Fred Kaplan and A Capital Calamity

Jeffrey Lewis 0:06

You are listening to the Arms Control Wonk podcast, a podcast on arms control, disarmament, and nonproliferation. I'm Dr. Jeffrey Lewis, the founding publisher of the Arms Control Wonk blog and a professor at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies at Monterey. Joining me today is Fred Kaplan. The author of six and now seven books for nuclear aficionados. Those include both The Bomb, President's Generals and the Secret History of Nuclear War, and Wizards of Armageddon, which my students recently did a book club for, and a new book, a novel, Capital Calamity.

How are you doing, Fred?

Fred Kaplan 0:46

I'm good.

Jeffrey 0:48

Okay, so you have done The Vulnerable Thing, which I also insanely did a few years ago. You have moved from nonfiction to fiction. Why did you do this?

Fred 1:04

Well, there's a prosaic reason and a more fanciful reason. The prosaic reason is that my last book, The Bomb, came out right before the COVID lockdown happened. And then a few months into that, I felt like writing another book. But, you know, the way I do books, the research part, I go do face to face interviews and archival libraries because not everything is online, actually.

So sometimes you'd have to go to libraries. But of course, I couldn't do that. And I'd had in mind the beginning of a novel many, many years ago. So I said, well, let's give that a try. The other reason, the more fanciful one, is that I've been doing this for a long time. I worked in Washington for a little while.

I've observed Washington for 40 years. And I've built up a lot of anecdotes, stories about people, about the culture, about the way things work. Not enough to make for anything like a memoir or a coherent personal history, but enough stories that I figured, well, I could work these things into a novel. And so that's what I started to do.

And quite honestly, going into it, I had very little idea about the plot beyond the first scene.

Jeffrey 2:29

Well, so I... Oh, go ahead.

Fred 2:30

Yeah. And, you know, it was just actually a very interesting process, the likes of which I haven't really experienced, figuring out where this story goes. But the main idea was to write a book about here is the national security community. You know, it's a satire. It's a satire and a thriller, I think. So there are As Richard Clark, who is, you know, the former White House counterterrorism chief, put it, only slightly exaggerated, darkly humorous view of, quote, national security.

But that was the basic idea.

Jeffrey 3:09

I mean, there is a sense in which, and I'm, I'm about two-thirds of the way through, there is a sense in which it is a novel of manners. It's a, it's almost like Jane Austen, but for DC. I, yeah, you know, I'm, I'm really thrilled that you say this. I recognize people and places. It is not fair game to ask an author about specific inspirations.

I will just say the grad school seminar, the Savage grad school seminar, I think I was invited to give a talk at that once.

Fred 3:47

Well, listen, here's the thing. The book begins, the epigraph is, much of what follows is true except for the plot. And I meant that literally. Those grad school seminars that I write about, I was a grad school in those seminars. I was one of the champs at destroying guest speakers who would come in. I mean, those scenes.

I went to the MIT grad school in defense and arms control studies where my hero went to. That part of the story is... Almost literally true. I really did in the beginnings when I would do exchange calculations and do something and realize that, oh, after this first strike, 20 million people die. I did suffer a kind of culture shock.

And for the first couple of months, read a Sherlock Holmes story every night before going to bed to calm me down. So a lot of what's in this book is, again, except for the plot, quite true.

Jeffrey 4:55

Yeah, I mean, I suppose for listeners, full disclosure, you studied under Bill Kaufman at MIT, right?

Fred 5:02

That's right, among others.

Jeffrey 5:05

But Bill Kaufman was my advisor's advisor. So we have that sort of, we have that thing in common. What I think I liked, so for listeners who should absolutely buy the book and read it, it's very, very funny, but it is very true to Washington. I like the description of the primary character, I guess he's the protagonist, not much of a literary man myself.

A person who does studies that, you know, sometimes I, the summary of, you know, does a study for the Air Force on why a bomber is necessary and then does the same study for the Navy on why the bomber is not necessary.

Fred 5:55

Right. That strikes. As far as if they take the Janus Corporation.

Jeffrey 6:02

I mean, that to me, I mean, there is this, there is this kind of, Bemused cynicism about the, about the place that, that rings true to me. And I, I think one of the nice things about the book, and I hope you'll say something about this, is you know, you, you seem to enjoy the folly of Washington without, without you know, letting that, that bemused cynicism curdle into something darker. Well.

Fred 6:35

Now, I should note, I live in New York now. I moved away from, I lived in Washington from 1978 to 1991. Then I went to Moscow for a few years as a correspondent. And since getting back in 1995, I've lived in Brooklyn. And I've never, the book, you're right. The book is about a guy who became totally disillusioned And plays into the cynicism of the town for his own profit.

But then there's kind of a moral arc to it. He does something silly. He does something mischievous that starts a war. And then he realizes he has to stop the war. And in doing so, he realizes that It is important to take stands and to commit yourself to values and to a course of action and not to just be in it for your own game.

So yeah, in that sense, it's kind of a Jane Austen on Washington novel too. One reason why I have not written a novel before is that I have good friends who are serious novelists. And I just felt intimidated by the, you know, like they're not writing books about nuclear strategy. So to intrude on their turf would be an insult.

But then, you know, I was rereading Graham Greene's Our Men in Havana, and he called it an entertainment. Now he was being a little bit, you know, It's a great book. It's much more than an entertainment. But his, and it's more serious, it's just as serious as his more, quote, serious books. But the idea was, okay, no, it doesn't have to be a literary masterpiece.

And so I said, okay, yeah, this will be like an entertainment. And I was inspired in several ways by Our Men in Havana, not to say it's as good as that, but But yeah, there is a moral arc to this book, even as it plays into and off of the observation that much of what goes on in our field in its official capacities is cynical.

It's a joke. It's superficial. It's shallow. The people in it are really... You know, not worth taking terribly seriously, but it is very serious. And sometimes you have to step up to that.

Jeffrey 9:13

Well, I mean, I think one of the things that that comes through is no one is taking anything very seriously because there is a structural way in which the town doesn't. But at the same time. That's almost, I think, a, a defense. You know, I think one of the criticisms that, that I encounter when I talk to people outside of DC is, when we're talking about nuclear war, we're talking about this incredibly heavy, weighty subject, and, and the criticism is, well, I make too many jokes. But I think you Almost as a self-protective mechanism.

One makes jokes, one has a kind of ironic distance between oneself and the subject matter. And I think that suffuses the entire town at some level, but I don't feel like you give into that cynicism. I think that the individuals in the story are all fundamentally Know, in different ways, motivated by a sincere interest, which is how one, frankly, gets into the game in the first place. So I wanted to ask about that, because you know, for, for Serge Willoughby, the main character, there's a, a There's a brief backstory where he comes to Washington in precisely the same time you do.

And he takes the MX debate so seriously and is shocked to learn that when circumstances change, people's arguments change. Is that a Fred Kaplan origin story?

Fred 10:53

Is that a thing that you really experienced? I experienced it, but I wasn't – my reaction wasn't quite as – Yeah, what happens, you might recall that, you know, the MX debate back in the early 80s, which was the debate in the budget, you know, the hawk said there's this window of vulnerability. Our ICBMs are going to be destroyed in a first strike.

We have to make a new ICBM, the MX, and make it mobile. And then the doves said, well, no, the missiles, the Minuteman really aren't that vulnerable. And even if they were, we have all these submarine missiles. And so those will survive. So that'll continue to deter the Russians. Then Reagan comes along, realizes that all these mobile schemes are ridiculous, and just decides to put the MXs in silos.

At which point the doves say, oh, this is a terrible idea because that'll make the missiles really vulnerable to a first strike and the hawks. Say, no, no, they're not really that vulnerable in any way. We have submarines. So now I actually lived through that debate and the switcheroo. I wasn't disillusioned by it. But by that time, quite honestly, I was getting bored with the job.

And it came as no surprise to me that, oh, what do you know? These congressmen who pretend to be up on all the analysis and read their staff's reports very carefully Really don't believe in any of it and just want what they want. My character, Serge Willoughby, who's a very idealistic Mathematician who gets involved in this stuff.

He takes it very seriously. It becomes the roots of his disillusionment and his decision to go off and become a consultant who will argue brilliantly for whatever his clients want. So yeah, I mean, much of what's in this book, I mean, yeah, people, are you Serge Willoughby? Well, you know, parts of him are me, but Not quite as extreme.

Jeffrey 13:02

What about the taste in photography and jazz?

Fred 13:05

That's absolutely me. Almost every photograph that, yeah, no, that's, Serge Willoughby's taste in art and music and stand-up comedy and design, that might as well be autobiographical.

Jeffrey 13:26

That's that's fantastic. So I loved the MX backstory in part because I am someone who thinks that All decisions about nuclear weapons are fundamentally about domestic politics, and that all of the strategic argumentation is created after the fact to describe or justify a decision. So Serge Willoughby resonates with me as a, as a, as an authentic character. But I use MX in my classes, literally, to make this point. You know, and I, I particularly love the idea that You know, there's this enormous enthusiasm for mobile missiles.

And you would think that the very hawkish Reagan administration would be extremely enthusiastic about this system. And then I introduced my student to the concept of Reagan voting ranch owners in the West.

Fred 14:17

Yeah. Turns out like their water.

Jeffrey 14:24

And so, you know what? Silos will be fine. And magically, the window of vulnerability closes when it becomes electorally, electorally complicated. Being vague about how far I am in, because I don't want, people hate spoilers. There is, I think, a particularly Nice scene that touches on the use and misuse of history in policy debates. That involves a bit of archival research.

I think that's probably enough to trigger it for you, but without giving it away for a reader.

Fred 15:08

Yes. Toward the end, there's an NSC meeting. Which pits the chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who is pushing for ignoring a peace proposal by China, and the Secretary of Defense, who is in favor of going for peace. And the chairman Because the president, who is unidentified... This is a novel where we're kind of in the present, but it's a parallel present.

It's not exactly the present we're living in. So the president is a John F. Kennedy fan, and he warms up to anybody who argues that Kennedy would have done the following. So the chairman of the Joint Chiefs brings up the very conventional version of the Cuban Missile Crisis, which is that, you know... The Russians wanted him to trade our missiles in Turkey for the Russian missiles in Cuba, and Kennedy turned him down and just went eyeball to eyeball, and the Russians came.

Well, in fact, as the Secretary of Defense points out, the tapes, you know, the declassified tapes of those meetings with Kennedy and his advisors show that, in fact, Kennedy did take The missile trade, but implored the half dozen advisors that he told about it to keep quiet about it, to never reveal that he'd taken the deal because then he would be seen as a betrayer.

So it's in the book because, as you may know, this is actually one of my historical obsessions. I wrote, when I was a Boston Globe reporter, I was given access to the first release of the XCOM tapes, which was the final day when Kennedy makes clear that he's going to take this deal, which was brand new at the time.

This was like in 1982 or something like that. And it has been kind of an obsession of mine ever since. How many... Otherwise respectable histories continue to repeat the nonsense, the deliberate lie that was put forth, by the way, with Kennedy's authorization by his people like Sorensen and so forth, that no, no, there was no deal. There was no deal.

When these tapes have been out there for almost 40 years, so I have found it kind of A cool idea to incorporate this other obsession of mine as a major plot point in this novel.

Jeffrey 17:50

Well, I mean, I think the reason that I find that such a compelling moment, and I think it's such a piece of the kind of, you know, comedy of DC Manor's aspect. And by the way, I mean, the book is very funny, I have to say. I think that it's... Know, it, I, I think someone I don't remember who, compared it to Veep, and, and, and the work of Armando Iannucci, which I, I think is kind of my ideal sort of, of, of sense of humor. but there is this way, I think, and weirdly, I think this comes through in the X-Com tapes, where so much of The town's argumentation is about appearances and, for lack of a better word, vibes.

And I don't know if you feel this way, but when I listen to those tapes or I read transcripts of them, I almost see Kennedy kind of play acting, like he will say things to get responses. He will disguise his own views in order to see what people say. It's a very layered performance, but maybe that's... Well, one thing that's interesting

Fred 19:05

See, nobody but he and his brother knew that there were tapes. And it's interesting that he and his brother took opposite sides on this. Bobby, he's been scrubbed since, but he was just as hawkish as anybody around that table. He thought this deal was a bad idea and that we should bomb the missile sites the following Monday.

I don't know if I agree with you. I think... I mean, I think, Kennedy, he's coming off very cool. You know, we've all seen whether or not we were living at the time, and I was a little bit, his press conferences. It's the same voice. It's very cool. Boston Brahmin. And I Think of anything that he said that he didn't mean.

I mean, he is probing to see what people think, but I think he's making his points quite clear, and even when they shocked the people around it. You know, at one point, and this is one thing that the tape has played at the NSC meeting, where all of his advisors, civilian and military, are arguing against taking this Turkish deal.

And he goes, well, you know, I'm just thinking, you know, we turn down this offer and we start doing 500 sorties of bombing a day. And then the Russians grab Berlin. And then it's revealed that this deal was on the table and we didn't take it. This isn't going to be a good war. I think he completely believed that.

And in retrospect, he was quite wise about it.

Jeffrey 20:48

Well, now you have me wanting to go back and look again. So that's, I mean, I found that usage of that in the novel, again, without saying too much to just, I found that to be a very effective way of exploring the way in which, you know, I keep calling it kind of a, you know, it's a comedy of manners.

A lot of this book happens in, Meetings and personal interactions that I think are very familiar to me, and, and to me, that the behavior of the characters is, you notice that, that's where most of my non-fiction book scenes take place as well. I, I wrote a whole novel that was set in conference rooms, basically. So I, you know, I, I, to me, this is the The the, the most interesting things happen in the most prosaic of settings. So that, that, that, that really, that really worked for me. what I'm curious at some point, the, the, the sort of the action, as, as in your own life, shifts out of DC.

Can you talk about the authorial choice involved in place? Because I am someone who gets very obsessed with places, both when I'm writing and when I'm reading.

Fred 22:22

You mean the New York scene? Yes. Well, the New York scene... Yeah, there's going to be some meetings with some mid-level Russian and Chinese people to talk about this. And it has to take place in New York. And my character says, oh, I know the perfect place. And it's upstairs from a comedy club called the Comedy Cellar.

Now, the reason why that's in this book, and I kind of laughed when I came up with this idea because it's a little bit outrageous. The fact is there really is a place called the Comedy Cellar. I go there quite a lot. And the owner in the book, named Noam Dorman, that is the name of the person who really owns the club.

And his stepmother who lives upstairs where the, she really does live upstairs. So, I mean, and I got Noam's permission to do this, but yeah, it's, yeah, no, it's there because I go there a lot. And the guy who runs it gave me permission to use his name.

Jeffrey 23:34

I mean, you would not be the first author who courts favor with friends.

Fred 23:39

I wasn't, you know, I wasn't courting favor. I was just, I just thought it would be, it was an inside joke with myself, I guess. I see.

Jeffrey 23:49

Well, I don't mean courting favor in a bad way. I have a friend of mine who was a doctor who did something very nice for me. And that act of kindness ended up in my novel.

Fred 24:00

There you go.

Jeffrey 24:01

Just because, I don't know, it was a way of saying thank you. So I don't know.

Fred 24:07

I think when you like a place, you could, you could, in that sense, courting returning an act of favor would be, would be a good way.

Jeffrey 24:14

Yeah. I guess I, I, I was, I was being careless in my language. I just, I, I love that when I, when I stumble across something like that in a novel and I think he must have been to this place or he must know this person or that to me is, I, I, I find that, I find that incredibly charming.

I want to go back to this. Comment you made about Graham Greene, because this is a thing that I very strongly agree with. I know that Greene divided his work into the entertainments and the serious literature. And in one of the prefaces to one of the entertainments, I think someone pointed out that You know, it's bizarre that we think of serious literature on the one hand, and, and, and entertainments on the other, because you know, the, the entertainments concern things that matter, life, death, the way in which we make decisions, you know, things that are hugely consequential for the well-being of society, and, and, and you know, like Graham Green's serious literature is, you know, Know, like, well, not just for Graham Green, but you know, like, we like the sex life of like an assistant professor of literature or something gets treated as, you know, like, like, allegedly serious literature. So I

I quite like the genre of books that firmly are, whether they are funny or not, firmly rooted in these big questions of how do people make decisions? How do people choose to adjust to structures of power? You know what? There's this saying, right, that seriousness is not the same thing as solemnity. I think the book is very funny.

I think it's... Serious. And so I guess I wanted to sort of draw you out on the idea of this, you know, I mean, you say it's an entertainment, but there's a serious argument here, right, about how those of us who work on these issues interact with the structures that are around us.

Fred 26:26

Well, no, absolutely. There's, you know, there's a scene later on in the book, I don't know if you've gotten there yet, but where His mentor, who persuaded him to become a consultant in the first place, realizes that he'd sent him down the wrong path, that the whole field of consultants have betrayed their education, their experience, their knowledge, to focus just on the tactical aspects.

And that we've been involved in two horrible wars, Iraq and Afghanistan, and the consultants didn't step forth to weigh in on whether these wars really served our national interest, whether they increased our security. So yeah, and Serge Willoughby is a guy who comes into his profession, Doubting what he used to once believe, namely that That rational analysis and mathematical precision can really serve the benefit of policy.

He sees it all as a big joke and then he slowly comes around to thinking that, well, no, maybe these things do have an impact at pivotal moments. So yeah, the book is really about, and I'm glad that you think it's funny because that's my intent. But yeah, there's a very serious point about wrestling With things like responsibility and purpose in the world, and whether these things really mean something, and if they do, what you do about it.

Jeffrey 28:11

Yeah, I mean, what I have taken away as I've watched the arc unfold, and again, I have not gotten to the very end yet, but in the beginning, I think he doesn't think truth matters, or at least he doesn't think truth matters as much as other things.

Fred 28:24

Maybe it doesn't even exist. Yeah, right. Mm-hmm.

Jeffrey 28:27

And I am certainly far enough along that I know that he thinks that and that you think that, too.

Fred 28:35

That I think that, too? Wow. That you think truth matters. I don't think I'm as cynical as Serge Willoughby ever was.

Jeffrey 28:43

Okay.

Fred 28:43

I think I'm skeptical. I think I have a dark streak. I certainly view a lot of what goes on in official life as a joke, as he puts it. But I... You know, I don't think I'm quite that cynical.

Jeffrey 28:59

No, but I mean, you think truth matters.

Fred 29:02

Yeah, I do. Yeah, yeah, yeah. Oh, I thought you meant that I agree with him that it doesn't matter.

Jeffrey 29:06

No, that the moral arc puts us in the place that I want to end, because I think it's a really important place to end, that we can be funny, we can be cynical, but that to decide that we're going to work in a field, whether it's journalism or academia or We fundamentally think that it matters that what we say is true, which, you know, is maybe a little bit in short supply in America at the moment.

Fred 29:39

Okay, I'm where you're saying right there. That's where I'm at, yeah.

Jeffrey 29:45

Well, I really appreciate you coming on to talk about the book. Do you have book signings coming up, I think I saw online?

Fred 29:55

Well, yeah. In Washington and in New York.

Jeffrey 29:59

We have a lot of listeners in both places, so this would be the time for you to drag them out.

Fred 30:06

In Washington on October 26th, which is a Saturday, I will be at Politics and Prose, the Union Market branch.

Jeffrey 30:18

I wrote my dissertation almost entirely at the Van Ness branch. Oh, okay. Yeah, Alice Schelling used to come in every day and never once said any. Tom was on my committee. She never once interrupted me because she said it looked like I was working so hard. So when I finished my dissertation, she let me know that, okay, he had been getting daily updates as she bought coffee. Well, I thought, I've had, I've had this. Last time I had a book reading at Politics and Prose, these other branches didn't exist. so I, I've done readings for all my books.

Fred 30:51

At Politics and Prose, except the first one, Wizards of Armageddon, and that's only because the store didn't exist.

Jeffrey 30:56

It's incredible. So October 26th, the Union Market Branch.

Fred 31:00

And then October 29th, which is the following Tuesday, I have a reading at Community Bookstore in Park Slope, Brooklyn, which is my neighborhood bookstore. So yeah, come on out. If not, order it from someplace else.

Jeffrey 31:17

Great. So on the whole, happy with the reaction the book is getting?

Fred 31:24

You know, it's still early. It just came out a few days ago. Reviews haven't appeared yet. I hope they do. It's been getting very nice Twitter commentary. So, yeah, I hope we'll see. You know, publishing is... Such a strange thing these days. Nobody really quite knows what works or why. And so it's it's and I've, you know, never written a novel before.

So it's all kind of a, you know, a shot in the dark.

Jeffrey 31:53

Well, the book worked for me.

Fred 31:56

Good.

Jeffrey 31:58

So, Fred, thanks for coming on the podcast.

Fred 32:01

Thank you for inviting me.

Jeffrey 32:04

And to listeners, thank you for listening.