the 90:12 second meaning 90:13 quite different is the extension of our 90:16 nuclear umbrella 90:17 to our allies to prevent nuclear attack 90:20 on them 90:22 and then finally the double extension of 90:24 our nuclear weapons 90:26 to avoid even non-nuclear attack on 90:28 allies 90:29 of course books have been written and 90:31 many uh 90:32 conference papers about these things but 90:35 i wonder 90:36 uh if you've addressed that today or 90:39 have any succinct comment 90:42 um yeah i mean uh first 90:46 i i i think noted in the comments i met 90:49 him a very long time ago 90:51 uh when i was doing my my research uh 90:54 and my doctoral research and um 90:58 uh it's really it really is good to see 90:59 you again uh if only remotely 91:02 um i think the the the problem of 91:05 extended deterrence that people think 91:07 about most 91:08 uh is uses first use of nuclear weapons 91:13 on behalf of allies in response to a 91:15 conventional 91:16 attack but actually if you think about 91:20 the situation we're in the moment it's 91:22 quite hard 91:24 to see why nato can't if it put the if 91:27 it really felt it was in a serious 91:29 situation now the nato allies couldn't 91:32 put together 91:33 a serious conventional defense 91:38 but you're still left with the problem 91:39 of nuclear threats 91:42 and that i think is is the difficulty is 91:45 whether 91:46 um whether an extended deterrence by the 91:49 uk 91:50 or france were quite small by comparison 91:53 nuclear arsenals 91:54 would be seen as being the same uh in 91:57 response 91:58 to direct nuclear threats and that issue 92:00 came up with you know in 92:02 in 2014 with ukraine um 92:05 uh and the uh the 92:08 the russians did a very good job of 92:09 reminding people why nato might be quite 92:12 a good idea 92:13 um by trying to be as many as menacing 92:16 as possible 92:18 um in largely i think in order to deter 92:20 any 92:21 engagement direct engagement in the 92:24 ukraine conflict um 92:26 so yeah i mean i think the distinctions 92:29 are important 92:30 um and and the problem is that 92:34 even if you think i think you can in 92:37 europe 92:38 that you could avoid uh with effort a 92:40 war 92:41 um between uh 92:44 the the us uh between the allies and 92:48 russia turning into something that 92:50 inevitably would lead to nuclear use 92:53 as soon as nuclear weapons are invoked 92:55 you've got a problem 92:57 um and it's hard to see 93:00 without the americans how you uh how you 93:03 deal with that 93:06 thank you so with that uh 93:09 we have to end i would like to thank uh 93:12 again 93:12 uh sir lawrence friedman for a marvelous 93:15 fascinating talk 93:16 and great engagement with our questions 93:19 uh on this very important and complex 93:21 issue 93:22 um i thank him uh please join me in a 93:25 round of applause 93:26 um a virtual round of applause 93:30 thank you and applaud yeah 93:33 thank you do that and thank you very 93:36 much 93:37 again uh for being with us today um 93:40 for the rest of you have a great weekend 93:42 thank you for joining and we will see 93:43 you in our next event 93:45 goodbye everyone 93:58 you

Apart from helping to structure thought, I think that the process of writing also helps to retain ideas in the memory. That has been my own experience.

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Multistakeholder model is increasingly challenged especially from development communities. Here is an interesting book which we plan to read together in order to see how this type of analysis impacts digital and Internet governance.

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Exampels of binary logic

Our course should help thinking about issues with nuance avoidng binary traps.