On a Wednesday afternoon 67 Octobers ago, Franklin D. Roosevelt agreed to see Alexander Sachs, a New York economist and occasional adviser. The topic: weapons of mass destruction. The meeting, which took place at the White House on Oct. 11, 1939, was, Richard Rhodes wrote in the Pulitzer Prize-winning "The Making of the Atomic Bomb," "the first authoritative report to a head of state of the possibility of using nuclear energy to make a weapon of war." Sachs handed the president a cautionary letter from Albert Einstein and quoted a British scientist: "Personally, I think there is no doubt that sub-atomic energy is available all around us, and that one day man will release and control its almost infinite power. We cannot prevent him from doing so and can only hope that he will not use it exclusively to blow up his next door neighbor."
That hope--and hope is an elusive but essential element in international affairs--has been tested anew inside the "Hermit Kingdom" of North Korea. Kim Jong Il's secretive regime announced that it has now exploded a nuclear device; while there is debate about the scale of this particular experiment, the global community is in agreement on a grim truth: North Korea is a nuclear threat. The scientists who were warning Roosevelt on the brink of world war in 1939 were right: once such technology exists, powers driven by the intrinsic political hunger for respect will do what they can to master that technology for their own purposes. And so, seemingly inexorably, the Nuclear Club grows ever larger.
In our cover story, Michael Hirsh, Melinda Liu and George Wehrfritz draw on decades of reporting to reconstruct the bizarre history of North Korea's nuclear ambitions. Lally Weymouth interviews the new secretary-general of the United Nations, South Korea's Ban Ki Moon, and Fareed Zakaria assesses America's options, arguing that sanctions tend to work only when the rogue power believes we are trying to change its policies, not its regime.
On the home front, Karen Breslau, Eleanor Clift and Daren Briscoe profile Nancy Pelosi, and Jonathan Alter separates fact from fiction in the race to win the "values" voter. Many of you have read our coverage of the toll Iraq is taking on military marriages. (Our NEWSWEEK.com series on the subject is called War Stories.) Last week we posted such a strong piece about a war-torn family that Catharine Skipp, Dan Ephron and Michael Hastings updated the story for this issue of the magazine.
In the debut of her BeliefWatch column, Lisa Miller explores the curious backlash against Pastor Rick Warren. While Johnnie L. Roberts profiles Max Siegel, the new business impresario of gospel music, Sean Smith spends quality time with Annette Bening, and David Ansen interprets Clint Eastwood's "Flags of Our Fathers" through the prism of Afghanistan and Iraq. We are also pleased to offer an exclusive excerpt from Steven Levy 's new book on the iPod, "The Perfect Thing."
After his October 1939 conversation with Sachs, FDR set America's atomic research in motion. On April 11, 1945, the day before he died and three months before the Manhattan Project proved successful at Alamogordo, New Mexico, Roosevelt worked his last speech, one he would not live to deliver. "Today," FDR said, "science has brought all the different quarters of the globe so close together that it is impossible to isolate them one from another." Roosevelt's answer? "We must cultivate the science of human relationships." Wise words then--and now.
Uncommon Knowledge
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
Newsweek is committed to challenging conventional wisdom and finding connections in the search for common ground.
