The Secret History of Nuclear War
Warfare
Kennedy's Argument for Ending the Berlin Crisis
When the argument became Kennedy asked, could we do four A and B, the limited nuclear thing, and keep four C from happening? Some officials in the Pentagon said, no, we need to do four C, the all out right away because we just do four A or B. Whereas if we do four C right away, we can win. These are from the almost verbatim notes that were taken in this meeting. This was what Herman Kahn would call the cool, calm, reasonable discussion about using nuclear weapons.These weren't gallibanting strategies to the Rand Corporation. And this was what led Kennedy to figure out a way to end this thing before we got to that point.
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