[ Silence ]
>> Professor Noam Chomsky: As long as nuclear weapons exist,
the chances of survival of the human species are quite slight.
I mean, there have been repeated occasions over and over again
when we've come very close to nuclear war.
In fact, we have declassified U.S. records,
Russian systems are obviously much worse.
So whatever is true of us has got to be worse for them,
but there are literally dozens of occasions when automated,
I mean, the nuclear weapons are on automated response systems.
So if you know, automated systems detect something going
on somewhere.
The computers calculate, and you get an order
to fire the weapons.
There are literally dozens of cases where it came up to
within a couple of minutes of sending off nuclear missiles.
It was aborted by human intervention.
OK. That's the U.S. side.
Russian side, undoubtedly, is a lot worse
because they don't have the, the systems are no good and so on.
Well, you know, that's just playing with fire.
Sooner or later, there's not going
to be a human intervention.
Furthermore, there are explicit cases where we've come literally
within instance of, in, instance of nuclear war.
I mean, the most extreme case,
which should really be studied carefully,
is 1962, the missile crisis.
That's been intensively investigated now for one reason
because the people involved like Robert McNamera and others
who recognise how crazy it was.
Arthur Schlessinger was in the government then,
called it the most dangerous moment in human history.
Now there was actually a, a moment there
when one Russian submarine commander prevented what could
have been a nuclear war.
At one point in the missile crisis,
Kennedy had established an embargo of Cuba.
No ships could come within a certain distance,
and Russian ships were approaching that line.
There were also, it turned, nobody knew it at the time,
but there were Russian submarines there
which had nuclear-tipped missiles.
They were attacked by U.S. destroyers, death chargers,
and the commanders of the submarines, who had authority
to fire nuclear missiles.
Same is true of U.S. systems.
They, they thought a war had started.
There were three commanders.
Two of them decided to send off the missiles.
OK. The third Vasili Arkhipov,
who should get 20 Nobel Peace prizes, he [laughter],
he rejected the order, and they had
to have all three agreeing to fire.
I mean, if they had fired, these are not nuclear, you know,
big huge nuclear weapons,
but if they'd fired nuclear-tipped missiles,
the U.S. reaction we know from the internal plans was,
you know, they do something like that, we take out Moscow
or they take out London, and, you know,
there it goes on from that.
You should read the studies.
We know what they were.
Came that close.
Actually there was another moment in the missile crisis
which amazingly is described as,
as one of John F. Kennedy's great achievements.
I mean, might be, it was one
of the worst crimes in human history.
What happened, the facts are known and not debated.
At, at a peak moment of the missile crisis, you know,
just coming to its peak, Khrushchev wrote a letter
to Kennedy in which he offered a way to end it.
The offer was that, that Russia would remove the missiles
from Cuba, and in return,
the United States would remove missiles in Turkey.
Now the missiles in Turkey are much more of a threat to Russia
than the missiles in Cuba were to the United States,
but that's the usual asymmetry.
We were allowed to do things that others can't do.
Now Kennedy was kind of surprised when he got
that letter because he had already given an order
to withdraw the missiles from Turkey
because they were obsolete.
They were being replaced by much more destructive Polaris
submarines in the Mediterranean.
So he had a, he pointed out that, internal discussion,
this is going to be a hard offer to refuse.
You know, it's not going to sell in Peoria.
But he decided to refuse it.
Just to preserve the macho image and to show that we run things.
So, in fact, they did withdraw the missiles
from Turkey but secretly.
That was part of the process of humiliating Khrushchev,
and to reach that goal, he was willing
to face what he himself considered a probability
about one in, in a third of nuclear war.
I mean, these are what goes on, these are the things that go
on in the minds of, you know, the, the best and the brightest
as they call themselves.
Just think of the rest.
Well, Kissinger, Schultz, and others who have been right
in the middle of this, and they know that we're
on the verge of catastrophe.
So they're saying, look, we've got to do something to get rid
of this destructive capacity.
This really doesn't have to do with deterrence so much.
I mean, as far as deterrence is concerned, there are,
interesting discussions, but one
of the most interesting is a very important book written
by one of Israel's leading strategic analysts,
and his name's Zeev Maoz.
It's in English.
It's, I think it's called "Defending the Holy Land",
and he goes through, it's about, you know, a thousand pages
of detailed analysis of Israel's strategic objectives since 1948,
and he's very judicious because the arguments on both sides.
It's carefully, he knows what he's talking about,
and his basic conclusion is
that Israel's policies have been selected in ways
in which harm its security.
Actually, that's not unusual.
That's true of the policies of most states, including Britain
and the United States.
So if you bother to look at the Chilcot Inquiry,
you'll have noticed that the head
of British Intelligence testified that when they decided
to go to war against Iraq, it was on the assumption
that it would sharply increase the terrorist risk to Britain,
and she points out that the CIA had the same assumption.
OK, we already sort of knew that from other sources,
but this is the highest level confirmation.
And that's correct, and they decided to go ahead anyway,
and the reason is the security of the people of Britain
and the United States is not a high priority for planners.
It's a low priority.
There's plenty of evidence for that,
that other countries are similar.
Now, well, in the case of Israel, that's his conclusion.
When he gets to nuclear, he has a chapter on nuclear weapons,
which is, worth reading,
and he argues I think pretty judiciously and convincingly
that Israel's nuclear weapons program has harmed its security.
He has a good argument, and if security were the top concern,
I think that argument would be taken seriously.
I mean, it's a striking fact if you look over history
that state actions are often taken with the understanding
that they may very well harm security.
And you take a look at the history of wars,
those who started the wars very often lose them
with disastrous consequences.
And the, it's taken into account
because there are higher priorities.
[ Silence ]