All language subtitles for Cold War - S01E12 - MAD (1960–1972) (480p x265 EDGE2020).eng

NARRATION:
At the start of the 1960s

Cold War tensions
were heightening.

Confrontation threatened.

The two superpowers
watched and waited,

preparing for
a nuclear holocaust.

The world's safety depended on
mutual assured detsruction -

the treat of mutual suicide that
came to be known as M.A.D. -

MAD.

It's not mad!
[ Laughs ]

Mutual Assured Destruction is
the foundation of deterrence.

Reconnaissance plane like this
took off on a routine

mission to probe the radar
defenses of the Soviet border.

COL. JOHN McKONE: We took off
from Brize Norton Air Base in England.

That was our
forward operating

location on that particular date,

and we were supposed to fly
this quote-unquoted 'milk run'.

There were not supposed to be any
particular problems during that

flight and we thought that
this would be a rather...

rather simple flight, although
it was a twelve-hour mission.

[speaking Russian ]

They flew in order to
detect our radar stations.

The wanted to know the location
of the air defense system of

the Soviet Union.

They often flew close
to our borders.

We started flying parallel
to the Soviet coastline,

which had Murmansk
and the mouth of the

White Sea and so
forth up there,

and we knew there was
quite a bit of activity

going on up there by the
Russians at that time.

[speaking Russian ]

I was on combat
duty to intercept,

and I flew up
to find the enemy.

I was guided
from the ground.

When I saw the enemy plane,
I identified it,

and radioed my base.

The co-pilot said,
'Check, check, check,

right wing',

and the aircraft commander,
Major Palm, said,

'Where the hell did
that guy come from?'

[speaking Russian ]

I signaled the
plane to follow me.

He wouldn't obey.

I radioed my base, and asked
what I should do.

An order came back
"Destroy it".

I opened fire and
the plane started to burn.

NARRATION:
As the MIG fighters returned to base,

John McKone and Co-pilot Bruce
Olmstead parachuted to safety,

and imprisonment in Moscow's
Lubianka prison.

The four other Americans on
board had died in mid-air.

On the front line,
constant vigilance.

War, if it came,
would soon 'go nuclear'.

American Titan missiles,

each with a warhead
that could destroy Moscow,

were ready
to be launched.

It would be done
before we had time

to stop and think about
what we were doing.

It doesn't take all that long
and it was just automatic.

There was no question
in our mind that

this was the thing to do.

If we had ever received a launch
message over the PAS system,

I ha... would have had
absolutely no doubt that my life

expectancy was measured
in probably less

than a half an hour,
and the only question was

would we able to
launch this missile

before the
incoming hit us.

NARRATION: Pearl Harbor
was still a painful wound in the

American psyche.

In Alaska, Greenland, and England,

Ballistic Missile Early Warning
radars were in operation.

America did not want
to be surprised again.

TOM DENCHY:
The Cold War

was a war that went
on 24 hours a day,

7 days a week.

We felt that they were

trying to take over the...
the world and actually

we were one of their
largest stumbling blocks in

that effort and
therefore we were one

of their primary enemies,
and their primary

target was to take
over our country.

GEN. MIKHAIL MOKRINSKI:
[speaking Russian ]

They were banging
it into our heads

and we couldn't
have imagined otherwise:

the Americans
were aggressors

who wanted to conquer
the whole world,

and we had to
protect the world.

NARRATIONI
In 1961,

the new American
President John Kennedy,

had taken office in
a tense nuclear world.

He inherited from Eisenhower,

the doctrine of
'massive retaliation'.

The term
"Massive Retaliation",

as it was understood
at the end of the 1950s,

and the beginning
of the 1960s,

was a policy of responding to
major Soviet conventional attacks -

for example,

in Western Europe,

should that
have occurred,

with a massive
nuclear response.

NARRATION:
"Massive Retaliation"

had been conceived at a time
of clear American superiority.

Now, the Russians were
trying to catch up.

GEN VALENTIN LARIONOV:
[speaking Russian ]

There was a syndrome to catch up
and overtake,

to try and show
everyone that we

weren't far behind
the Americans,

that we too had
nuclear weapons.

There were those who said
that we can only prevent

a nuclear war if
we oppose world

imperialism with a force
of similar strength.

NARRATION:
Khrushchev sought a dramatic

means to remind the West
of the power of the Soviets.

He broke a moratorium
on nuclear testing.

October the 30th, 1961:
a Russian bomber crew were

preparing to drop the largest
bomb the world had ever seen.

The explosion was
the equivalent of more than

50 million tons of TNT,

more than all the explosives
used in World War ll.

50 miles away, people
were blown off their feet.

Khrushchev said he
wanted the bomb to

"hang like the sword of Damocles
over the imperialists heads".

Kennedy took up
the challenge.

In view of
the Soviet Action,

it will be the policy

of the United States to
proceed in developing

nuclear WEEIPOHS,

to maintain
this superior capability

for the defense of the free
world against any aggressor.

NARRATION:
To Kennedy's anger,

the super bomb was just one of a
series of Soviet nuclear tests.

GEN. MIKHAIL MOKRINSKI:
[speaking Russian ]

I remember counting
down the seconds,

then dropping the bomb.

We had to put on special glasses,

and pull down curtains
to protect us

against the radiation.

We'd put on the glasses,
but we'd forget

to draw the curtains as we
wanted to have a peek.

Suddenly, there would be
something like a rising sun.

The clouds disperse and
you see a beautiful,

beautiful picture,

like in a fairytale- a mushroom
growing up and up.

It's on top of you and
you are going underneath.

The instruments measuring
the level of radiation

went right
off the scale,

but of course we
forgot about that.

Then suddenly
there is a huge

blow as the shock
wave hits the plane,

all the controls go crazy, and
you have to grab the joystick,

and quickly, quickly try
and get it under control.

The plane was
thrown from side to side.

We knew what a nuclear
explosion was like.

It became obvious
that the Russians just...

there was no
containing them,

they were shooting
hot just this big bomb,

but lots and lots of them

and we essentially
did the same thing.

We went and, you know,

we got bombs from
wherever we could

find 'em and took 'em to
Nevada and shot them

just in order to respond to
these Russian tests.

It was a
crazy period.

NARRATION:
In the West,

public opinion was turning
against the arms build up,

and the testing
of the bomb.

In Britain,
what started in 1958

as a march to the
weapons centre at Aldermaston,

swelled to an annual rally of
tens of thousands of campaigners

for nuclear disarmament.

DORIS BOOTMAN:
We did seriously accept

the fact that if a nuclear

bomb was used
in the London area

the effect was going to
be so massive over such a

geographical area

that even people living miles out
would have repercussions.

And we were
quite serious in

our expectations that
this could happen.

The scientists have made it,
it's there and available,

somebody's going
to want to use it.

NARRATION: Kennedy and his
secretary of defense, McNamara,

were increasingly aware of the
danger of relying

on the strategy of
"Massive Retaliation".

ROBERT MCNAMARA:
Nuclear weapons

have no military
utility whatsoever,

excepting only to deter one's
opponent from their use.

Which means you should never
never never initiate their

use against a
nuclear-equipped opponent.

If you do,
it's suicide.

And that conclusion I
came to very early.

As I say, when I came in I...
I didn't know the difference

between a nuclear weapon
and a conventional weapon,

but it didn't take
me long to find out.

A few months,

and I came to
that conclusion.

The problem was, how to
implement the conclusion.

NARRATION: McNamara
presented the Joint Chiefs of Staff

with an
appealing alternative.

Soviet cities were no
longer to be targeted.

They were to strike only
at Soviet military forces.

This was known as
No Cities/Counter-force.

And if both sides
did that,

then the casualties,

in the unlikely and very undesirable
prospect of a nuclear war,

would be less.

[speaking Russian ]

This idea of a
"No-Cities" plan,

this striking only
against military bases,

rocket forces
and submarines-

it was simply an attempt to make
nuclear war morally acceptable.

It was an attempt to
deceive oneself.

NARRATION: The Russians
weren't the only skeptics.

The head of the Strategic Air
Command General Power,

was briefed on Counterforce by
one of McNamarafs assistants.

WILLIAM KAUFMANN:
General Power insisted

that the only way
to deal with these

barbarians was to blow
them all up and I said,

'But who's going
to win that?'

And he said, 'I would be
satisfied if there were

just two Americans
left and one Russian -

that would be
we would have won'.

And I said, 'Well there'd better
be one of them a woman'.

NARRATION:
October 1962.

Khrushchev, seeking to reduce
American nuclear superiority,

sent Soviet missiles
into Cuba.

GEN RUSSELL DOUGHERTY:
It was real.

You know,
this was no joke.

They were moving mid-range
missiles into Cuba and

and I don't think there's

any doubt about the fact
they were moving.

They may have had some
there already.

They certainly had
the facilities

to rapidly
introduce them.

That was tense.

NARRATION:
Kennedy ordered a blockade,

and put his forces across the
globe on the highest alert.

B-52s loaded with
hydrogen bombs,

were ready for war.

OVIDIO PUGANALE:
During the Cuban missile crisis,

if the horn blew we
shook like the devil.

I mean we were scared we
said we're on our way.

So we simply ran
to that airplane

and fired up the ground
carts to get

get power to the airplane
and air to start

the engines and we cranked those
engines as fast as we could

and we would listen
for a message

from Strategic Air Command

to give us instructions on
what type of exercise it was,

if it was a practice or
if it was the real thing.

You know, you
literally swallowed

because you didn't know
what it was going to be.

NARRATION: Confronted by
Kennedy's nuclear superiority,

Khrushchev turned
the missile ships back.

[speaking Russian ]

Both Khrushchevs government
and Kennedy's government

proved to be wise
enough to find their way

out of this situation.

The Cuban missile crisis
was very important.

It showed just how close
to the edge of the

nuclear precipice the
world was standing.

NARRATION: Moscow and
Washington realized that direct

communication between the two
capitals must be improved.

They installed the
"hot-line" between them.

The following summer,
shocked at how close

they'd come to nuclear war,
the Soviet Union,

America and Britain agreed a
Limited Test Ban Treaty.

There would be no more
'atmospheric? tests.

Nuclear testing would continue,
but underground.

In Russia, the Kremlin
had learnt a lesson.

Never again did it want
to confront America

from a position
of weakness.

NIKOLAI DETINOV:
[speaking Russian ]

Lack of nuclear armaments

and the weakness of
the Soviet Union

came as a shock to
the Soviet leadership.

It was like a cold shower
for the Government,

who realized that these
weaknesses had to be overcome.

NARRATION:
The Soviet Union

built
up their nuclear forces.

They added hundreds of
missiles to their arsenal.

The Americans had to accept
that, realistically,

they could no longer destroy
all the Soviet forces.

HAROLD BROWN: It became
clear that if you said that

your main approach was going
to be to target the other

side's military capability,
what would happen is that

those targets would
proliferate to the point

where there would be no
limit to the amount

that you would spend on
strategic forces.

The military on both sides
accepted that

they could no longer protect
their own country

from destruction.

NARRATION:
The superpowers

had discovered they had
one thing in common;

an interest in
avoiding nuclear war.

It is an ironic,
but accurate fact,

that the two
strongest powers

are the two in the most
danger of devastation.

All we have built,
all we have worked for

would be destroyed in the
first twenty-four hours,

and even in the
Cold War which brings

burdens and dangers
to so many countries,

including this
nation's closest allies,

our two countries
bear the heaviest burdens.

For we are both devoting massive
sums of money to weapons

that could be
better devoted

to combat ignorance,
poverty, and disease.

NARRATION:
A grim logic

was beginning to emerge.

Nuclear disarmament
was not achievable,

yet nuclear war
was unthinkable.

By 1964,

McNamara had concluded
that his 'No Cities' plan

was a
dangerous illusion.

War would only be avoided,

he now thought,

by the threat
of mutual suicide.

WILLIAM LEE: McNamara
in particular became totally

convinced that the
only strategy was...

what is known as
Mutually Assured Destruction,

MAD for short.

And what that meant
was that the only

way to have stable
deterrents in the world was

for both sides to be able
to kill twenty-five to

fifty per cent of the
other's population.

It's not mad!

[ laughs ]
Mutual Assured Destruction

is the foundation
of deterrence.

Today it's a
derogative term,

but it's those
who denigrate it,

don't understand deterrence.

If you want a
stable nuclear world-

if that isn't
an oxymoron,

to rephrase it,

to the degree one can achieve
a stable nuclear world -

it requires that each side
be confident that it can

deter the other,
and that,

that requires that
there be a balance

and the balance is the
understanding that if either

side initiates the use
of nuclear weapons,

the other side will
respond with sufficient

power to inflict
unacceptable damage.

NARRATION: Submarines
now played a crucial role.

[Archive Sound- Countdown ]
3, 2, 1, Fire!

NARRATION: For MAD to succeed,
each side needed to be able to retaliate,

even after it had suffered
a surprise attack.

JOE WILLIAMS: The Polaris system
to begin with was really a city killer.

It was an extremely

survivable assured destruction
capability that the

Soviets knew,
they could not destroy

and knew that if they
conducted a first strike,

that system would some
day be available to retaliate.

It might take
some time to

get the message
to them from a

destroyed national headquarters,
but at some day the missile

warheads would come raining in
and they would pay the price.

I don't think that
there would have been

hesitation on the part of any
commanding officer to launch.

Did we think about what was
back home?

Sure we did, but you didn't
let that control your actions.

Time to think about that
after you'd done your duty.

[speaking Russian ]

The fact that
very tense people

were close to
nuclear weapons,

ready to use
those weapons,

presented a huge danger
to the world.

And of course,
we felt uncomfortable,

but we still had to
accomplish our task,

like the Americans had to
accomplish theirs,

and we would have
accomplished it.

What would it
have ended in?

It would have had very sad
consequences for the world.

I thought from the beginning

it was morally bankrupt,
decrepit,

morally dis...
I mean, I...

I just do not accept war...
that the primary objective

to war is to kill people.

The primary objective of war is
to win the bloody thing with

as... as few losses to er...
first of all to your own

side and second
to the other side.

Always you want to minimize
losses on both sides,

but first of all yourself:
but you want to win the thing

and get it over as
soon as possible.

HAROLD BROWN:
If the first day

had involved
attacks on cities

then it would have been

just unbelievably
catastrophic:

tens of millions of deaths and
enormous destruction.

Even one
thermonuclear weapon

on a large city

would be destructive
on an almost

unimaginable and
unprecedented scale.

World War ll killed
50 million people,

but it didn't
do it in one day.

NARRATION: In 1963, Peter
Watkins, a British film-maker,

made a drama documentary to show
what a nuclear war would mean.

ARCHIVE NARRATION:
9:16 am.

A single megaton
nuclear missile

overshoots
Manston Airfield in Kent,

and air bursts
six miles from this position.

At this distance
the heat wave is sufficient

to cause melting of
the upturned eyeball,

third degree burning of the
skin and ignition of furniture.

12 seconds later the
shock front arrives.

The blast wave from a
thermonuclear explosion has been

likened to an enormous door
slamming in the depths of hell.

NARRATION: The film
was called the 'War Game'.

The BBC banned it.

It wasn't seen on television
for twenty years.

HAROLD BROWN: There was,
for a period of a couple of years -

at least a year -

a strong effort to persuade
the American public

that it was worth investing in
and practicing civil defense.

That campaign
fell flat;

the public wasn't
very interested.

I think the public
concluded that if

a thermonuclear war
were to take place,

civil defense, although it might
preserve some lives,

would not preserve most lives,
and what came

afterwards would have made
life not worth living.

"Whether you're sitting in your
desk next to the window,

or standing in the
elevator shaft,

it wouldn't
be of any great

significance if the bomb
were dropped in this

area within a radius
of 25 miles."

"I assume you're
supposed to go to a shelter,

but in a city like
New York there's not

much chance that a person
would survive if there

was an attack
or something...

"In the case
of a real attack,

nobody would know what
to do I'm quite sure."

NARRATION:
Officially the Russians

took Civil defense
more seriously,

but the reality was
not encouraging.

MARIA STEPANOVA:
[speaking Russian ]

When people began to realize how
dangerous these weapons were,

they used to joke
that if a nuclear bomb

was dropped nearby all
there'd be left to do

was to cover yourself
with a white bed sheet

and crawl to the cemetery.

[ laughs ]

If you could make it to
the cemetery that is.

[speaking Russian ]

The leaders were
guided by the idea that

as there might not
be a nuclear war,

why spend money which
we were so short of?

On the other hand,

if there was a war, civil
defense would not help.

It was a very sensible,

purely pragmatic
Russian attitude.

NARRATION:
Even short of total war,

deterrence carried
its own dangers.

In 1966 over the
coast of Spain,

a B-52 was due to attempt
a routine refueling,

mid-air from a tanker.

In the village of Palomares,

Simo Orts was setting out
for the day's fishing.

SIMO ORTS:
[speaking Spanish]

I was fishing
opposite Villaricos,

and the planes were
flying overhead.

We always used to
watch the planes.

There were two B-52s refueling,
and the ones at the back

must have brushed against each
other and the planes exploded.

[ Speaking Spanish ]

I remember all this fire
in the air and pieces

of airplane falling
to the ground.

I remember all the neighbors
running to the place

where the smoke came from.

We thought that what had
fallen there was still burning.

NARRATION:
As the planes broke up,

4 hydrogen bombs were
scattered over the coast.

Three hit the ground,
one was lost at sea.

SIMO ORTS:
[speaking Spanish]

I saw it very clearly:

the bomb fell into the
sea very close to me.

And then, I saw how much
interest the Americans showed...

the whole
Sixth Fleet came.

There were 5,000 soldiers
living on land in tents -

generals, colonels,
so many important

people from North America.

NARRATION: The American fleet
searched the ocean for the missing bomb.

Those on dry land had
different problems.

When the bombs
hit the ground,

safety devices prevented a
thermonuclear explosion.

But the conventional high
explosives,

used to trigger
a nuclear blast,

had gone off,
scattering radioactive plutonium.

ANTONIA FLORES:
[speaking Spanish]

They started doing medical

check-ups here in the
town with a Geiger counter.

Some people had to
throw away their clothes

because they
were contaminated.

The houses were washed down
with detergent or water.

At no stage did the Americans
tell us anything.

People were scared,

because no one knew
what was happening -

all you knew was that you were
forbidden to eat things,

that you couldn't
go out on the street,

you couldn't
touch anything -

everything but everything
was permanently prohibited.

NARRATION:
Over four and a half

thousand barrels of
contaminated soil were

shipped back to
the United States for burial.

At sea,
the search

continued for
the missing bomb.

NARRATION: The Spanish feared
that the Mediterranean was contaminated.

American Ambassador,
Biddel Duke,

went swimming
for the cameras.

INTERVIEWER:
"Ambassador do you detect

any radioactivity
in the water?"

[ laughs ]
"if this is radioactivity, I love it."

NARRATION:
Eighty days after the accident,

an American
mini submarine,

Alvin, found the
missing bomb, intact.

The Pentagon called a lost
nuclear bomb a 'Broken Arrow'.

Palomares was the
14th Broken Arrow since 1950.

More were to come.

The number of Soviet
Accidents' is still unknown.

The Russian military

were unconvinced by McNamara's
notion of 'Assured Destruction'.

They saw it as
their first duty to

protect their homeland.

They worked to develop
anti ballistic missiles -

ABMs, which could destroy
American missiles in flight.

COL.GEN. YURI VOTINTSEV:
[speaking Russian ]

First there used to be
sword and then a shield,

then a tank and
anti-tank gun;

now it turned out that a
missile was not invulnerable.

Science and technology
was developing so fast.

It had become possible to

fight the most dangerous,
the most invincible weapons.

NARRATION:
To the United States,

Russia's ABMs
came as a blow.

It was a
terrible paradox.

By building a 'defensive
system, Russia had

put the delicate
nuclear balance at risk.

NIKOLAI DETINOV:
[speaking Russian ]

We thought of it
as an umbrella.

Would an umbrella
harm anybody?

If it rains,
you open it up.

That was how we
saw the ABM system.

It was an umbrella to
protect our population

against a possible
missile strike.

In terms of MAD,

if you believe in
Mutual Assured Destruction,

anything that
interferes with the...

with...
with both sides, see,

it's mutual,
Mutual Assured Destruction.

It must be mutual,
and it must be assured.

So anything on
either side that it

would interfere
with both sides,

either or both sides,

capability to kill twenty
to fifty per cent

of the population
of the other side is,

by definition, destabilizing.

[speaking Russian ]

The introduction of ABMs
destabilized MAD,

the balance of terror.

We were both so afraid of
nuclear armaments.

We knew that you wouldn't
strike and we wouldn't strike.

But, now if one
side could counter

the other's ability
to respond,

then they
had the advantage.

NARRATION:
America too,

had been
developing an ABM System,

but McNamara was reluctant
to authorize production.

The system was
easy to beat,

and the sums
just didn't add up.

WILLIAM KAUFMANN: The
ratio of cost to the defender,

as against the offense,
was very unfavorable,

in that it would cost say, like,
five dollars to the defense

to counter every dollar
that the offense spent.

And therefore the...
the economics just strongly

favored the offense.

NARRATION: McNamara convinced
President Johnson to abandon ABMs.

But only if the Soviets
agreed to do the same.

In 1967, war in
the Middle East raised

international tension
to boiling point.

America supported Israel.

The Soviet Union supported
Egypt, Syria and Jordan.

ARCHIVE NARRATION:
"The Israelis have released

these dramatic aerial pictures
to support their claim to have

shot down six MIG fighters of
the Syrian Air Force."

NARRATION: Israel swiftly
inflicted a crushing defeat.

America, fearful that the Soviet
Union might come to Egypt's aid,

prepared the Sixth
fleet for action.

ROBERT MCNAMARA: The
Six Day War between Israel and

and Egypt-

And as a part of that,
the hotline was used

for the first time
and one of the

messages from Kosygin to
President Johnson was,

'If you want war,
you'll get war'.

These were very
very tense times.

NARRATION:
To reduce the tension President Johnson

Soviet Premier Kosygin
agreed to meet

at Glassboro, New Jersey.

In spite of the Middle East crisis,

ABMs were high
on their agenda.

[speaking Russian ]

The President and the
Premier had a meeting,

and the President
started speaking.

He said,
"Let's come to an agreement,

let's each not build such
expensive ABM systems."

Kosygin said,
"I am against this...

Why do you object to a system
that protects people?

Defense is something moral,
and aggression is immoral.

Missiles mean aggression.

If you agreed to reduce the
number of aggressive missiles,

then I could speak about
reducing our defense system...

NARRATION: Whilst the
arguments over ABMs continued,

American scientists were
preparing a countermeasure;

Multiple Independently
Targeted Re-Entry Vehicles-

MIRVs for short.

One single missile could now
carry ten separate warheads,

each capable of
destroying a city.

HELMUT SONNENFELDT:
Once you got into the MIRV era,

the problem of strategic defense
became

infinitely more complicated,
infinitely more expensive,

because you had
to devise ways of

going after a multiplicity
of warheads

and all kinds of junk
that would be put

into the atmosphere
to mislead the defense.

COL .GEN. YURI VOTINTSEV:
[speaking Russian ]

One anti-ballistic
missile is enough to shoot

down one
ballistic missile.

But now imagine that
a ballistic missile

has 10 separate warheads.

In order to shoot down
one of those missiles,

you would need at least 10
anti-ballistic missiles.

Here are two figures
for you to compare.

The United States
of America had,

on their land based
launching sites alone,

1,054 ballistic missiles.

To counter that,
we would have needed

over 10,000 anti-ballistic
missiles.

That would be madness.

[speaking Russian ]

The Soviet Union realized
that unless we stopped

the arms race,
then the Americans,

who were financially
better off,

could out-do
the Soviet Union.

The leadership began to
understand that now we

had to choose between building
socialism and communism,

or making missiles.

NARRATION: By 1969 the
super powers were, between them,

spending more than
50 million dollars a day

on nuclear armaments.

It was a burden both sides
were finding intolerable.

At last, they agreed
to meet in Helsinki

to try to halt
the arms race.

The negotiations came
to be known as SALT.

HELMUT SONNENFELDT:
SALT stands for

Strategic Arms
Limitations Talks.

It was an...
an effort, er,

in the light
of later events, a...

a rather modest effort to try
and put some kind of a cap

on the accumulation of
strategic delivery systems.

NARRATION: The bargaining
was not going to be easy.

[speaking Russian ]

It was like diving into
a swamp with your eyes closed.

There were a lot of doubts

and difficulties in
organizing these things.

Particularly because
before going to the talks,

the members of the delegation
were called up by Brezhnev

and very seriously warned
not to say too much.

He reminded them that
the KGB was listening,

and the Lubianka prison
was watching.

HELMUT SONNENFELDT:
The Soviets were even more

were far more hesitant about
doing anything that might

involve some sort of
intrusion into their society,

because
inevitably anything

to do with real arms control
would involve inspection,

verification and
so on and so forth.

And this, for the Soviets,
remained anathema.

NARRATION: Negotiations
dragged on throughout 1970 and 1971,

as each side tried
to come to terms

with the other's philosophy.

HELMUT SONNENFELDT:
The Soviets

really had
it in their

gut, in the marrow of their
bone, this... this right,

this inherent right of a
nation to defend itself and

there wasn't really any
argument in those days,

early days of a
technical nature,

of a... of a strategic
analytical nature.

It was just the God given-
they wouldn't have said God-

right of a nation
to defend itself.

[speaking Russian ]

The Soviet Union
felt naked, unprotected,

surrounded everywhere by
American nuclear forces.

It was very difficult to
protect the Soviet Union.

When we had
developed our

own ballistic missiles,
although we had very few,

we realized that it had
acted as a counterbalance.

But when we
started the talks,

we remembered all the kinds of
weapons that could reach us.

NARRATION: Behind the
scenes, Henry Kissinger,

Nixon's national
security advisor,

arranged private
meetings with

Soviet Ambassador
Anatoly Dobrynin.

ANATOLY DOBRYNIN:
[speaking Russian ]

These meetings
made it possible

to introduce corrections, or
amendments without losing face.

Using the back channel
with Kissinger,

we could first state the
official point of view,

and then talk more freely.

I would say, "Henry, mind you,
or you should realize..."

I was really just
thinking aloud,

and then he would say,

"Well, Anatoly, why should we
get stuck on this?

Why don't we do it in a
different way?"

NARRATION:
Face to face across the table,

the two sides made
progress on ABMs.

But they barely touched on
the most destabilizing of the

new technologies-
multiple warheads- MIRVs.

[speaking Russian ]

The subject was not
really discussed

because by then the Americans
already had this technology

and Russia didn't.

We believed that
we should have it too.

NARRATION:
Finally, in May 1972,

after almost three years
of negotiations,

President Nixon arrived
in Moscow to sign the

SALT agreements
with Premier Brezhnev.

ABMs had now
been discredited

and the two sides
agreed to limit them.

But all they could agree
on 'offensive' weapons

was a temporary
freeze on missile launchers.

The superpowers were
learning to cooperate.

Yet, their failure to
control MIRVs

meant that, in the next decade,
Russia and

America would add 12,000 nuclear
warheads to their arsenals.

Preparations for global
annihilation continued.