The Beginning of the Nuclear Bomb: An Oral History
From 1942 to 1945, the Manhattan Project had operated in secret to develop a weapon more fearsome than anything the world had ever seen. Now, in mid-July, they were ready — or at least, they hoped so. Top officials gathered in the desert outside Alamogordo, New Mexico, for the world's first test of a nuclear explosion. They gave the operation codename Trinity.
You know the story from the 2023 blockbuster, Oppenheimer, which dramatized J. Robert Oppenheimer, the head of the Los Alamos Laboratory, in his troubled quest to reach the dawn of the nuclear age. What you may not know, however, is how the men who participated in that quest would describe it, in their own words.
In my upcoming book, The Devil Reached Toward the Sky: An Oral History of the Making and Unleashing of the Atomic Bomb, I assembled an oral history of the Manhattan Project, the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki and the end of World War II in the Pacific, told through the voices of around 500 participants and witnesses of the events — including luminaries like Albert Einstein and Oppenheimer and political figures like President Harry Truman. History projects, government reports, memoirs and innumerable other documents tell the story of the Trinity test in exacting detail, from the fears that the atmosphere would catch fire to the sleepless Oppenheimer fretting about everything that could go wrong.
Those details are as important now as ever. Multiple countries around the world are considering expanding or starting nuclear weapons arsenals. Tensions rose in the Middle East when the United States bombed Iran in June to prevent it from developing a nuclear weapon — an endeavor that reportedly only set the program back a few months. And Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly hinted at the use of nuclear weapons in his ongoing war on Ukraine.
With the nuclear age reaching its hottest point since the Cold War, a look back at its origins provides a stark reminder of just what's at stake.
The following has been edited for length and clarity.Maj. Gen. Leslie Groves, director, Manhattan Project: By May 1945, we reached the conclusion that our estimates of being ready early in August were reasonable and that we should have accumulated enough material for one bomb by late July. July 24 was finally set as the deadline date. And by the end of that day, enough uranium — and a little bit more — had been shipped to Los Alamos for the manufacture of the first bomb to be dropped on Japan.
Herbert L. Anderson, nuclear physicist, Manhattan Project: It was recognized that no amount of experimental work would yield as much information as an actual explosion, and plans were made for such a test, under a code name of 'Project Trinity.'
J. Robert Oppenheimer, director, Los Alamos Lab: Why I chose the name [Trinity] is not clear, but I know what thoughts were in my mind. There is a poem of John Donne, written just before his death, which I know and love. From it a quotation: 'As West and East / In all flat maps (and I am one) are one, / So death doth touch the resurrection.' That still does not make Trinity; but in another, better known devotional poem Donne opens, 'Batter my heart, three person'd God;—.' Beyond this, I have no clues whatever.
Kenneth T. Bainbridge, director, Trinity Project: Oppenheimer asked me to be director of the Trinity Project. John Williams was appointed as deputy director to oversee that the installation and construction of facilities for instruments and shelters conformed to the scientific requirements and were completed on time. In succeeding months increasing numbers of scientists and Special Engineer Detachment soldiers from Los Alamos were assigned to the Trinity Test Project as confidence rose that the implosion method might be practicable and sufficient core material might be available in June or July.
Otto R. Frisch, physicist, British delegation to the Manhattan Project: We all went in cars and buses to the test site, code-named 'Trinity' in the desert near Alamogordo, also known as El Jornado del Muerte, Spanish for the Journey of Death.
William L. Laurence, reporter, The New York Times: I had been with the Atomic Bomb Project a little over two months. I had visited all the secret plants, which at that time no one mentioned by name — Oak Ridge, Hanford, Los Alamos; the Martian laboratories at Columbia, Chicago and California universities. I had seen things no human eye had ever seen before, things that no one had ever thought possible. I had watched men work with heaps of Uranium-235 and plutonium great enough to blow any city off the map. I had prepared scores of reports on what I had seen — every one of them marked 'Top Secret' and locked in a special top-secret safe.
Otto R. Frisch, physicist, Los Alamos Lab: A steel tower, about 100 feet tall, had been constructed to carry the explosive device. When it finally arrived and was being hoisted to the top I was standing there with George Kistiakowsky — our top expert on explosives — at the bottom of the tower. 'How far,' I asked him, 'do we have to be for safety in case it went off?' 'Oh,' he said, 'probably about 10 miles.' 'So in that case,' I said, 'we might as well stay and watch the fun.'
William L. Laurence: The bomb was set on a structural steel tower 100 feet high. Ten miles away to the southwest was the base camp. This was H.Q. for the scientific high command, of which Professor Kenneth T. Bainbridge of Harvard University was field commander. Here were erected barracks to serve as living-quarters for the scientists, a mess hall, a commissary, a post exchange and other buildings. Here the vanguard of the atomists, headed by Professor J. R. Oppenheimer of the University of California, scientific director of the Atomic Bomb Project, lived like soldiers at the front, supervising the enormously complicated details involved in the epoch-making tests.
Here early that Sunday afternoon had gathered Major General Leslie R. Groves, commander-in-chief of the Atomic Bomb Project; Brigadier-General T. F. Farrell, hero of World War I, General Groves' deputy; Professor Enrico Fermi, Nobel Prize winner and one of the leaders in the project; President James Bryant Conant of Harvard; Dr. Vannevar Bush, director of the Office of Scientific Research and Development; Dean Richard C. Tolman of the California Institute of Technology; Professor R. F. Bacher of Cornell; Colonel Stafford L. Warren, University of Rochester radiologist; and about 150 other leaders in the atomic bomb program.
Brig. Gen. Leslie Groves: After arriving at the Alamogordo base camp on July 15, a brief review of the situation with Oppenheimer revealed that we might be in trouble. The bomb had been assembled and placed at the top of its 100-foot-high steel tower, but the weather was distinctly unfavorable.
Brig. Gen. Leslie Groves: The weather that evening was quite blustery and misty, with some rain.
William L. Laurence: Base Camp was a dry, abandoned reservoir, about 500 feet square, surrounded by a mound of earth about 8 feet high. Within this mound bulldozers dug a series of slit trenches, each about 3 feet deep, 7 feet wide and 25 feet long. Three other posts had been established, south, north and west of Zero, each at a distance of 10,000 yards. These were known, respectively, as S-10, N-10 and W-10. Here [at base camp] the shelters were much more elaborate — wooden structures, their walls reinforced by cement, buried under a massive layer of earth. S-10 was the control center. Here Professor Oppenheimer, as scientific commander-in-chief, and his field commander, Professor Bainbridge, issued orders and synchronized the activities of the other sites.
Brig. Gen. Leslie Groves: There was an air of excitement at the camp that I did not like, for this was a time when calm deliberation was most essential. Many of Oppenheimer's advisers at the base camp were urging that the test be postponed for at least 24 hours. I felt that no sound decision could ever be reached amidst such confusion, so I took Oppenheimer into an office that had been set up for him in the base camp, where we could discuss matters quietly and calmly.
Edward Teller, theoretical physicist, Los Alamos Lab: Rain — in the desert in July!
Brig. Gen. Leslie Groves: I had become a bit annoyed with Fermi when he suddenly offered to take wagers from his fellow scientists on whether or not the bomb would ignite the atmosphere, and if so, whether it would merely destroy New Mexico or destroy the world. He had also said that after all it wouldn't make any difference whether the bomb went off or not because it would still have been a well worthwhile scientific experiment. For if it did fail to go off, we would have proved that an atomic explosion was not possible. Afterward, I realized that his talk had served to smooth down the frayed nerves and ease the tension of the people at the base camp, and I have always thought that this was his conscious purpose. Certainly, he himself showed no signs of tension that I could see.
Kenneth T. Bainbridge: The first possible time for the detonation of the real bomb had been set for 2 a.m. July 16, and the Arming Party was scheduled to arrive at Point Zero — the tower supporting the bomb — before 11 p.m. July 15. At that hour, Don Hornig would connect the cables to the bomb and detach the detonating unit used in rehearsals.
Brig. Gen. Leslie Groves: Oppenheimer and I agreed to meet again at 1 a.m., and to review the situation then. I urged Oppenheimer to go to bed and to get some sleep, or at least to take a rest, and I set the example by doing so myself. Oppenheimer did not accept my advice and remained awake — I imagine constantly worrying.
Boyce McDaniel, physicist, Los Alamos Lab: When I heard of the delay, I went back to the barracks to try to catch a little nap. That was a fruitless endeavor. To sleep during the excitement was impossible. I finally arose and went outside to check on the weather. It was still drizzly and overcast. I could hear one of the observation planes above the clouds trying to locate the site.
Brig. Gen. Thomas F. Farrell, chief of field operations, Manhattan Project: For some hectic two hours preceding the blast, General Groves stayed with the Director, walking with him and steadying his tense excitement. Every time the director would be about to explode because of some untoward happening, General Groves would take him off and walk with him in the rain, counseling with him and reassuring him that everything would be all right.
Brig. Gen. Leslie Groves: About 1 a.m., Oppenheimer and I went over the situation again, and decided to leave the base camp, which was 10 miles from the bomb, and go up to the control dugout, which was about five miles away.
Brig. Gen. Thomas F. Farrell: The scene inside the shelter was dramatic beyond words. In and around the shelter were some 20-odd people concerned with last-minute arrangements prior to firing the shot. The shelter was cluttered with a great variety of instruments and radios.
Kenneth T. Bainbridge: When the time came to go to Point Zero, I drove [Manhattan Project group leader] Joe McKibben and Kistiakowsky in my car; I had selected them to be in the Arming Party. On the way in, I stopped at S-10 and locked the main sequence timing switches. Pocketing the key I returned to the car and continued to Point Zero.
Brig. Gen. Leslie Groves: While the weather did not improve appreciably, neither did it worsen. It was cloudy with light rain and high humidity; very few stars were visible. Every five or 10 minutes, Oppenheimer and I would leave the dugout and go outside and discuss the weather. I was devoting myself during this period to shielding Oppenheimer from the excitement swirling about us, so that he could consider the situation as calmly as possible, for the decisions to be taken had to be governed largely by his appraisal of the technical factors involved.
Berlyn Brixner, optical engineer, Manhattan Project: By 3:00 a.m. we were at our camera stations preparing to photograph the explosion.
Brig. Gen. Leslie Groves: As the hour approached, we had to postpone the test — first for an hour and then later for 30 minutes more — so that the explosion was actually three- and one-half hours behind the original schedule.
Edward Teller: The night seemed long and became even longer when the test was postponed.
Brig. Gen. Leslie Groves: I was extremely anxious to have the test carried off on schedule. Every day's delay in the test might well mean the delay of a day in ending the war.
Kenneth T. Bainbridge: Finally, just before 4:45 a.m., [Chief Meteorologist Jack] Hubbard gave me a complete weather report and a prediction that at 5:30 a.m. the weather at Point Zero would be possible but not ideal. I called Oppenheimer and General Farrell to get their agreement that 5:30 a.m. would be T = 0.
Rudolf Peierls, physicist, British delegation to the Manhattan Project: Finally, the news came through that the test would proceed.
Berlyn Brixner: By 5:00 the weather was clearing, and shortly thereafter the countdown started.
Otto R. Frisch: Now it would be only minutes before the explosion took place.
Brig. Gen. Leslie Groves: Once the decision was made to go ahead, no additional orders were needed. At 30 minutes before the zero hour, the five men who had been guarding the bomb to make certain that no one tampered with it left their point of observation at the foot of the tower.
Kenneth T. Bainbridge: After turning on the lights, I returned to my car and drove to S-10 arriving about 5:00 a.m. I unlocked the master switches and McKibben started the timing sequence at -20 minutes, 5:09:45 a.m. At -45 seconds a more precise automatic timer took over. At the final seconds another circuit sent out electronically-timed signals for the still more precise pulses needed by many special instruments.
Brig. Gen. Leslie Groves: Leaving Oppenheimer at the dugout, I returned to the base camp.
William L. Laurence: At our observation post on Compania Hill the atmosphere had grown tenser as the zero hour approached. We had spent the first part of our stay eating an early morning picnic breakfast that we had taken along with us. It had grown cold in the desert, and many of us, lightly clad, shivered. We knew there were two specially equipped B-29 Superfortresses high overhead to make observations and recordings in the upper atmosphere, but we could neither see nor hear them.
Brig. Gen. Leslie Groves: Our preparations were simple. Everyone was told to lie face down on the ground, with his feet toward the blast, to close his eyes and to cover his eyes with his hands as the countdown approached zero. As soon as they became aware of the flash they could turn over and sit or stand up, covering their eyes with the smoked glass with which each had been supplied.
Rudolf Peierls: We had been given pieces of dark glass through which to look at the spectacle.Boyce McDaniel: Finally at t-minus-10 minutes, all of us at the base site crouched on the ground behind an earthen barricade watching the light glowing on top of the tower.
Otto R. Frisch: The very first trace of dawn was in the sky.
Brig. Gen. Thomas F. Farrell: As the time interval grew smaller and changed from minutes to seconds, the tension increased by leaps and bounds. We were reaching into the unknown and we did not know what might come of it.
Joseph L. McKibben, group leader, Manhattan Project: Sam Allison was the announcer on the radio and gave the countdown. He had a wonderfully senatorial voice. When I turned on the automatic timer at minus 45 seconds, a bell chimed every second to assist in the countdown.
Berlyn Brixner: I removed the waterproof covers from the Mitchell and other cameras on the roof of my bunker, sat down behind the Mitchell and listened on the intercom to the countdown from the timing station at S-10. I shivered partly from thoughts about the expected explosion and partly from the wet cold desert air. Then, at minus 30 seconds the cameras began to run.
Brig. Gen. Leslie Groves: The quiet grew more intense. I, myself, was on the ground between Bush and Conant.
Val L. Fitch, technician, Special Engineer Detachment, Los Alamos: About half a minute before the scheduled moment of detonation my boss, Ernest Titterton, a member of the British Mission to Los Alamos, suggested that since there was nothing more for me to do I might as well go outside the bunker to get a good view. This I did, taking with me the 2-by-4-inch piece of nearly opaque glass which someone had handed me earlier.
Edward Teller: We all were lying on the ground, supposedly with our backs turned to the explosion. But I had decided to disobey that instruction and instead looked straight at the bomb. I was wearing the welder's glasses that we had been given so that the light from the bomb would not damage our eyes. But because I wanted to face the explosion, I had decided to add some extra protection. I put on dark glasses under the welder's glasses, rubbed some ointment on my face to prevent sunburn from the radiation, and pulled on thick gloves to press the welding glasses to my face to prevent light from entering at the sides.
Boyce McDaniel: I remember thinking, 'This is a very dramatic moment. I must concentrate on it so that I can remember it.' I looked around me at the leaders of the program and at my friends. I remember especially I. I. Rabi, Fermi and Bacher, each staring intently into the darkness.
William L. Laurence: Suddenly, at 5:29:50, as we stood huddled around our radio, we heard a voice ringing through the darkness, sounding as though it had come from above the clouds: 'Zero minus 10 seconds!' A green flare flashed out through the clouds, descended slowly, opened, grew dim and vanished into the darkness.
Otto R. Frisch: I sat on the ground in case the explosion blew me over, plugged my ears with my fingers, and looked in the direction away from the explosion as I listened to the end of the count.
Edward Teller: We all listened anxiously as the broadcast of the final countdown started; but, for whatever reason, the transmission ended at minus five seconds.
Brig. Gen. Thomas F. Farrell: Dr. Oppenheimer, on whom had rested a very heavy burden, grew tenser as the last seconds ticked off. He scarcely breathed.
Brig. Gen. Leslie Groves: As I lay there, in the final seconds, I thought only of what I would do if, when the countdown got to zero, nothing happened.
Kenneth T. Bainbridge: My personal nightmare was knowing that if the bomb didn't go off or hang-fired, I, as head of the test, would have to go to the tower first and seek to find out what had gone wrong.
Edward Teller: For the last five seconds, we all lay there, quietly waiting for what seemed an eternity.
Otto R. Frisch: . . . Five . . .
J. Robert Oppenheimer: Years of hard and loyal work culminated on July 16, 1945.
Otto R. Frisch: . . . Four . . .
George B. Kistiakowsky, Director, X Division (Explosives), Los Alamos Lab: The Trinity test was the climax of our work.
Otto R. Frisch: . . . three . . .
William L. Laurence: Silence reigned over the desert.
Otto R. Frisch: . . . two . . .
Rudolf Peierls: The big moment came.
Brig. Gen. Thomas F. Farrell: Dr. Oppenheimer held on to a post to steady himself. For the last few seconds, he stared directly ahead.
Maj. Gen. Leslie Groves: The blast came promptly with the zero count on July 16, 1945.
Kenneth T. Bainbridge: The bomb detonated at 5:29:45 a.m.Brig. Gen. Thomas F. Farrell: In that brief instant in the remote New Mexico desert the tremendous effort of the brains and brawn of all these people came suddenly and startlingly to the fullest fruition.
Robert Christy, theoretical physicist, Los Alamos Lab: Oh, it was a dramatic thing!
Val L. Fitch: It took about 30 millionths of a second for the flash of light from the explosion to reach us outside the bunker at south 10,000.
William L. Laurence: There rose from the bowels of the earth a light not of this world, the light of many suns in one.
Joseph O. Hirschfelder, physicist, Los Alamos Lab: All of a sudden, the night turned into day.
Maj. Gen. Leslie Groves: My first impression was one of tremendous light.
Warren Nyer, physicist, Los Alamos Lab: The most brilliant flash.
Otto R. Frisch: Without a sound, the sun was shining — or so it looked. The sand hills at the edge of the desert were shimmering in a very bright light, almost colorless and shapeless. This light did not seem to change for a couple of seconds and then began to dim.
Emilio Segrè, physicist, Los Alamos Lab: In fact, in a very small fraction of a second, that light, at our distance from the explosion, could give a worse sunburn than exposure for a whole day on a sunny seashore. The thought passed my mind that maybe the atmosphere was catching fire, causing the end of the world, although I knew that that possibility had been carefully considered and ruled out.
Rudolf Peierls: We had known what to expect, but no amount of imagination could have given us a taste of the real thing.
Richard P. Feynman, physicist, Los Alamos Lab: This tremendous flash, so bright that I duck.
Joan Hinton, physicist, Los Alamos Lab: It was like being at the bottom of an ocean of light. We were bathed in it from all directions.
Marvin H. Wilkening, physicist, Los Alamos Lab: It was like being close to an old-fashioned photo flashbulb. If you were close enough, you could feel warmth because of the intense light, and the light from the explosion scattering from the mountains and the clouds was intense enough to feel.Kenneth T. Bainbridge: I felt the heat on the back of my neck, disturbingly warm.
Hugh T. Richards, physicist, Los Alamos Lab: Although facing away from ground zero, it felt like someone had slapped my face.
George B. Kistiakowsky: I am sure that at the end of the world — in the last millisecond of the earth's existence — the last man will see what we have just seen.Joan Hinton: The light withdrew into the bomb as if the bomb sucked it up.
Otto R. Frisch: That object on the horizon, which looked like a small sun, was still too bright to look at. I kept blinking and trying to take looks, and after another 10 seconds or so it had grown and dimmed into something more like a huge oil fire, with a structure that made it look a bit like a strawberry. It was slowly rising into the sky from the ground, with which it remained connected by a lengthening grey stem of swirling dust; incongruously, I thought of a red-hot elephant standing balanced on its trunk.
Brig. Gen. Thomas F. Farrell: Oppenheimer's face relaxed into an expression of tremendous relief.
William L. Laurence: I stood next to Professor Chadwick when the great moment for the neutron arrived. Never before in history had any man lived to see his own discovery materialize itself with such telling effect on the destiny of man, for the immediate present and all the generations to come. The infinitesimal neutron, to which the world paid little attention when its discovery was first announced, had cast its shadow over the entire earth and its inhabitants. He grunted, leaped lightly into the air, and was still again.
Maj. Gen. Leslie Groves: As Bush, Conant and I sat on the ground looking at this phenomenon, the first reactions of the three of us were expressed in a silent exchange of handclasps. We all arose so that by the time the shock wave arrived we were standing.
Val L. Fitch: It took the blast wave about 30 seconds. There was the initial loud report, the sharp gust of wind, and then the long period of reverberation as the sound waves echoed off the nearby mountains and came back to us.
William L. Laurence: Out of the great silence came a mighty thunder.
Edward Teller: Bill Laurence jumped and asked, 'What was that?' It was, of course, the sound of the explosion. The sound waves had needed a couple of minutes to arrive at our spot 20 miles away.
Otto R. Frisch: The bang came minutes later, quite loud though I had plugged my ears, and followed by a long rumble like heavy traffic very far away. I can still hear it.
Robert R. Wilson, physicist, Los Alamos Lab: The memory I do have is when I took the dark glasses away, of seeing all the colors around and the sky lit up by the radiation — it was purple, kind of an aurora borealis light, and this thing like a big balloon expanding and going up. But the scale. There was this tremendous desert with the mountains nearby, but it seemed to make the mountains look small.
William L. Laurence: For a fleeting instant the color was unearthly green, such as one sees only in the corona of the sun during a total eclipse. It was as though the earth had opened and the skies had split.
Joseph O. Hirschfelder: The fireball gradually turned from white to yellow to red as it grew in size and climbed in the sky; after about five seconds the darkness returned but with the sky and the air filled with a purple glow, just as though we were surrounded by an aurora borealis. For a matter of minutes we could follow the clouds containing radioactivity, which continued to glow with stria of this ethereal purple.Robert Christy: It was awe-inspiring. It just grew bigger and bigger, and it turned purple.
Joan Hinton: It turned purple and blue and went up and up and up. We were still talking in whispers when the cloud reached the level where it was struck by the rising sunlight so it cleared out the natural clouds. We saw a cloud that was dark and red at the bottom and daylight on the top. Then suddenly the sound reached us. It was very sharp and rumbled and all the mountains were rumbling with it. We suddenly started talking out loud and felt exposed to the whole world.
Joseph O. Hirschfelder: There weren't any agnostics watching this stupendous demonstration. Each, in his own way, knew that God had spoken.
Maj. Gen. Leslie Groves: Unknown to me and I think to everyone, Fermi was prepared to measure the blast by a very simple device.Herbert L. Anderson: Fermi later related that he did not hear the sound of the explosion, so great was his concentration on the simple experiment he was performing: he dropped small pieces of paper and watched them fall.
Maj. Gen. Leslie Groves: There was no ground wind, so that when the shock wave hit it knocked some of the scraps several feet away.
Herbert L. Anderson: When the blast of the explosion hit them, it dragged them along, and they fell to the ground at some distance. He measured this distance and used the result to calculate the power of the explosion.
Maj. Gen. Leslie Groves: He was remarkably close to the calculations that were made later from the data accumulated by our complicated instruments.
Joseph O. Hirschfelder: Fermi's paper strip showed that, in agreement with the expectation of the Theoretical Division, the energy yield of the atom bomb was equivalent to 20,000 tons of TNT. Professor Rabi, a frequent visitor to Los Alamos, won the pool on what the energy yield would be — he bet on the calculations of the Theoretical Division! None of us dared to make such a guess because we knew all of the guesstimates that went into the calculations and the tremendous precision which was required in the fabrication of the bomb.
Berlyn Brixner: The bomb had exceeded our greatest expectations.
Kenneth T. Bainbridge: I had a feeling of exhilaration that the 'gadget' had gone off properly followed by one of deep relief. I got up from the ground to congratulate Oppenheimer and others on the success of the implosion method. I finished by saying to Robert, 'Now we are all sons of bitches.' Years later he recalled my words and wrote me, 'We do not have to explain them to anyone.' I think that I will always respect his statement, although there have been some imaginative people who somehow can't or won't put the statement in context and get the whole interpretation. Oppenheimer told my younger daughter in 1966 that it was the best thing anyone said after the test.
Brig. Gen. Thomas F. Farrell: All seemed to feel that they had been present at the birth of a new age.
J. Robert Oppenheimer: We knew the world would not be the same. A few people laughed, a few people cried. Most people were silent. I remembered the line from the Hindu scripture, the Bhagavad-Gita; Vishnu [a principal Hindu deity] is trying to persuade the prince that he should do his duty, and to impress him, takes on his multi-armed form and says, 'Now I have become death, the destroyer of the worlds.' I suppose we all thought that, one way or another.
George B. Kistiakowsky: I slapped Oppenheimer on the back and said, 'Oppie, you owe me 10 dollars,' because in that desperate period when I was being accused as the world's worst villain, who would be forever damned by the physicists for failing the project, I said to Oppenheimer, 'I bet you my whole month's salary against 10 dollars that implosion will work.' I still have that bill, with Oppenheimer's signature.
Maj. Gen. Leslie Groves: Shortly after the explosion, Farrell and Oppenheimer returned by Jeep to the base camp, with a number of the others who had been at the dugout. When Farrell came up to me, his first words were, 'The war is over.' My reply was, 'Yes, after we drop two bombs on Japan.' I congratulated Oppenheimer quietly with 'I am proud of all of you,' and he replied with a simple 'thank you.' We were both, I am sure, already thinking of the future.
Norris Bradbury, physicist, Los Alamos Lab: Some people claim to have wondered at the time about the future of mankind. I didn't. We were at war, and the damned thing worked.
Hashtags
Try Our AI Features
Explore what Daily8 AI can do for you:
Comments
No comments yet...
Related Articles
Scientific American
14 hours ago
- Scientific American
—Have Weathered Attacks Before and Won
Worth recalling in this anniversary year, one of Scientific American 's proudest moments came in a past era of attacks on science. The lesson—that speaking out for science is worth the criticism it brings—is surely worth recalling today. The year was 1950, and the 'red scare' was fully underway, alongside a nascent arms race between the U.S. and the Soviet Union. The Soviet demonstration of an atomic bomb in 1949 had galvanized calls for a bigger bomb, a hydrogen bomb, in the U.S., sparking the paranoia today best remembered for claiming the career of Manhattan Project chief J. Robert Oppenheimer. But a war on scientists not toeing the political line was in full swing then, and Scientific American was in the thick of it. On March 20, 1950, a U.S. Atomic Energy Commission agent named Alvin F. Ryan seized and burned 3,000 copies of the forthcoming April issue of Scientific American, which the commission claimed held atomic secrets. Ryan also supervised the melting of four printing plates holding a feature story in the issue, ' The Hydrogen Bomb: II,' that contained the supposedly objectionable information within one of its columns. On supporting science journalism If you're enjoying this article, consider supporting our award-winning journalism by subscribing. By purchasing a subscription you are helping to ensure the future of impactful stories about the discoveries and ideas shaping our world today. 'Strict compliance with the commission's policies would mean that we could not teach physics,' said an outraged Gerard Piel, then publisher of Scientific American, in the April 1, 1950, report of the seizure on the front page of the New York Times. He threatened to take further censorship to the Supreme Court. Piel had relaunched Scientific American in 1948, with a focus on bringing the views of scientists like Bethe, thoughtfully edited, to the public. This scientists-as-writers approach came about by happenstance, Scientific American editor Gary Stix found while researching the history of the magazine. Piel found it was cheaper to pay scientists to write copy and then rewrite it, rather than hire magazine writers. The approach proved so successful, with the public then clamoring to hear the news straight from scientists, that the magazine had 100,000 readers and 133 pages of advertising by 1950. Berthe's article was just one of four published by the magazine on the H-bomb, which President Harry Truman had decided to pursue in January of 1950. Much debate, among scientists and the public, followed over whether such a weapon would make the U.S. safer or endanger humanity. The Nobel Prize–winning discoverer of how fusion in stars baked elements, Bethe, was in the latter camp. His article went through the physics of fusion and pled to 'save humanity from this ultimate disaster' by reconsidering the president's H-bomb decision, or at least pledging no first use of the weapons in warfare, a commitment still unmade, and widely debated in nuclear circles. 'Piel had made his publication an important forum for critical analysis of U.S. science policy during the coldest years of the cold war,' in exposing the Atomic Energy Commission's attack on press freedom, wrote history professor Alfred W. McCoy. To satisfy the AEC, Bethe made four 'ritual' cuts to the final version of the article and published it. Even so, U.S. security officials continued to pressure scientists and the press over the course of the red scare. The FBI searched Bethe's luggage after a European trip in 1951. ' Scientific American runs to the sort of stuff which the Soviets would like to see in a popular science journal,' claimed an AEC memorandum that same year. The U.S. tested its first H-bomb a year later, and stripped Oppenheimer of his security clearance, in 1954, in a power play now seen as a political vendetta. The arms race played out through the 1960s, building stockpiles of tens of thousands of nuclear missiles on both sides until its folly, and frightening close brushes with Armageddon, lowered those numbers in an era of détente, the sort of world that Bethe had called for in his article. All the while, Scientific American stood for the importance of scientists speaking out, and providing the public, even amid the unhinged persecution of the red scare, choices for a better world. Throughout science, the lesson stood, among eminent voices ranging from Linus Pauling to Carl Sagan. Scientists led calls for test ban treaties and disarmament; they warned of nuclear winter throughout the cold war. In the magazine, former CIA official Herbert Scoville Jr. warned of the danger of a new generation of U.S. submarines as 'first-strike' weapons, that familiar warning, in 1972. Bethe himself kept speaking out, against the Reagan administration's 'Star Wars' missile defense plan as unworkable, costly and destabilizing in the 1980s (views heard today on its current 'Golden Dome' revival). Accepting the Einstein Peace Prize in 1992, he acknowledged that while scientists had not ended the cold war, they had succeeded in 'planting the idea there was an alternative to the arms race.' Their example, and that idea, remains as important as ever, especially with U.S. science facing severe cuts, and nuclear weapons a renewed flashpoint in geopolitics. Piel's statement released after the 1950 seizure—'there is a very large body of technical information in the public domain which is essential to adequate public participation in the development of national policy and on which the American people are entitled to be informed'—still stands true today at this magazine. We will continue to speak out and provide scientists with a place to make their voices heard.
Atlantic
16 hours ago
- Atlantic
How American Power Should Be Deployed
How should American power be deployed in the world? Since the Cold War, America's role as a global leader has been up for debate. Host Garry Kasparov and former U.S. Ambassador to the United Nations John Bolton dissect the state of the neoconservative geopolitical worldview. They consider what the latest iteration of the 'America First' foreign-policy rationale signals for democracy worldwide and analyze what it means that the new American right sometimes sounds like the old American left. The following is a transcript of the episode: Garry Kasparov: I would like to begin this episode with two quotes from American presidents. You might try to guess which presidents they are from. [ Music ] Kasparov: The first: 'Good leaders do not threaten to quit if things go wrong. They expect cooperation, of course, and they expect everyone to do his share, but they do not stop to measure sacrifices with a teaspoon while the fight is on. We cannot lead the forces of freedom from behind.' And the second presidential quote, 'We must begin by acknowledging the hard truth: We will not eradicate violent conflict in our lifetimes. There will be times when nations—acting individually or in concert—will find the use of force not only necessary but morally justified.' The first, with the memorable line about not measuring sacrifice with a teaspoon while the fight is on, was spoken by my namesake, President Harry S Truman, in a 1951 address in Philadelphia at the dedication of the Chapel of the Four Chaplains. He had brought American troops into combat in Korea: a controversial decision to stand up to Communist aggression, only six years after the end of World War II. The second presidential quote, about nations being morally justified to use force, is more surprising. It was spoken on stage in Oslo, Norway, in 2009, during Barack Obama's Nobel Peace Prize acceptance speech. Donald Trump's 'America First' isolationist cry echoes the America Firsters of the 1930s who wanted to stay out of what they called 'Europe's war,' even as late as 1941. Refusing to defend Ukraine against Russia's invasion has many parallels to the U.S. staying out of World War II until Pearl Harbor. Harry Truman learned the lesson. As he said in Philadelphia, you fight small conflicts to avoid big wars. Evidence of the good that can come from military intervention starts with South Korea, a thriving democratic ally, and North Korea, a prison-camp nation. From The Atlantic, this is Autocracy in America. I'm Garry Kasparov. [ Music ] Kasparov: Terms like intervention and regime change are practically dirty words in U.S. politics, since the disastrous occupation of Iraq. But when aggressive dictatorships—like the Soviet Union in the past, or Vladimir Putin's Russia today—go on the march, words alone do not stop them. My guest today, Ambassador John Bolton, would agree with both of those presidential quotes, although, like me, he did not find much else to agree on with Obama during his eight years in office! Bolton has strong opinions on American foreign policy and the use of force. At a time when the new American right sounds like the old American left, his thoughts are critical. [ Music ] Kasparov: John Bolton, you have had many distinctions and titles in your career, including ambassador to the United Nations, national security adviser, and many others. I will add one more. You are the only guest to join us in both seasons of this show. Thank you for doing it. John Bolton: Glad to be with you. Kasparov: And by the way, I see the chessboard in your office. Do you play chess? Bolton: I do. You know, that was given to me by Nikolai Patrushev, my opposite number— Kasparov: Ooof! (Laughs.) Bolton: —when he was the Russian national security adviser. And it is interestingly made out of Karelian wood from the Finnish territory. So, and it was checked out by the Secret Service before I accepted it. Kasparov: Do you think that the chess rules apply to this, you know, current geopolitics? Or it's more like a game of poker? Bolton: Well, I think I wouldn't argue with you about the rules of chess. I don't think people like Vladimir Putin care about the rules. When people talk about the rules-based international order, the prime malefactors didn't get the memo. They don't believe in it, and they don't act like it's there. And for us to believe that it's there, I think, handicaps our ability to defend ourselves. Kasparov: I want to talk with you about how American power should be deployed in the world, in service of democracies and against autocracies. But I want to start with what seems to be the ever-changing meaning of 'America First' as a foreign-policy rationale. How do you interpret that term based on what you're seeing in the second Trump administration? Bolton: Well, I think Trump himself has basically given us the answer on 'America First,' 'Make America great again'—whatever his slogans are. They are exactly what he says they are at any given moment. They don't reflect an overarching philosophy. They don't reflect, in this case, a clear national-security grand strategy. Trump doesn't even really do policy as we understand it. I don't think to this day that he really appreciates that the words America first were initially used in the run-up to World War II to be the slogan of the isolationists, those who did not want to be drawn into the European war. He doesn't see, he never saw the background of that, or the concerns about anti-Semitism that lurked in that 'America First' movement. And I think from Trump's point of view—because to him everything is transactional—it means he just makes the best deals in the world, and he doesn't necessarily distinguish among the terms of the deals he's making. It's the fact of making a deal that shows who's in charge. Kasparov: You said, and we all suspected, that Trump was not aware about the true meaning of 'America First,' because he's not a—no matter what he says—a good scholar of history. But assuming he knew that 'America First' meant isolationism back then in 1939, 1940, and a clear distinction of anti-Semitism, would he care? Bolton: I don't think he would care. And I think he views truth in a very relative way. People say Trump lies a lot. I actually don't think that's an accurate description. I don't think he cares much about what's true and what's not true. He says what he thinks he would like the world to be, and as it benefits him at any given time. And if pressed on that point about anti-Semitism in particular, I think he would just brush it away. Kasparov: So you've written that Trump's decisions are like an archipelago of dots that don't really line up, and that advisers in the first term, you included, would try to string good decisions together. Now, what about the second administration? What is happening now? Bolton: Well, you know, even just about six months in, I think you can see the difference in personnel selections pretty clearly. Certainly in the national-security space. In the first term, he had people who largely shared a Republican philosophy, a Reaganite approach to foreign policy. Obviously there were many disagreements on tactics, on priorities, on a whole variety of things, which is perfectly natural in any administration. And Trump, not knowing much about international affairs, could often buy one argument one day and another argument the next day. But eventually he got frustrated, I think, that his visceral instincts weren't necessarily automatically adopted by his advisers, who were trying to give him the best advice, trying to get to the optimal outcome. So to avoid the problems that he saw in the first term, in the second term, I think, he has consciously looked for people who act as yes-men and yes-women. They don't say, Well, have you considered these alternative options? Have you looked at these facts? He wants people who will listen to what he says and then go out and implement it. Now, in the first term, people said his advisers tried to constrain him, tried to really to make the decisions in his place. And I just think that's wrong. I think I can speak for many others: We were trying to make sure that he made the best decision possible, and giving our advice was part of our function. My title was national security adviser. I don't know what else I'm supposed to do, other than give advice, in that job. But in the second term, he wants not loyalty—I think loyalty is a good word; I think it conveys a valuable commodity—he wants fealty. He wants people who are gonna say Yes, sir, and do it really without thinking, in many cases without trying to improve or suggest modifications. I think that's—ironically, it's gonna be harmful to Trump. It's certainly gonna be harmful to America, but that approach ultimately will hurt Trump too. Kasparov: How so? Bolton: Well, if a president is making decisions in a very narrow focus without understanding the broader implications, the additional risks, the additional opportunities, he's gonna miss a lot of what the rest of the world will see. And then contingencies will arise that he simply won't be prepared for. So that even what was a reasonably good decision can go bad, because you don't take into account the second- and third-order consequences. And I hesitate to say this with Garry here, but in chess you have to think a couple moves ahead. Maybe some people think lots of moves ahead. Trump plays it one move at a time, and that is dangerous. Kasparov: Yeah, it's not a very rosy picture. So it seems that his Cabinet now, and all people who are supposed to give him advice, they are not going to contradict him. Bolton: You know I have to say, contrary to the first term, there haven't been so many leaks out of this White House in the early months. So I don't have confidence we really know how the decision making is going. But to the extent we do, my impression is that while there's a lot of discussion about the optics of how you present a particular decision—the kind of background politics, how it makes Trump look—in terms of strategic thinking by people who understand international affairs, there's not an awful lot of that. And indeed, even in some cases it might seem unusual, people who disagree get excluded. It appears Tulsi Gabbard—who opposed, from all we can tell, the strikes against Iran's nuclear-weapons program—was just cut out of the picture. And I have to say in the short term, I'm delighted by that. It probably contributed to the right decision. But what that means more basically is that Trump made a fundamental mistake appointing her, because you want people who will give their best advice, and it helps the president—should help the president—make a better-informed decision. Kasparov: You mentioned Tulsi Gabbard. What about other advisers? Who do you find the most worrisome? Bolton: Well, I think Secretary of Defense [Pete] Hegseth really is in over his head in this job. I think his comments in public about comments and criticisms that people made about the outcome of the bombing of the Iranian nuclear sites demonstrated that. It's fine to defend the president. That's what Cabinet members should do. If you get tired of defending the president, you should resign. But that's not your only job. Your job is also to explain and justify the conduct that you've ordered on behalf of the president. Not in a partisan way, but in a way that helps the American people understand. Leadership here is in large part education, and that's not what they're doing. They're doing a kind of attack partisan politics. Again, it makes Trump feel good in the short term, but in the longer term, he will not be well served by that kind of approach either. Kasparov: Now a strategic question: our allies in Europe. J. D. Vance went to Munich, the Munich Security Conference, back in February and chastised European democracies for many things—among them being afraid of the far right and suppressing democracies at home. What's your take? Bolton: Well, there are a lot of interesting things in that speech. No. 1, you know, Vance is really on the quasi-isolationist side of the political spectrum. And he, and people like him, have been very critical over the years of the neoconservatives for their constant emphasis on human rights and similar concerns. And yet at Munich, what he gave was a neoconservative speech. Although he was criticizing the Europeans for their democratic failures, I would've felt better if he had included Russia and China as part of his critical analysis. But he was doing exactly what he criticized the neoconservatives for doing. This is, I think, a measure of how really partisan these kinds of approaches are from a domestic American point of view. He's scoring—Vance there is scoring points against the neoconservatives, against liberal internationalists, against a variety of people that I'm not part of. So I didn't take it personally. But it was carrying on a domestic-U.S. political debate in an international forum. I think that Trump himself doesn't understand alliances. I'm not sure Vance understands them any better. In Trump's case, he looks at NATO, for example, and he sees it as the United States defending Europe: We don't get anything out of it, and they won't pay. Well, if I thought NATO worked that way, I probably wouldn't be very enthusiastic about it either. But the whole point of a collective-defense alliance is that the security of all the members is enhanced when they live up to their obligations. And I think NATO remains the most effective politico-military alliance in human history. There are members who are not pulling their fair share. That's right. I think Trump was right to criticize that. What's not right is to break the alliance up over it. And I think we are—notwithstanding the recent NATO summit where everybody smiled and seemed to be happy—I don't think we're past the danger point of Trump potentially withdrawing the U.S. from NATO in less happy times. Kasparov: Oh, that's interesting. So can he withdraw from NATO unilaterally without a vote in the Senate, Congressional approval, whatever—or is it just totally in the hands of the president? Bolton: It's my very firm view that the Constitution does entrust that authority solely to the president. In the case of NATO, ironically, Secretary of State Marco Rubio and some others passed legislation a few years ago that said the president could not withdraw from NATO without the consent of the Senate. I think that provision is unconstitutional. I don't think you can limit the president's authority. So if Trump decided to pull out, and he issued an executive order doing that, that might be challengeable in litigation, but it would take years to resolve. And in effect, Trump would have withdrawn by the time the case was decided by the Supreme Court. Kasparov: Do you think it's realistic, that he will go that far? Bolton: You know, I think he, as I say, he doesn't understand the alliance viscerally. He doesn't like it. He has said, and his advisers have said, things like, Well, we'll only defend NATO members that are meeting what used to be the 2 percent threshold: 2 percent of GDP spent on defense, now 3 and a half percent, 5 with infrastructure. Well, that's a statement that the NATO alliance is like a piece of Swiss cheese. You can't defend this country and then not defend the country next to it because it's not at 2 percent; it's just not viable militarily. But that kind of thinking has not left Trump's mind, and has not left the minds of his advisers. So I remain very worried, notwithstanding this recent NATO summit where things seem to go well. This is deep within Trump that he distrusts the alliance, thinks it's part of America getting a raw deal. Kasparov: But I think that all countries that might be in danger, countries that border Russia or are just in the vicinity of potential Russian aggression, they already are almost at 5 percent. They spend a bigger percentage of GDP than the United States on their defense. Does it mean that America will defend them? Bolton: Well, we certainly should, but I think this is an important question about Trump the man faced with a crisis situation like that. Let's say Russia invades the Baltics: Estonia, Latvia, and Lithuania. Not impossible; certainly something the Baltics fear very much. Now, we did not have any crisis nearly that dangerous in the first term. COVID was a crisis, but it was a health crisis played out over a long period of time. So what would Trump do if the Baltics were attacked by Russia? I don't know the answer to that question. And it's legitimate for the Eastern European countries in NATO in particular to be worried about, because Trump does not like decisions where he can't reverse himself the next day. And obviously a decision to comply with Article V and defend countries invaded by Russia would be a decision that would be irrevocable for a long time until the military struggle played itself out. Kasparov: So what do you expect to happen in Ukraine? Again, Ukraine is fighting this war, and many of us believe it's shielding the free world against Russian aggression. And Ukrainians and many Europeans, especially neighboring countries, they are disappointed, I would probably say shocked, by the Trump administration's policy in the region. Can Ukraine survive on its own, or basically can Europe provide enough for Ukraine? And how long will America take this neutral stand? Bolton: Well, I'm afraid the answer is the rest of Trump's presidency. I think it's gonna remain undecided. My guess is in the near term—which may be the remaining three and a half years of the administration—Trump is not gonna go back and make a major effort to seek a diplomatic solution. I think he was burned by the failure of Russia to show any conciliatory impulses at all when he tried in the last few months. And I think he sees it as a failure to live up to his campaign boast that he could solve the problem in 24 hours, which of course was never realistic. So the real issue is: Will he allow the continuation of U.S. military assistance at approximately the same levels—weapons, ammunition, and, to my mind, most important of all, military intelligence that's so critical to the Ukrainians on the battlefield? And to the question you've raised, can the Europeans make up the difference? I don't think they can on the intelligence. I just don't think they have the capability. It could be they can make it up in hardware. I would hope they could, but it just won't be the same if Trump really does cut off the aid. Kasparov: Now, about another crisis or another war, it's the Middle East. How do you rate Trump's actions there—attacking Iran, then offering the olive branch? And again, some say he did it in a desperate search for the Nobel Peace Prize, Trump's policy vis-à-vis Israel-Palestinians. Bolton: Right. Well, I think he's not gonna get the Nobel Peace Prize for bringing peace to Ukraine, that's for sure. So he's looking for another opportunity. I find myself to a certain extent satisfied, but to a certain extent frustrated. I think it was the right thing to do to order American military attacks on some of the key Iranian nuclear-weapons facilities. There's been a huge and kind of intellectually arid debate about exactly how much damage was done by those attacks, which we don't know because we were not close enough to get a full assessment. But I think Trump cut off U.S. military action too soon. I don't think that there will ever be peace and stability in the Middle East while the regime of the ayatollahs remains in power. I'm not saying that requires extensive U.S. involvement. It certainly doesn't require boots on the ground. It could involve assistance to the Iranian people. [ Music ] Bolton: I think the question is: Will they have the courage to try to take advantage of the splits and tensions within the regime that I think are pretty obvious across the world now, and see if this is not the moment to rid themselves of the ayatollahs. Kasparov: We'll be right back. [ Break ] Kasparov: Let's move from the world of practicalities into the world of idealism. What could be an ideal world if we could have our wishes granted? So, how should American power be deployed in service of democracy? So what are the tools to use, and where to use them? Exporting democracy, military interventions, regime change? Bolton: Well, I think where American interests are at stake, there are a number of things we could do. I think regime change doesn't obviously have to involve American boots on the ground. There are all kinds of ways that regime change can take place. We tried that in the case of Venezuela in 2018 and 2019, that would've allowed the Venezuelan people to take control away from the [Nicolás] Maduro, really the Chavez-Maduro dictatorship. But we would've, at the same time, pushed the Russians, the Cubans, the Chinese, the Iranians out of positions in Venezuela, very advantageous to them. It didn't work, but it was worth the effort. If we had succeeded, I would've said basically to the people of Venezuela, Congratulations. It now belongs to you. You figure out what you're gonna do with it. I have never been a nation builder, in the sense that some people have been, but I don't shy away from regime change. In the case of Iraq, which is the case that people point to again and again, I give full credit to the people who tried to make the coalition provisional authority in Iraq work. I think they did it out of the best of motivations. But it's not what I would've done. In my perfect world, I would've given the Iraqi leaders—some in exile, some who had been in the country—a copy of the Federalist Papers and said, Good luck. Call us if you have any questions. We'll hold the ring around you. We'll protect you from Iranian and other external influences, but you need to do this yourself. And I think that's really how you nation build. You don't enhance people's political maturity by making decisions for them. Even if you can make better decisions than they can, you enhance political maturity by saying, You're gonna make the decisions, and you're gonna learn by your mistakes. It's not guaranteed for success, but I think that's a more solid way of nation building than for Americans to try and do it for them. Kasparov: But let me press on this issue. Because you mentioned Venezuela. I can add Belarus. In these countries, we clearly saw the opposition winning elections. Not hearsay. Winning elections, having physical proof of receiving, in both cases, 70 percent of votes. And both dictators—[Alexander] Lukashenko and Maduro—they stayed in power. They didn't care. They used force. Lukashenko, we understand he's too close to Russia. Putin was there. The opposition stood no chance. But Venezuela is just next door. Recently we had these elections, and Maduro basically ignored it. He made the deal with the [Joe] Biden administration, so some kind of relief of sanctions, but promising free and fair elections. So he reneged on his promise. Should America intervene? Bolton: Well, look—back in 2018 and 2019, I think we were at the point where we should have been doing more. But you know, we didn't have many capabilities in the Western hemisphere, thanks to the Obama administration, that where we could have had opportunities through our intelligence community and others to help Juan Guaidó, the legitimate president of Venezuela. The days are long gone by when we really could have done very much, and I feel we didn't enforce the sanctions as strictly as we could have. We made a lot of mistakes there. The Biden administration didn't even try that. They thought they could make a deal with Maduro. It was a total mistake. I don't see how anybody could believe he would honor any commitment he made. I want to come back to Belarus, though, because I do think that that was a situation where it was very much in our interest to see if there was any way at all to persuade Lukashenko to pull away from Russia. So I went to Minsk in August of 2019, about two weeks before I resigned—I was the first senior American to visit Belarus in a long, long time—just to see the guy, and see if there were some hooks we could put in to bring him away, for his own safety's sake, but ultimately leading to popular government. I, as I say, I resigned two weeks later, so I didn't carry through on it. But it was a case to me that suggested we could have some influence there, and maybe, as in the case of Poland with solidarity, maybe there were ways to make that work. But we never tried, because Trump didn't really care about Belarus. Trump asked in his first term, Is Finland still part of Russia? So to him, Belarus, Ukraine: They all look Russian to him. And it's hard to get him to focus on things. Kasparov: We've talked now at length about Trump's view of the world, such as it is. Now I want to talk about the Bolton view. So my experience of growing up in the Soviet Union during the Cold War instilled in me a great deal of clarity about good and evil in the world of geopolitics. But there has been a terrible decline in American values after the Cold War, and a new lack of clarity about the American role in the world. So what has that meant for how you see America's place as the global leader? Bolton: Well, I think we're seeing today play out in the Trump administration and among many people who are supportive of him that this virus of isolationism—which isn't a coherent ideology itself, it's a knee-jerk reaction to the external world—can go through a long period of being irrelevant and then suddenly reappear. And I attribute this in part to a failure in both political parties, ever since the collapse of the Soviet Union, to develop political leaders who thought about what it would take from America to help in the wider world, create conditions of stability that would be beneficial to the U.S. here at home: that would allow our economy to flourish, that would allow our society to flourish. And so people at the time of the collapse of the Soviet Union, some were saying, It's the end of history. Others were saying, you know, We can have a peace dividend; we can cut our defense budgets; globalization will take care of everything; it's the economy, stupid. And we lost the post–World War II and Cold War generations of leaders, who spoke very plainly to the American people—whether it's Harry Truman, Dwight Eisenhower, many, many more—to say, look, safety for America doesn't begin on the Atlantic and Pacific shores. Safety for America is having a broader place in the world, a forward defense posture with allies to guard against aggression and to try and deter aggression. And that means a robust, strong America that sees its economic and political and social issues really involved all over the world. Now, there's a cost to that. There's a defense budget that has to be paid. There are allies that have to be dealt with. There are risks that have to be taken. But to say we don't live in a perfect world, far from it, but the way to protect America is not to put our head in the sand—not to turn away from the rest of the world—but to deal with it in ways that are most favorable to us. And I think one of the things we're seeing today, 35 years after the collapse of the Soviet Union, is: We don't have much in the way of political leadership that can speak to the American people in these terms. The Americans have always risen to the challenge when their leaders are straight with them. And the idea that we can't, we don't need to worry about the rest of the world—it's not a threat, it doesn't concern us, it's not gonna affect us—is deeply uninformed. I don't call it naive. It's almost perverse, and yet that's what we're dealing with. If we could see political leaders emerge, most likely I think in the Republican Party, that can make that case to the American people, we could return to a Reaganite kind of foreign policy that that was successful in the Cold War and could be made applicable to the very different, but no less threatening, challenges we see around the world today. Kasparov: Going back to 1991, 1992. The Soviet Union is gone, and I think Americans expected some benefits from the victory, phenomenal victory in the Cold War. But eight years of [Bill] Clinton presidency brought no security. Prosperity yes, but security no. Because by the time Clinton left the office, al-Qaeda was ready to strike. Something went wrong, terribly wrong, in the '90s. So do you think that if [George H. W.] Bush 41 would've won the elections and stayed in the office, the Republican administration had a plan on how to redefine American leadership in the new world? Bolton: No. I mean, I think there was a lot of uncertainty all around the political spectrum. George H. W. Bush talked about a 'new world order.' Well, it wasn't much order before, and frankly there wasn't much order after. But what he was referring to was the collapse of the Soviet Union. What we didn't see, because we were too optimistic perhaps, was that Russia would return to authoritarianism. We thought, Well, now they've got the chance; everything will be fine. That obviously didn't work out. We didn't see the turmoil in the Arab world. We didn't see the radicalization, the effect of the 1979 revolution in Iran. And we also, in the 1990s, didn't see China, didn't see that it was a threat, that it would be a threat. You know, we heard Deng Xiaoping say to the Chinese, Hide and bide. Hide your capabilities; bide your time. We didn't realize what he was saying. So this illusion that the end of the Cold War meant the end of history—that conflict was no longer a threat to us—led us to make grave mistakes about Russia, about China, about the threat of Islamic terrorism. And we have suffered through all of those and are still suffering through them today. So it was a catastrophic series of mistakes, that there's a lot of blame to spread around here for sure, and [the] Clinton administration bears a full share of it. Whether George H. W. Bush would've done better? I don't know. I think so, because I think he understood the world a lot better than Bill Clinton did. Kasparov: But it still sounds very disturbing that the same people—okay, Clinton replaced Bush, but the apparatus was there, you know, the CIA, Pentagon, the so-called deep state. And the same people, the same agencies, the same institutions that were instrumental in defeating the Soviet Union in the Cold War made such huge blunders. You said—missed Russia, missed China, missed Islamic terrorism, basically missed everything. Every threat that we are dealing with now has been totally missed in the '90s. What was that? It's just a kind of relaxation? We won. Let's go celebrate. You know, let's uncork champagne bottles. Bolton: Look, I think it was escapism, and I think it was the desire to think, Okay, so in the 20th century we've had three world wars. Two of them hot, one of them the Cold War. We're past all that. Now, that's what 'the end of history' means. And, it was a delusion. It was a detour from history. It really was. And we've paid the price. We're still paying the price, and one reason is we're not spending nearly what we should on defense. The 5 percent commitment that NATO made, we're not approaching. The Trump budget for the next fiscal year is only a small nominal increase over the current budget. It's not gonna do nearly enough. We're setting ourselves up for, I think, a very risky future if we don't change that. Kasparov: You just mentioned Trump's budget and its nominal increase in defense, but it's a huge increase in ICE. So do you think it's a bit dangerous? Yes? That this military force has been built in America and the control of the DOJ? And they already demonstrated very little respect for the Constitution. Could it be a potential tool for terror? Bolton: Actually, Trump has come very close to achieving the goal he expressed of closing the border. I mean, he had the border closed at the end of the first term, because deterrence works. If you think you're gonna walk through Mexico and get stopped at the Rio Grande, you're not gonna leave your city or town or village. That's been restored. His—what he wants now is the deportation of the illegals. And I think he's going to have a lot of trouble with that. But the immigration issue is, I think, part of the isolationist temptation that somehow the rest of the world is gonna corrupt us. I think with careful attention and screening of who comes in, we can minimize the risk of terrorists coming in, criminals, agents of foreign governments. Nothing's perfect, but I think we can do a pretty good job of it. I don't think that's what Trump wants to do. He wants the issue of the fight with California, for example. That's why he federalized the California National Guard and sent in the Marines. Ironically, Gavin Newsom, the governor of California, wanted to fight too. It benefited both of them politically. It was just the country that was hurt. Kasparov: So do you think it's a real chance that Trump will do something totally unconstitutional in America to preserve his power, or just to secure the desired outcome of the next elections? Bolton: Well, I think he tried that in 2020, and he failed. The system was stressed, but it held. I think Trump is gonna do—he did a lot of damage in the first term; he will do more damage in the second term. Some of it might be irreparable. I think withdrawing from NATO would be irreparable, for example. But I have confidence in the Constitution and the institutions. This is not the late Roman Republic. We're not—I don't think we're in danger of succumbing. It does require more people to stand up and say, We don't accept the way Trump behaves. I'm disappointed more Republicans in the House and the Senate haven't done that. I don't think this is gonna be easy. But I do think, for example, the courts are holding up pretty well. I think their independence is critical to sustaining the Constitution. And I think as time goes on, Trump's influence will decline. Remember, he's not just a new president now, which he is. He's also a lame-duck president. And as people begin to appreciate that more and more, I think his influence will wane. Kasparov: So, anything to be optimistic about today? Just, you know, give us just some hope that with Trump in the office, with the rise of authoritarianism, with Iranian regimes surviving, and with terrorism not yet being defeated, what's the best-case scenario? Bolton: Well, I think realistically we've been through worse. I mean, it always seems you've got troubles unique to our time. But the U.S. has been through a lot worse than this, including an incredibly violent Civil War. And we came out on top. And I think one reason is that when you level with the American people—and it's gonna take the next president to do it—then we do rise to the occasion. I believe in American exceptionalism. And I think betting against America is always a dangerous thing to do. [ Music ] Bolton: So I think in the near term, we've just gotta grit our teeth, make sure we do the best we can to minimize the damage that Trump will cause, and try and get ready to meet the challenges we're gonna face. The threats from China, from the China-Russia axis, from the nuclear proliferation, the threat of terrorism. There are a lot of threats out there, and it's gonna take a lot of effort. But I believe in the United States. I think we will prevail. Kasparov: John, thank you very much for joining the show. And let's see, you know, if the future brings us more positive than negative news. Thank you. Bolton: I certainly hope so. Thanks for having me. Kasparov: This episode of Autocracy in America was produced by Arlene Arevalo and Natalie Brennan. Our editor is Dave Shaw. Original music and mix by Rob Smierciak. Fact-checking by Ena Alvarado. Special thanks to Polina Kasparova and Mig Greengard. Claudine Ebeid is the executive producer of Atlantic audio. Andrea Valdez is our managing editor. Next time on Autocracy in America: George Friedman: It is a historical norm, that there is a king, that there is a ruler. So authoritarianism historically is far more the norm than liberal democracy. Liberal democracy opened the door to the idea that people with very different beliefs could live together. It is a great experiment, but it's a very difficult experiment. If you believe that the way you should live is a moral imperative, then it is very difficult to have a liberal democracy.
Buzz Feed
a day ago
- Buzz Feed
Trump Announced A $200M White House Ballroom Renovation
President Donald Trump has already spent months trying to remake the White House in his own image. He's gilded the Oval Office. He's paved the Rose Garden. He's added two gargantuan flag poles. He's hung a bunch of new pictures of himself. Now, he is about to embark on his biggest project yet: tearing down the East Wing to build an enormous ballroom that looks eerily similar to the one he uses at Mar-a-Lago, his Florida club. White House press secretary Karoline Leavitt revealed new details Thursday about the $200 million project, which is expected to break ground in September and wrap up in time for Trump to use it before the end of his term. Funding purportedly will be provided by Trump and other unnamed individuals. 'I'll do it and probably have some donors or whatever,' the president said at a signing ceremony Thursday. 'There's never been a president that was good at ballrooms — really good,' he said. The event space is expected to boast a 650-person capacity and blend architecturally into the rest of the People's House, although its footprint will be quite large: The space will add 90,000 square feet. The main residence is only 55,000 square feet. Trump has spoken about his desire for a bigger White House event space for some time, as large formal gatherings occasionally spill onto the lawn to be held under lavish tents. Trump has always hated tents. On Thursday, he explained why: 'People schlopping down to the tent — it's not a pretty sight. The women with their lovely evening gowns, and their hair all done, and they're a mess by the time they get [there].' Trump said it was important that the addition 'pay total respect to the existing building.' The East Wing was added in 1902 during the administration of President Theodore Roosevelt and expanded downward to include a bunker during World War II — the specifications of which are not publicly known. Significant gut renovations were made to the entire White House complex in the late 1940s and early 1950s due to structural concerns. Leavitt emphasized at a press conference that the East Wing has been renovated in the past. In response to a question on how much of the East Wing would be torn down, Leavitt responded: 'The East Wing is going to be modernized. The necessary construction will take place.' 'And for those who are housed in the East Wing, including the office of the first lady, the White House Military Office, the White House Visitors Office, those offices will be temporarily relocated while the East Wing is being modernized,' she said. Trump has chosen Washington-based McCrery Architects to lead the project, along with Clark Construction and AECOM to provide engineering services. The White House said that updates would be posted to its website. Take a look at more of the renderings below: McCrery Architects McCrery Architects McCrery Architects
