The History of the Bomb

By Strobe Talbott

WAR AND PEACE IN THE NUCLEAR AGE

PBS; Mondays; 8 p.m. on most stations

As though in penance for its sins, television occasionally tries to promote literacy in the sense of both knowledge and reading. Such megasubjects as science, art, mythology and civilization, as well as the hot and cold wars of the 20th century, have been creditably presented in public-TV documentaries, usually with what are called in the trade "book tie-ins." Now the history of the Bomb is traced in a masterly 13-part PBS series, War and Peace in the Nuclear Age, and in a comprehensive, highly readable companion book of the same title (Knopf; $22.95). The book, published last week, is by John Newhouse, a veteran diplomatic historian who writes for The New Yorker. The TV series begins this week.

Both works live up to their Tolstoyan title. Under executive producer Zvi Dor-Ner, the series freshens the emblematic images of the nuclear age with rare footage and ironic juxtapositions, so that the viewer is more likely to look, and think, twice. Yet another mushroom cloud, at first almost a cliche, becomes surreal as Communist Chinese cavalrymen are shown charging toward ground zero as part of a training exercise, riders and horses wearing special masks to protect them against the blast.

The Cuban missile crisis, which seemed done to death on its 25th anniversary less than two years ago, is skillfully re-created. The show combines interviews with participants (including, thanks to glasnost, an aide to Nikita Khrushchev and another official who was the Soviet ambassador to Cuba at the time) and excerpts from secretly recorded tapes of John F. Kennedy's deliberations with his top advisers. In contrast to the traditional version of the episode, one of the leading hawks, at least initially, is the President's brother Bobby. He is heard suggesting that it may be necessary to "sink the Maine again or something" as a pretext for a U.S. invasion of Cuba.

J.F.K.'s Secretary of Defense, Robert McNamara, emerges as the principal spokesman for the overarching theme of both the TV series and the book. That theme is that nuclear weapons are not really weapons at all; they are political instruments whose very existence deters their own use. Author Newhouse calls the quest for strategic advantage "the chimera of the nuclear age."

Having been used only twice, within a four-day period nearly 44 years ago at the end of World War II, the Bomb is prone to mind-numbing abstraction. The TV series uses grainy, black-and-white newsreels to make landmark events feel as though they happened in the real world and epigrammatic statements sound as though they were said by real people. One of many moments that make War and Peace television at its best: a 1946 United Nations disarmament conference is seen considering a U.S. plan for international controls that would prevent the Soviet Union from developing its own bomb. The proposal comes to a vote. It needs unanimous endorsement. One delegate after another says "Yes," until first the Polish, then the Soviet, delegate is heard from. A 37-year-old Andrei Gromyko says, softly and in English, "Abstain." The plan is dead, and the tone of the superpower rivalry is set for nearly 40 years to come. Finally, Gromyko is shoved aside by Mikhail Gorbachev, who knows how to say yes to the West and churn out a dizzying array of proposals of his own.