Nearly sixty years after the Cuban missile crisis and thirty years after the end of the Cold War, today’s leaders appear capable of repeating the dangerous precedents of the past. In order to better understand and manage the major nuclear challenges of the 21st century, the lessons of the past should be considered. Serhii Plokhii’s new book, Nuclear Folly: A History of the Cuban Missile Crisis, offers an international perspective on the crisis, tracing the tortuous decision-making that produced and then resolved it. In this book talk, he illustrated the drama and anxiety of those tense days, drawing on a range of Soviet archival sources and White House tapes, and explained how to grapple with the problems posed in the present.
Speaker:
Serhii Plokhii - Former Short Term Scholar; Mykhailo Hrushevsky Professor of Ukrainian History, Harvard University
Moderator:
Jill Dougherty - Global Fellow; Former CNN Foreign Affairs Correspondent
