The Global Security Institute had a smooth transition of leadership in the wake of founder Senator Alan Cranstons death on New Years Eve. The Board of Directors elected Jonathan Granoff as GSI President, and Kim Cranston, Senator Cranstons son, as Chairman of the Board. Pat Patterson now serves as the new President of the Board, and Colette Penne Cranston has joined the Board of Directors. In the absence of Senator Cranstons physical presence, the Board and Staff of GSI are rededicated to his legacy of effective action.
On February 6th, the GSI worked with the producers of Thirteen Days to host an exclusive screening of the critically acclaimed dramatization of the Cuban Missile Crisis, in the Library of Congress theatre. The screening was arranged in cooperation with the Lawyers Alliance for World Security and Representatives Edward J. Markey (D-MA) and Christopher Shays (R-CT), co-chairs of the House of Representatives Bipartisan Task Force on Non-proliferation.
The packed, bipartisan audience of more than 500 guests included 16 Members of Congress, 2 foreign ambassadors, and staff from the offices of 126 Representatives and 26 Senators, including House and Senate leadership. Representatives from 21 government agencies and departments and Congressional Committees, and 23 organizations and educational institutions, were in attendance along with several journalists and columnists. Audience members took with them 15 boxes of GSI Annual Reports, LAWS White Papers on CTBT and NMD, MPIs Naked Nuclear Emperor, and other nuclear abolition advocacy literature.
The screening was followed by a panel discussion and reception with Robert McNamara, former Secretary of Defense; Graham Allison, Director of the Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs at Harvard Universitys Kennedy School of Government; and Roald Sagdeev, former Science Advisor to President Mikhail Gorbachev.
Thirteen Days Demonstrates Imperative of Nuclear Weapon Abolition
Secretary McNamara, who helped guide President Kennedy through the crisis, reflected on his memories of the Cuban Missile Crisis and his views on the ongoing nuclear threat.
“In the end we avoided nuclear war by a hairs breadth,” McNamara said. “And it didnt have a damn thing to do with the so-called best and the brightest. The basic thrust of [the movie] is absolutely correct. We came that close to nuclear war. It was luck that prevented us from blundering into it. And the conclusion you should come to is that the indefinite combination of human fallibility and nuclear weapons will lead to destruction of nations.”
A Lesson for Modern Times
McNamara and other experts warned that the film has serious lessons for todays leaders, and applauded President Bushs campaign commitment to take the U.S. nuclear arsenal off hair-trigger alert and to make deep reductions in nuclear stockpiles. They cautioned that such vital threat-reducing steps are incompatible, however, with the new administrations plans for a national missile defense, which is internationally destabilizing.
“The proposed national missile defense plans have serious flaws and can never be reliably tested,” remarked Global Security Institute CEO Jonathan Granoff. “The question is not whether we can build it, but whether we should. Missile defense, regardless of its technical merits, will stimulate an arms race with China, provoking India and Pakistan to follow suit. It provides no defense against a suitcase bomb or a tugboat in New York Harbor. It does not help move us toward a world that removes the unacceptable risk that nuclear weapons pose.”
By contrast, de-alerting nuclear weapons would provide a safety zone for any future crises. Congressman Ed Markey commented: “During the campaign, candidate Bush declared his interest in a mutual U.S.-Russia initiative to take our nuclear weapons off of hair-trigger alert. In 1962 we had 13 days. In this new era we may only have 13 minutes. President Bush should follow through on de-alerting as the way to find the time human beings need to make wise decisions about weapons of mass destruction.”
The Media Take Note
In her column on February 8th, Washington Post columnist Mary McGrory wrote about the attention being given to Thirteen Days, and referenced the Library of Congress screening. On Thursday, February 22, Robert McNamara and Peter Almond, the movies producer, appeared on The News Hour with Jim Lehrer to talk about the film and its contemporary importance.
Thirteen Days was the first film screened by President Bush in the White House theater. It was also the movie selection for the House Democrats on the bus ride returning from their annual retreat.
The Global Security Institute, with Ted Sorenson, is sponsoring screenings of Thirteen Days for the diplomatic corps of the United Nations on March 7th and in July. Please contact GSI if you would like to attend.
Posted by elena_goss
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February 08, 2001
On the long bus ride back from their weekend retreat in Pennsylvania, despondent Democrats watched “Thirteen Days,” the somber and gripping dramatization of the Cuban missile crisis of 1962. After it was over, they asked themselves: “Would he do what Kennedy did?”
“He,” of course, is George W. Bush, who in his second week in office held a high-profile White House screening of “Thirteen Days” to which he invited the Kennedy family — having first had a friend screen it to make sure nothing would dismay them. Indeed, there was nothing, except the exaggerated portrayal of Kenneth O’Donnell, Kennedy’s appointments secretary, as the man who saved the world from annihilation. Crowning the unlikelihood, the film has O’Donnell calling the president “Jack.” On the New Frontier, everyone from family to staff called him “Mr. President.” It was a must because of his youth and his win-by-a-whisker.
But O’Donnell’s son owns a hunk of the film company, and producer-star Kevin Costner needed a fat part.
This does not detract from the essence of “Thirteen Days,” which celebrates Kennedy’s remarkable grasp of two iron truths: He knew he was commander- in-chief — Gen. Curtis LeMay, bellowing and roaring at him to bomb and invade Cuba, was wasting his breath. The second principle Kennedy never let go of was that nuclear war, which is what unrestrained military action would lead to, was unthinkable.
Kennedy relied far more on his brother Bobby, the attorney general, than he did the brass who had told him he had no choice but to go forward in the Bay of Pigs. From the first heart-stopping moment when he saw the photographs of missiles in Cuba, Kennedy insisted there had to be an option other than what his closest aide Ted Sorensen called “humiliation and escalation.” He tried diplomacy and a blockade.
Washington and the world wonder about our new and untried president. Could Bush stand up to the chiefs? Or, more importantly, could he stand up to the strong-minded hawks around him, the Ford alumni like Vice President Cheney and his defense secretary? Donald H. Rumsfeld is just back from a Star Wars-selling trip to Europe, which is not all that keen about the nuclear missile shield that is the most visible part of Bush’s nuclear thinking.
It’s a little ironic that Hollywood is nudging Washington to do some Doomsday thinking. The fate of Earth did not figure in the presidential campaign, and was not mentioned in the debates. George W. Bush expressed enthusiasm for Ronald Reagan’s Star Wars and hopes of building it. He coupled this with a declaration of his intent to reduce our nuclear arsenals, even unilaterally.
Rumsfeld’s European weekend produced new expressions of doubt from our allies. They are leery of a nuclear missile defense, fearful that a new system, which would require the elimination of the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty with the Russians, could destabilize the nuclear arrangements now in effect. Russia and China refused to accept our assurances that the shield is not against them but against nasty little countries that we used to call “rogue” states but now call “states of concern.”
Moscow and Peking have threatened an arms buildup if we deploy a defensive system. Rumsfeld told the dubious Europeans they just better get used to the NMD. They will be consulted, but they will have no veto power over its deployment.
Rumsfeld tried to seduce the infidels with promises of sharing our missile defense secrets with them. They did not succumb. As of now, our system doesn’t work.
On Tuesday, Rep. Edward J. Markey (D-Mass.) sponsored a showing of “Thirteen Days” at the Library of Congress for House members. The Coolidge Auditorium was packed with staff members, many of whom looked as if they had been in kindergarten when the world lurched to the brink of nuclear confrontation — and was pulled back by a pair of brothers from Boston who understood power and politics.
Markey was a leader of a highly popular grass-roots uprising called the nuclear freeze movement, which seized the country in 1982, and was put down by Reagan. Reagan so prized his Star Wars dream that in 1986, he turned down Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev’s offer of eliminating all nuclear weapons on condition that Reagan abandon Star Wars. This he refused to do.
Is Bush as gung-ho? We’ll know more later. Secretary of State Colin L. Powell, at his confirmation hearings, sounded less keen than his Cabinet mates, and may represent our best hope of sensible options. Meantime, Markey hopes that Bush and other people in charge learn lessons from “Thirteen Days.” He hopes they will see the crisis as Kennedy did — a “conversation” between him and Nikita Khrushchev. It was a dialogue of submarines and U-2s, missiles and warplanes, but two great powers were telling each other that they didn’t really want to blow up the world.
Posted by zack_allen