I'm struck by how, in both of your stories, you’re both describing having these very foundational experiences about nuclear fears: Philip, your reaction to the civil defense drills with the feeling that these are not going to do anything; and Zachary, you go from this position initially feeling confident, and then having this loss of confidence come in. How much did these fears shape your life paths?
Philip: It certainly affected mine. I was terrified as a high school student, and wanted to do something about the fact that everybody was terrified. And so when I got to college, I actually wrote my undergraduate thesis on nuclear negotiations that led to the Partial Test Ban Treaty of 1963.
The Cuban Missile Crisis, which occurred while I was in college, increased my commitment to working in this field, although when I graduated from college and went to law school and graduated from law school, I didn't have an opportunity to work in the field because Nixon had been elected and there was little prospect that he was going to stop nuclear weapons testing or sign a nuclear weapons testing ban. So it wasn’t until Carter was elected that I actually had a chance to do something about this.
Zachary: And for my part, my anxiety peaked in the early 1980s and then diminished after Gorbachev came into office. And my experience again in high school and college was of one amazing thing happening after another, i.e. Gorbachev's initiatives. I was looking up some dates. It’s 1990, I believe, that an SS-20 shows up in the Air and Space Museum in downtown Washington. So, you know, one of the missiles I'd been afraid of is now there and is literally a museum relic.
I remember reading my senior year of college in 1991 that Boris Yeltsin had officially stopped targeting missiles at the United States. So I’d lived, again, aware since childhood that a Soviet missile was pointing at me at all times. And obviously I knew those missiles could be retargeted, but even the idea that Yeltsin was not actively trying to target and possibly kill me was a big deal! You know, again, in terms of my nightmares and psychological state.
The first Gulf War in 1990, where again, the Soviet Union under Gorbachev stood back, suggested that the US-Soviet rivalry was not central. And I actually ended up living in Russia for six months in 1993 after the collapse of Soviet Union. And, you know, obviously the Russian threat is back, but at the time it was a very hopeful time. So I did not feel I had to try to give my own life to nuclear disarmament.