The Sixties: The Cold War
PEREIRA: I love it. Welcome back. We know the 60s certainly left a lasting mark on the history of the United States, perhaps most notably during the beginning of the Cold War when America risked nuclear war with the Soviet Union. Tonight's episode of CNN's new original series "THE SIXTIES" explores just how tremendous anxiety and fear was that gripped the nation and how it shaped who we are today. Joining us now, a friend of the show, Douglas Brinkley is back, a historian at Rice University. Really a delight to have you here looking back on a tremendous decade in America's history. We were looking at that clip that just aired, children on a school bus having to duck, under school desks ducking. It was such an anxiety-ridden time.</s>DOUGLAS BRINKLEY, HISTORIAN, RICE UNIVERSITY: Well, absolutely because of nuclear weapons and particularly in the United States starting in 1957 with Sputnik. Once the Soviets had Sputnik in the air, we were in catch-up mode, ended up giving some of the dynamism of the 60s. You know, Alan Shepherd going into space and then John Glenn and then John F. Kennedy saying we will go to the moon by the end of the decade. That was the optimism that we were going to beat the Soviet Union. We had $260 billion bipartisan money being spent to get to the moon. But the downside of all that, the Cuban missile crisis -- the duck and cover, Bob Dylan's "Hard Rain is Going to Fall" when he wrote it during the Cuban missile crisis, you know. There was a palatable fear in the country.</s>BOLDUAN: In the documentary -- this episode does a really good job of describing that palpable fear felt throughout the country. Do you think that that sense collectively has been felt since? Do we have anything like that?</s>BRINKELY: Well, I don't think we've had quite the nuclear fear with the Cuban missile crisis that those missiles could blow up like all of the lower 48, maybe if Washington would have been spared, meaning total annihilation. So I think there has never been a nuclear showdowns, two scorpions in a bottle is the metaphor of the United States and the Soviet Union, about who is going to sting first. And the quote of Dean Rusk, secretary of state was they blinked, not us. That the ships turned around in Cuba and Kennedy got this big, big plus in history that he resolved the Cuban crisis. But it was a damn near thing.</s>CUOMO: With the current -- with the benefit of hindsight, how much of the Russian threat was a straw horse.</s>BRINKLEY: Much of it in the sense that there was supposed to be a missile gap with the Soviet Union. Well, they didn't -- the gap was we have a lot more than they did.</s>BOLDUAN: Yes, that didn't exist.</s>BRINKLEY: But in the Cold War context, you have stuff done by having this bogeyman, enemy of the Soviet Union and we're going to break them. And so you know -- but any time you have a country with nuclear weapons, it's considered a threat to us. And so you don't want to minimize that. But Khrushchev was on a roll until he met John F. Kennedy in the Cuban missile crisis. After that you see his stock go down but also John F. Kennedy gets shot in Dallas.</s>PEREIRA: So interesting to think about this episode airing tonight especially when you see what's going on -- Crimea, Ukraine, Russia, Putin flexing his muscles, and even in his comments about Hillary Clinton, it's so interesting. Especially when you think of the people in America that were alive then and what they must be thinking when they watch this news emerge now.</s>BRINKLEY: And it's also -- that's why George Herbert Walker Bush didn't really celebrate when the Soviet Union broke up in '91. History plays weird games on you. You're starting to see Putin want to kind of reconstruct the Soviet Union. But also George Kennan the great analyst of this period of your documentary talking about containing of the Soviet Union; he called it traditional Russian expansionism. We were calling it the Communist Red Blob of the Soviet Union. Kennan said, no, Russia is always expansionistic. We have to contain Russian expansionism. You're seeing that going on now with Putin.</s>CUOMO: Have control of --</s>BRINKLEY: Yes, exactly.</s>BOLDUAN: One provocative question that's raised in this episode that will have a lot of people thinking is when touching on the Vietnam War would history have played out differently if JFK had not been assassinated. If it wasn't Lyndon Johnson in the seat at the time -- what do you think?</s>BRINKELY: We have to watch the what-ifs as a historian. With that said, there is some compelling evidence that Kennedy would have not gotten immersed in Vietnam including a famous interview he did with Walter Cronkite shortly before his death. Also some other (inaudible) -- he didn't want to get baited into going into Vietnam. Dwight Eisenhower shrewdly did not get drawn into the Vietnam War. So I am of the school that Kennedy probably would not have put the amount of ground troops that Lyndon Johnson did after his death. Kennedy was -- seemed to be knowing that that was a loser's hand in Vietnam.</s>CUOMO: I've noticed that when we talk about the series, a lot of the writing is a little qualified, like this could have been one of the -- do you think there's any question that the 60s in America, that was the most influential cultural development period we've had?</s>BRINKLEY: Endlessly fascinating on so many different levels. I mean the show tonight is going to be more about the Cold War context of the Soviet Union. But just think about the birth of folk music and then rock 'n' roll.</s>PEREIRA: Sure.</s>BRINKLEY: You know folk rock and then rock 'n' roll. Think about counter culture and drugs. Think about civil rights --</s>PEREIRA: Civil rights -- right?</s>BRINKLEY: Martin Luther King and Medgar Evers and Malcolm X, Cesar Chavez, the great Latino leader and then Bobby Kennedy killed.</s>PEREIRA: Right. Iconic moments, iconic images. You know, I was thinking -- you're mentioning all this I was even thinking of the Berlin wall. All of these things that just hearken to a time of just -- there was such -- it was such a pivotal time.</s>BRINKLEY: And a lot of women that are important. Rachel Carson writes Silent Spring Revolution and the word "conservation" kind of gets erased and becomes environmentalism and ecology. We're living with that today.</s>CUOMO: The questions you were asked in the 60s, you know, we're still answering today.</s>PEREIRA: It's funny because sometimes we think -- I worry, you know, we are born much later but I think do we look back and just sort of look at rose-colored glasses? I did for an era but I really think --</s>BOLDUAN: I think good and bad we're still feeling the effects of that era and you can either argue we're still feeling the effects of the Cold War.</s>BRINKLEY: Well 58,000 Americans died in the Vietnam War. Those are real people.</s>PEREIRA: Those are real lives.</s>BRINKLEY: Then you're dealing with veterans today that aren't getting proper medical attention and then you're dealing with the damage that did to families of losing somebody. Vietnam is the bogeyman in the middle of the 60s, San Francisco, Haight Ashbury Party.</s>PEREIRA: There's some stuff that you have to check out in this episode. If you haven't seen it, tune in now -- it's not too late, trust us. "</s>THE SIXTIES: THE WORLD ON THE BRINK" airing tonight right here on CNN, East Coast and West Coast -- we're all united on this, 9:00 p.m. together, OK. We can all watch it all simulcast -- well not really. But at 9:00 at any rate. Douglas, really a pleasure to see you.</s>BRINKLEY: Thank you</s>PEREIRA: Thanks so much for being here and great conversation.</s>CUOMO: Right. It's a great look, not just at what was, but what still is. You'd be surprised by that. Appreciate it Professor. Coming up, what would you do -- be honest -- $125,000 just dropped right in front of your lap? It sound like that only happens in movies. It happened in real life. What would you do with that money if you were on hard times, $125,000 falls in your lap? Wait until you hear what makes this man "The Good Stuff.