GM: People raise the question of who started the Cold War. Actually, the roots... of the Cold War were in the two wars of aggression that we fought with the Japanese and the Germans. There's no question that the estrangement between the two countries during the time we were allies was much greater than we... We didn't want to raise any serious issue until we had won those wars. But even before they were over, it became apparent that the Soviets were involved on a world conquest, not by military means necessarily, but by the expansion of the Communist socialistic system, and that this was so basic to their thinking that being an ally for us during the war was merely a minor detour to their world conquest in that way. ... Other people have analysed it in terms of their own inability to develop the economic base which other countries that they felt indeed that we were holding them back and that socialism was the wave of the future, and everything had to go... except its achievement. (Pause) [Lubrinin], in his book, points out that neither one of us ever really made any effort. I don't necessarily accept that view, because this is just the way he explains it, in terms of the... the actual position in the world, and the attitudes in government of the other, that... when both of us come in conflict with... say in a place like the Congo or a place like in the Belize, with Syria on their side, or in Afghanistan where we have... people in Pakistan helping the Afghan people, that we both thought we were doing the right thing from our viewpoint, and... created concentrations all around the world that urged the Cold War on, which could have been avoided. I myself don't think there was ... ever any chance of avoiding the Cold War, as long as Stalin and Khrushchev were there at least. Nixon made the most determined effort that any President made to try to understand and to try to have summit meetings which could push detente further and decelerate the Cold War. And why these efforts failed, and whose fault it was, looks differently to both sides. But I am convinced myself that, over a period of time, that the policies taken by our Government, no matter which political party, were very consistent in doing the best we could to avoid accelerating the Cold War to a shooting war, and that had we found receptivity in the Soviet Union without... (Hesitates) assuming... that... anything about the future of Communism, that it would never have been possible. I doubt very much whether... it could have been handled any other way. I think it had to run its course.

GM: Well, I think it's generally thought to be that... that... I think people think the most dangerous point in the war might have been in the Middle East, when we intervened in the war, so that their stooge, Syria, could be saved. And... they threatened, in effect, that they would enter the war on the Syrian side, and we threatened that we might use the atomic bomb. I think this was probably the most critical area. Fortunately it was avoided. Of course, [Lubrinin] says that the Soviets never had any intention of fighting a war. And certainly we had no intention of starting the fighting of a war. And the fact is we didn't fight a war - excethat these two... wars by stooges,, Vietnam and Korea, cost us 100,000 men... 100,000 deaths, which is a costly thing. But had the Cold War itself become a shooting war, it would have been a great deal worse.

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