Gilsinan: At the end of it, you draw the conclusion that “it was the nuclear weapons that were the enemies of us all. All along.” Is that a call for anything in particular?
Jacobsen: That exact line is an echo to the words of Carl Sagan. After Sagan and his colleagues came up with the original theory of nuclear winter in 1983, they had a big conference in Washington about nuclear winter. And then there was a follow-on book called The Cold and the Dark. That’s why my last part of the book is called that. And Sagan’s conclusion is that the enemy is not a foreign nation, it’s the weapons themselves.
Gilsinan: Is the solution then to get rid of them entirely?
Jacobsen: I’m often asked that question, and the answer for me is always the same. I am the journalist who wrote the book called Nuclear War: A Scenario, presenting readers with the most fact-based dramatic series of events that I put together in this scenario. And there are scores of people in NGOs around the world who have dedicated decades to the question that you just asked me: What is the solution? And so I wouldn’t want to step out of my lane as a journalist and as a storyteller and into their lane as an expert on solutions. But they are definitely there and ready to offer opinions.
Gilsinan: You have reported on the national security apparatus for a long time. If you were going to pick one of the things that surprised you the most in reporting this book, what would it be?
Jacobsen: The general takeaway that when individuals, like dedicated professionals working within the national security apparatus in general, working within nuclear command and control specifically — once they leave their role in that apparatus, and they are allowed the bigger perspective, they seem to me to gain wisdom about the inherent dangers and the increasing potential problems with the premise that nuclear deterrence will hold.
That was the fundamental takeaway of, “Wow, I’m not alone in thinking: Holy shit, what if deterrence fails?” You realize people actually, once they leave the apparatus, they ask themselves that question, too. And they are just as confused and concerned as the next guy, whether it’s a Nobel laureate or a member of the Red Hot Chili Peppers [each of whom contacted Jacobsen to commend the book].
Gilsinan: Do you think people currently within the apparatus are asking themselves that question? Or is it just that those people aren’t talking to journalists?
Jacobsen: In the current situation, it’s no one’s fault. First of all, all of this has been inherited, right? Everyone who is in the nuclear command and control business inherited the job from a concept in the 1950s that began under the premise that nuclear war could be fought and won. One must never forget that. The generals that I refer to in that section on the SIOP [Strategic Integrated Operational Plan, the 1960s-era plan for general nuclear war] believed they could fight and win nuclear war, even if it meant killing 600 million people across the globe. That is insane. No one would argue that now.
Then the position changed to “OK, that’s madness. We can’t fight and win a nuclear war. We’re just going to simply never have one.” So the fundamental premise of nuclear war fighting switched. And yet the whole system is exactly the same. That’s a fundamental paradox. And that’s dangerous.
Gilsinan: Deterrence itself is a paradoxical concept — that mutually assured destruction is meant to keep us all safe.
Jacobsen: And let’s be clear, no one’s sitting around going, “Let’s have this idea of mutually assured destruction.” It’s not sinister in its conception. The premise was with the intention of safety. But it was the bad answer in 1959. And now the whole world has changed. The world is so remarkably different in 2024 than it was in 1960 from technology, from engineering, and also from the fact that there are now nine nuclear armed nations with some “mad king” logic infused throughout.
Gilsinan: I would also think that the logic of mutually assured destruction would be just as convincing to a Kim Jong Un as it would have been to a [Nikita] Khrushchev. Assuming, as our intelligence services do, that his top priority is regime survival, mutually assured destruction would probably discourage him from launching a first strike.
Jacobsen: The idea of the mad king logic came to me from arguably the world’s most senior expert on nuclear weapons, and that is Richard Garwin. Now in his 90s, he drew the architectural plans for the world’s first thermonuclear bomb. Everyone thinks of Edward Teller as the father of the thermonuclear bomb. He was, but he couldn’t figure out how to explode it. He looked to Garwin, who was then 23 years old. When I said to Garwin, “What do you fear most?” He’s the one that said to me, the mad king, someone who is working from the logic, and he quoted the French, “Après moi, le deluge.” This idea of “After me, the flood” — if I die, it doesn’t matter. And the point of that, coming from someone that has advised every president since [Eisenhower], you have to really think that’s a real threat. Take Garwin seriously.
In mad king logic, the insane is sane.
Gilsinan: And presumably the more countries that have nuclear weapons, the more opportunities there are for there to be a mad king.
Jacobsen: It would be hard for me to envision an Iranian mullah with a nuclear bomb as anything other than a mad king.
Gilsinan: Was there anything that made you hopeful?
After the Reykjavik Summit in 1986 between Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev and President Ronald Reagan, the world went from 70,000 nuclear warheads, an all-time high, to the approximately12,500 we have today. | Scott Stewart/AP
Jacobsen: Absolutely, the Reagan reversal. When I was a young high school student in 1983, I saw a movie called “The Day After.” It fictionalized a nuclear war between America and the Soviet Union, and it was absolutely horrifying. I watched it along with 100 million Americans, but a very important American also watched that show: President Ronald Reagan. He had a private screening at Camp David. His advisers encouraged him not to, but he watched it. And he wrote in his presidential journal that he became, quote, “greatly depressed.” He switched his position on nuclear supremacy. He reached out to [Soviet leader Mikhail] Gorbachev. They had the Reykjavik Summit. And as a result, the world has gone from 70,000 nuclear warheads, an all-time high in 1986, to the approximately12,500 we have today.
Gilsinan: Are you hoping that this book will have a similar effect as that movie?
Jacobsen: I would hope, by all means, that the president of the United States would make nuclear command and control, nuclear weapons, nuclear power, nuclear threats a priority and not something hidden.
Gilsinan: So more declassification, more public discussion of what this actually means?
Jacobsen: And more presidential action on reducing the threat, because the president can write an executive order to change “launch on warning” with that pen. The president could change [U.S. policy to] “no first use” [of nuclear weapons] with that pen. The president could reach out to his so-called enemy and have a conversation with that person, seeing them as an adversary, as Reagan did. The Reagan-Gorbachev Summit turned Russia and America from being archenemies into being adversaries, which is a big step.
Gilsinan: Do you think Biden — or Trump, for that matter — could do that with Putin? Biden tried to do some of that in 2021. And it was followed by Russia suspending participation in the New START Treaty, which committed the U.S. and Russia to limits on nuclear warheads. So the question is, if there’s not parallel reduction of such forces among our enemies, do we screw ourselves by reducing our own arsenals?
Jacobsen: You don’t know unless you try it, and you have to have a partnership. But Reagan saw the film in 1983 and Reykjavik itself was in 1986. Things take time. But they have to have a beginning.
You ask me what’s the hopeful thing? It’s not about declassifying things as much because most of this information is there. It’s about having an actual discussion about it where the people can be privy to both sides of the argument. So that you and I aren’t sitting here saying [about a “launch on warning” option]: “That’s dangerous.” Based on what? We don’t have all the information. But what is the missing information? What did President Obama get told by his advisers [about “launch on warning”]? Why don’t we get to know? These are the kind of open debates that people should be having, I believe. And more than anything to make known around the world how fraught nuclear weapons, nuclear use is, how insane it is to be having nuclear threats out of the mouths of the Russian president, the American former president, the president of North Korea. This is dangerous.
Gilsinan: Deterrence has held for 70 years. Do you think we can hang on for another 70?
Jacobsen: Some people say we’re in the 79-year experiment. When I began writing the book, war in Ukraine had not happened, there were not such incredibly fragile situations unfolding around the globe. And so it is a precarious time, and I hope that my writing Nuclear War: A Scenario, and people reading it, contribute to the safety of the future of this strange 79-year experiment.