Prof. Peter Kuznick: “Imperialism is the enemy of freedom*”

Mohsen Abdelmoumen: Historical experience indicates that all empires that have overestimated the power of their military force inevitably end up destroying themselves. In your opinion, to what extent is the US currently in this phase of decline?

Peter Kuznick: I’d say we’re in a strange historical period. Greater military power is no longer determinative in itself. First, nuclear weapons are the great equalizer. As Henry Wallace and others recognized 80 years ago, having only one or a handful of nuclear weapons and delivery systems is sufficient to neutralize a more nuclear powerful adversary. Second, having demonstrably superior conventional forces is also no longer determinative as we’ve seen in Ukraine and Iran. Neither Russia nor the U.S. has been able to defeat their adversaries. This was also the case for the U.S. in Vietnam, Iraq, and Afghanistan and for Russia in Afghanistan. Now with drones, robotics, and AI, asymmetric warfare enables weaker nations to resist invasion and bombing by much stronger ones. This is a dual-edged sword. It makes the use of nuclear weapons more conceivable, but it also suggests that warfare is now obsolete. Let’s hope the latter understanding is the one that prevails.

I recently conducted a fascinating interview with Aaron Good. Aaron Good, drawing inspiration from Peter Dale Scott, characterizes the assassination of JFK as a Deep State operation aimed at thwarting his departure from the imperial consensus. You, who have studied the Kennedy presidency in depth, do you share this conclusion? If so, why does the American academic establishment persist in not teaching this version of events, more than 60 years after the fact?

I love Aaron Good. He’s a dear friend. He invited me to speak at the George School when he was teaching there. He brought his George School students to participate along with my American University students on my study-abroad class in Kyoto, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki. I served on his Temple University dissertation committee. I introduced him to Dan Ellsberg who introduced him to Peter Dale Scott.

I’m still not sure if it was the deep state, the shallow state, or something in between who killed President Kennedy. I do know that there were lots of malefactors who hated him and would have been glad to see him dead, including the Mafia, the FBI, the CIA, the Pentagon, Southern segregationists, anti-Castro Cubans, pro-Castro Cubans, the Soviets, the Israelis. The list goes on. It sometimes seems the only ones who didn’t want him dead were Aaron, Oliver, Oswald, and me. Actually, Aaron was not born yet and Oswald may have head a motive. So that leaves Oliver and me–plus also most of humanity.

Kennedy underwent a dramatic transformation after the Cuban Missile Crisis and, during the last year of his life, did want to defy the warmakers and bring world peace. He also wanted to withdraw from Vietnam and end the Cold War. He also wanted to end the space race and achieve nuclear abolition. His vision for the world would have required turning it upside down. How wonderful that would have been. Oliver and I said that the forces who brought him down were the same ones who thwarted Henry Wallace twenty years earlier. And Kennedy had a partner in Khrushchev who also realized, perhaps even more than Kennedy, how close we came to nuclear war in October 1962. So yes, there were a lot of potential candidates for assassinating Kennedy. Who actually did the foul deed may never be known. But just teaching the history this way shows students how close we came to creating a different and better world and that it is possible to do so again. I find that most good historians raise doubts about the assassination–at least on the college level. And Oliver’s movie JFK lays out the conspiratorial thesis quite brilliantly. I thought we did so quite well in Untold History without suggesting we knew who actually pulled the trigger.

In your collaborations with Oliver Stone, you highlight the missed turning points in American history (such as the replacement of Henry Wallace by Harry Truman). Aaron Good, for his part, argues that institutions in the United States are structured to preserve the empire’s dominance, regardless of who is in power. Have Aaron Good’s works led you to reevaluate your perspective, abandon hope for political reform, and acknowledge total systemic corruption?

Absolutely not. The system may be structured in a way to preserve the status quo, keep the ruling elites in power, and thwart forces who are trying to overturn things and change them for the better, but they are neither all powerful or all knowing. We’ve come close many times to having different outcomes. Oliver and I argue that if Roosevelt had lived longer or if Wallace had replaced him on April 12, 1945 instead of Truman, there likely would have been no atomic bombings in 1945 and no Cold War. The power brokers and their capitalist allies may have prevailed, but it was by the tiniest of margins. Had Claude Pepper made it five more feet to the microphone at the 1944 Democratic Convention, we might be living in a peaceful, humane, and prosperous world today. Kennedy and Khrushchev were also struggling to create a better world. Things looked hopeful when Obama was elected in 2008 after eight years of George Bush. Obama was an example of someone who could have but lacked the courage to challenge the corrupt and greedy rulers to whom he capitulated. Maybe after a second term of Trumpian fascistic cruelty, bullying, glorification of ignorance, stupidity, greed, bellicosity, and mendacity, the world might be ready to try a fundamentally different approach. While we’re still here, there is hope.

When assessing the main argument of your book, co-authored with Oliver Stone, could one say that Iran truly poses a threat to global security, or is it merely a significant geopolitical obstacle to American dominance in the Middle East?

Iran, whatever the crimes and shortcomings of its theocratic leaders and repressive system, is primarily a threat to U.S. and Israeli regional domination. The neocons, in their declaration of unipolarity, Defense Planning Guidance, Project for a New American Century, and forever wars of lies and aggression, made clear that no regional power would be allowed to rise in a way that would threaten U.S. hegemony even in one region. Iran has done so in Southwest Asia. Russia has done so in Eastern and Central Europe. China has done so in the Indo-Pacific. The U.S. and its allies have tried to contain and defeat the threats.

That said, I’m not a fan of the Iranian theocracy and the way the government has treated its citizens since the overthrow of Mossadegh in 1953. I despised the Shah and Savak and I continue to condemn the Islamic Republic. But it is certainly not the responsibility of the U.S., who has been guilty of repressing and exploiting the Iranian people for decades, to intervene in Iranian affairs. 

Professor Kuznick, you provided a detailed analysis of the devastating effects of Operation Ajax in 1953 on Iran. How does the memory of this CIA-led coup d’état continue to act discreetly on the resilience strategy of the current Iranian regime against the Washington administration?

The Iranians have good reason to hate the United States and not trust anything it says or does and that goes back at least to 1953. It is similar to the North Korean hatred and mistrust of the U.S. for its viciousness in the early 1950s and since. If any Iranians forgot about U.S. treachery, they were reminded by the U.S./Israeli attacks in June and February. It is interesting though not shocking to me to see that the U.S. media and “experts” trace the tension between the U.S. and Iran to 1979. They never even mention 1953 so I make sure to do so on every occasion. How would Americans feel if Iran or the Soviet Union had intervened to overthrow a popular U.S. president who, according to the U.S. ambassador at the time, had the support of between 95 and 98 percent of the American people?

As an expert on the nuclear age, if you were serving as a confidential advisor in Tehran, wouldn’t you advise him that the fate of Libya under Gaddafi and Iraq under Saddam shows that possessing nuclear weapons is the only surefire guarantee against a U.S.-led regime change?

This is another complicated issue. Certainly having nuclear weapons is the only way to prevent another U.S./Israeli attack. However, Iran has means to retaliate that are even more powerful than nuclear weapons–including control over the Strait of Hormuz and swarming drones and missiles toward Dimona. Trump keeps saying that if Iran had a nuclear weapon they would immediately attack Israel, but that is nonsense. The Iranian leaders are not suicidal and they know that if they attacked Israel with a nuclear bomb, Israel would retaliate in kind and devastate Iran. So the simple logic is that having a bomb equals a guarantee against invasion, but the reality is that it makes one a more likely target of nuclear attack.

Professor Kuznick, as someone who analyzes the long-term history of the United States, are we witnessing today an unprecedented historical shift in the nature of Washington’s unconditional support for Tel Aviv, or is this simply a continuation of Cold War doctrine?

We appear to be witnessing a dramatic shift in U.S. support for Israel. We haven’t seen anything like this since the Suez Crisis. The U.S. has long put almost all its eggs in the Israel basket for control of the Middle East. Trump, perhaps out of desperation to save his own neck, seems to be throwing Bibi under the bus, which is where he belongs. I often refer to Netanyahu as Bibi the Butcher because of his brutal destruction of Gaza. Trump has no loyalty. He broke with Modi and he has recently broken with Netanyahu. He justifies Iran having a missile program and has so strengthened Iran in the MOU that its leaders have a new lease on life. The billions of dollars they will receive as a result of this deal will not only entrench its leaders, it will make Iran one of the two most powerful nations in the region. So Trump’s support for Tel Aviv, like his support for all traditional U.S. allies, is very conditional.

You have extensively documented the abuses of American imperialism. How does the U.S. administration’s unconditional support for Israel’s military intervention in Gaza reveal a recurrence of the darkest moments in American diplomacy, similar to episodes such as Vietnam or Iraq?

Biden and Trump have both provided Israel with the weaponry, funding, intelligence, and political cover to carry out its horrific slaughter in Gaza. While no one should exonerate what Hamas did on October 7, that does not in any way justify the Gaza genocide, which outraged the conscience of humanity. I saw how Gaza became the burning moral issue for my students and others between the ages of 18 and 30. It reminded me about the way my generation felt about Vietnam, though the numbers and duration are not comparable. Robert McNamara told my students that he accepted that 3.8 million Vietnamese died in the war. When I was in Hanoi last year, the Vietnamese leaders told me they believe the death toll to have been 5 million. While Vietnam is sometimes called a “television war,” Gaza was even more of a television war. The images of death and destruction were everywhere. Seeing that horrified my students and changed the image of Israel from a heroic David to a modern-day ruthless executioner. Now more than 60 percent of Americans have a negative view toward Israel. 80 percent of Democrats do. Israel is radioactive among younger Americans. But the blind U.S. support for Israel’s oppression of the Palestinians is not longer there, which might make for progress toward a Palestinian state.

Professor Kuznick, in your analysis of U.S. foreign policy, how do you explain Washington’s persistent blindness during the Cold War to Algeria’s role as a “Mecca for revolutionaries”? Did the United States miss a historic opportunity to understand nonalignment by systematically reducing it to a tool of Moscow? 

The United States was the enemy of revolutionary nationalism during the Cold War. That was evident throughout the 1950s and changed briefly under Kennedy. But with the Mann Doctrine and other repressive measures, the U.S. reverted to viewing progressive nationalists as being in bed with Moscow during the Johnson administration and did everything it could to defeat Algerian nationalists and others throughout the Global South. Egypt’s Nasser was of particular interest to the Americans as was the Bandung Conference.

You often speak out against the “untold stories” of the American Empire. If we apply this framework to the Global South, how does the refusal of Western powers to fully acknowledge their colonial legacy—such as the crimes of French colonization in Algeria—continue to hinder relations between the West and the Global South today?

The Europeans have a vile history of colonial exploitation. Japan emulated them in the 1930s and 1940s. The U.S. did so starting in the 1890s and has continued to do so till today as witnessed in the recent kidnapping of the Maduros in Venezuela. But the Global South, in conjunction with the BRICS, the SCO, the African Union, and others has reasserted itself and begun to carve out a path that repudiates war and exploitation. China, Brazil, and, at times, India have encouraged this new direction. When Russia ends its highly provoked but still unjustifiable invasion of Ukraine, it can also join the movement. It would be a wonderful and universally welcome rejection of the colonial past and the push for greed and domination that we’ve seen for the past century plus. President Kennedy supported the Algerian revolution and said that imperialism was “the enemy of freedom.” He saluted Algerian independence in 1962. Pontecorvo’s “The Battle of Algiers” had a great influence on my generation’s attitude towards colonialism and helped inspire the Vietnam antiwar movement. It also helped turn a lot of us into New Left radical activists.

France’s first steps as a nuclear power came at the expense of the colonized Algerian populations in the Sahara. As a nuclear historian, do you believe that Algeria’s current stance in favor of total disarmament is a direct response to this trauma, and why are the nations of the Global South the only ones sincerely waging this fight today?

France’s nuclear testing in the Sahara greatly influenced the fiercely anti-nuclear attitude of the Algerian people. Between 1960 and 1966, France conducted 17 nuclear tests in Algeria. These continued even after Algeria won independence. The tests traumatized the Algerian people, who have been staunch supporters of nuclear disarmament since. The citizens of the Global South know that they will suffer the consequences of nuclear winter as much as will the citizens in the combatant nations. And the recent wars in Ukraine and Southwest Asia on top of the threat of war in the Taiwan Strait has brought the world closer to nuclear war than it has been in more that 80 years. Former DNI Tulsi Gabbard warned of the danger of nuclear war in her June 10, 2025 video that began with footage of Hiroshima. Supporting nuclear abolition is an expression of sanity. Trump’s latest nuclear threats against Iran are an expression of desperation and lunacy.

Interview conducted by Mohsen Abdelmoumen

Peter Kuznick, Professor of History and Director of the Nuclear Studies Institute at American University, is author of Beyond the Laboratory: Scientists As Political Activists in 1930s America (University of Chicago Press), co-author with Akira Kimura of Rethinking the Atomic Bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Japanese and American Perspectives (Horitsu Bunkasha, 2010), co-author with Yuki Tanaka of Genpatsu to hiroshima – genshiryoku heiwa riyo no shinso (Nuclear Power and Hiroshima: The Truth Behind the Peaceful Use of Nuclear Power (Iwanami, 2011), and co-editor with James Gilbert of Rethinking Cold War Culture (Smithsonian Institution Press).

A New York native, he received his Ph.D. from Rutgers University in 1984. He was active in the Civil Rights and anti-Vietnam War movements and remains active in antiwar and nuclear abolition efforts. In 1995, he founded American University’s Nuclear Studies Institute. That year, on the 50th anniversary of the atomic bombings, his Institute co-hosted a major exhibit with the cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, which displayed many of the artifacts that were originally supposed to be part of the Smithsonian’s ill-fated Enola Gay exhibit. Every summer, since 1995, he has taken Institute students on a study-abroad class in Kyoto, Hiroshima, and Nagasaki. The Institute was named the most creative and innovative summer program in North America by the North American Association of Summer Sessions. In 2003, Kuznick organized a group of scholars, writers, artists, clergy, and activists to protest the Smithsonian’s celebratory display of the Enola Gay at the Smithsonian Air and Space Museum annex. As part of this effort, he cofounded the Committee for a National Discussion of Nuclear History and Current Policy and the Nuclear Education Project with Hiroshima Mayor Tadatoshi Akiba and professors Mark Selden and John Dower.

His current projects include a book on scientists and the Vietnam War and another that looks at how the evolving understanding that nuclear war could lead to annihilation of all life on the planet has shaped the behavior and views of military strategists, policymakers, and the public. He and Oliver Stone co-authored the 10 part Showtime documentary film series and book both titled The Untold History of the United States. He regularly provides commentary for all the major U.S. and international media and has begun his fourth three-year term as Organization of American Historians Distinguished Lecturer.

*In his famous speech delivered to the U.S. Senate in July 1957 concerning the independence of Algeria, Senator John F. Kennedy stated that “the great enemy of this formidable force for freedom is called […] imperialism.”

Published in French in La Nouvelle République