The Window of Survivability

2019 ◽  
pp. 53-96
Author(s):  
Edward M. Geist
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
The United States ◽  
Civil Defense ◽  
The Political ◽  
Nuclear War ◽  
Party Leadership ◽  
Institutional Goals ◽  
Official Ideology ◽  
Technological Developments

Prior to the introduction of thermonuclear weapons in the mid-1950s, civil defense to protect civilian populations appeared relatively plausible. Despite these apparently favourable conditions, both U.S. and Soviet civil defense failed to actualize their ambitious institutional goals. This chapter examines the political and institutional reasons for this failure. Even after the death of Stalin enabled a reappraisal of the USSR’s stultifying strictures on permissible discussions of nuclear weapons, official ideology and obsessive secrecy still crippled civil defense. The insistence that the highest level of Party leadership approve assumptions about nuclear war made it impossible for the program to respond to rapid strategic and technological developments. In the United States, the opposition of a handful of well-placed opponents in Congress limited funding to a small fraction of that which civil defense officials sought.

The Dual Problems of Peace and National Security

1984 ◽  
Vol 17 (01) ◽  
pp. 18-23
Author(s):  
Robert G. Gilpin
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Reagan Administration ◽  
Large Scale ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Nuclear War ◽  
Difficult Situation ◽  
Political Spectrum

The strategic consensus that has characterized American official and popular thinking about nuclear weapons since World War II has greatly eroded in recent years. That consensus consisted not only of an American determination to use nuclear weapons to deter a direct Soviet attack on the United States but also of a commitment to extend the American deterrent to cover a Soviet nuclear or large-scale conventional attack on America's principal allies. In the face of the recent massive and continuing growth of Soviet nuclear and conventional capabilities this consensus has come under growing challenge.This challenge to the consensus on the policy of nuclear deterrence has come from both ends of the political spectrum. On the political “right,” the Reagan administration has argued that deterrence alone is too weak a reed to forestall a Soviet attack on the United States or one of its allies; the prevention of a Soviet attack requires the development of a nuclear war-fighting strategy similar to that which the Soviets themselves are presumed to possess. On the political “left,” a large and highly vocal antinuclear movement largely under the banner of the “freeze,” challenges one aspect or another of the deterrence strategy and demands a deemphasis on, if not the complete elimination of, nuclear weapons. Both of these positions, I believe, are flawed and fail to provide a satisfactory solution to the difficult situation in which the United States finds itself in the closing decades of the twentieth century.

Iraq versus the United States

Tempting Fate ◽  
2019 ◽  
pp. 40-62
Author(s):  
Paul C. Avey
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Decision Making ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Regime Change ◽  
The United States ◽  
Civil Defense ◽  
Military Action ◽  
The Us ◽  
Saddam Hussein ◽  
Political Dispute

This chapter provides a background for Iraqi behavior during the period of American nuclear monopoly beginning in 1979 when Saddam Hussein was officially Iraqi president, focusing most heavily on events in 1989–1991. In an intense political dispute, Iraqi leadership took actions they believed would fall below the threshold of nuclear use. Most of the limitations that Iraq exhibited were due to its own weakness; it could do little more. For Iraq as a weak actor, war with the United States was possible precisely because it would pose such a low danger to the United States. Even then, Iraqi leadership incorporated the US nuclear arsenal into their decision making in 1990–1991. That confrontation is the most important to examine because it involved Iraqi military action that Iraqi leaders believed would invite some form of US response, and US compellent demands did not center on Iraqi regime change. In 1990, Saddam and his lieutenants held their own unconventional weapons in reserve and discounted an American nuclear strike because of the high strategic costs that such a strike would impose on the United States. They also undertook various civil defense measures to minimize losses from nuclear strikes. Fortunately, the Americans had little intention of using nuclear weapons and did not face a need to resort to nuclear use.

The continuing threat of nuclear war

2008 ◽  
Author(s):  
Joseph Cirincione
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
The United States ◽  
Nuclear War ◽  
The North ◽  
The Earth ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The World ◽  
Nuclear Winter

The American poet Robert Frost famously mused on whether the world will end in fire or in ice. Nuclear weapons can deliver both. The fire is obvious: modern hydrogen bombs duplicate on the surface of the earth the enormous thermonuclear energies of the Sun, with catastrophic consequences. But it might be a nuclear cold that kills the planet. A nuclear war with as few as 100 hundred weapons exploded in urban cores could blanket the Earth in smoke, ushering in a years-long nuclear winter, with global droughts and massive crop failures. The nuclear age is now entering its seventh decade. For most of these years, citizens and officials lived with the constant fear that long-range bombers and ballistic missiles would bring instant, total destruction to the United States, the Soviet Union, many other nations, and, perhaps, the entire planet. Fifty years ago, Nevil Shute’s best-selling novel, On the Beach, portrayed the terror of survivors as they awaited the radioactive clouds drifting to Australia from a northern hemisphere nuclear war. There were then some 7000 nuclear weapons in the world, with the United States outnumbering the Soviet Union 10 to 1. By the 1980s, the nuclear danger had grown to grotesque proportions. When Jonathan Schell’s chilling book, The Fate of the Earth, was published in 1982, there were then almost 60,000 nuclear weapons stockpiled with a destructive force equal to roughly 20,000 megatons (20 billion tons) of TNT, or over 1 million times the power of the Hiroshima bomb. President Ronald Reagan’s ‘Star Wars’ anti-missile system was supposed to defeat a first-wave attack of some 5000 Soviet SS-18 and SS-19 missile warheads streaking over the North Pole. ‘These bombs’, Schell wrote, ‘were built as “weapons” for “war”, but their significance greatly transcends war and all its causes and outcomes. They grew out of history, yet they threaten to end history. They were made by men, yet they threaten to annihilate man’.

Dangerous Confidence? Chinese Views on Nuclear Escalation

2019 ◽  
Vol 44 (2) ◽  
pp. 61-109 ◽  
Author(s):  
Fiona S. Cunningham ◽  
M. Taylor Fravel
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Armed Conflict ◽  
Chinese Language ◽  
The United States ◽  
Nuclear War ◽  
Force Structure ◽  
Alternative Sources

Chinese views of nuclear escalation are key to assessing the potential for nuclear escalation in a crisis or armed conflict between the United States and China, but they have not been examined systematically. A review of original Chinese-language sources and interviews with members of China's strategic community suggest that China is skeptical that nuclear escalation could be controlled once nuclear weapons are used and, thus, leaders would be restrained from pursuing even limited use. These views are reflected in China's nuclear operational doctrine (which outlines plans for retaliatory strikes only and lacks any clear plans for limited nuclear use) and its force structure (which lacks tactical nuclear weapons). The long-standing decoupling of Chinese nuclear and conventional strategy, organizational biases within China's strategic community, and the availability of space, cyber, and conventional missile weapons as alternative sources of strategic leverage best explain Chinese views toward nuclear escalation. China's confidence that a U.S.-China conflict would not escalate to the use of nuclear weapons may hamper its ability to identify nuclear escalation risks in such a scenario. Meanwhile, U.S. scholars and policymakers emphasize the risk of inadvertent escalation in a conflict with China, but they are more confident than their Chinese counterparts that the use of nuclear weapons could remain limited. When combined, these contrasting views could create pressure for a U.S.-China conflict to escalate rapidly into an unlimited nuclear war.

Civil Defense—the New Debate

Worldview ◽  
1979 ◽  
Vol 22 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 44-44
Author(s):  
Thomas J. Downey
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
The United States ◽  
Civil Defense ◽  
Nuclear War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
Limited Effectiveness ◽  
Basic Facts ◽  
Evacuation Plan ◽  
Do So

Anyone who believes that the Soviet Union, because of its civil defense program, is better able to survive a nuclear war than the United States is totally misguided. And anyone willing to accept such a foolish argument is blind to three basic facts.First, the massive urban evacuation program would have limited effectiveness in reducing the disastrous effects of a nuclear attack on the general population, even supposing that such a scheme could be effectively carried out on a national scale. Second, targeting for population destruction is not in any case a primary goal of our current strategic planning. Third, if Soviet strategic planners are contemplating a first-strike scenario against the United States (as many American hawks state in their arguments for an American civil defense evacuation scheme), they would be unable to employ their urban evacuation plan, because to do so would obviously destroy the element of surprise needed for any first strike to succeed.

The Populist Roots of Mass Production

2020 ◽  
pp. 19-50
Author(s):  
Stefan J. Link
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Twentieth Century ◽  
Political Economy ◽  
Mass Production ◽  
Political Ideology ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Political ◽  
Two Factors ◽  
Henry Ford ◽  
Technological Developments

This chapter traces mass production to its beginnings in the United States, where it emerged from the distinctive ideology of Midwestern populism. Why did Detroit, of all places, pioneer the industry that would shape the twentieth century like no other? Was Detroit simply lucky, as it were, to count a Henry Ford and a Ransom Olds among its citizens — incarnations of the American genius for innovation and entrepreneurship? Figures like Ford and Olds acted within the political economy of the Midwest and shared the characteristic populist commitments that suffused the region. These two factors — political economy and political ideology — go a long way toward explaining why, at the turn of the twentieth century, southeastern Michigan was in an auspicious position to get ahead of rapid technological developments and to spread its fruits widely. Experts with machines and metal, Midwestern mechanics gave their producerism a characteristic technological spin. This kind of producer populism permeated Detroit politics. The chapter then looks at a series of very different conflicts which honed Henry Ford's conviction that automotive mass production should reflect a producer-populist orientation.

Civil Defense—the New Debate

Worldview ◽  
1979 ◽  
Vol 22 (1-2) ◽  
pp. 40-41
Author(s):  
Paul H. Nitze
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
New York ◽  
World War Ii ◽  
New York Times ◽  
The United States ◽  
Civil Defense ◽  
World War ◽  
Nuclear War

George Kennan, in an interview published by the New York Times Magazine, affirmed the proposition that it is better to be “Red than dead.” Since the end of World War II the United States has been engaged in a successful effort to demonstrate that the choice thus implied is wrong. We have demonstrated, at least to date, that it is not necessary to be either “Red or dead“; it has been possible both to remain free and to avoid a nuclear war. The essential task is to continue so to do.In the last half of the 1950's, at the time of Sputnik, serious doubts arose as to whether a time would shortly arise when that issue—“Red or dead“—could become serious. It had not been a serious choice during the period when we had a nuclear monopoly, or even when we had an overwhelming and stable nuclear deterrent. But with the Soviet development of ICBMs, the technological practicality of which was first demonstrated by Sputnik, it became possible, perhaps probable, that the “better Red than dead” issue would arise in all seriousness in a few years.

The Hazards of Operations Involving Nuclear Weapons during the Cold War

2018 ◽  
Vol 20 (3) ◽  
pp. 207-249 ◽  
Author(s):  
Milton Leitenberg
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Cold War ◽  
Soviet Union ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
The United States ◽  
The Other ◽  
False Alarms ◽  
Nuclear War ◽  
The Soviet Union ◽  
The Cold War

This article provides an overview of the perils of U.S. and Soviet nuclear war planning during the Cold War. In particular, the article discusses instances of false alarms, when one side or the other picked up indications of an imminent attack by the other side and had to take measures to determine whether the indicators were accurate. None of these incidents posed a large danger of an accidental nuclear war, but they illustrate the inherent risks of the war preparations that both the United States and the Soviet Union took for their immense nuclear arsenals.

Counterforce Revisited: Assessing the Nuclear Posture Review's New Missions

2005 ◽  
Vol 30 (2) ◽  
pp. 84-126 ◽  
Author(s):  
Charles L. Glaser ◽  
Steve Fetter
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Foreign Policy ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
The United States ◽  
Nuclear Forces ◽  
Nuclear War ◽  
Trade Offs ◽  
Conventional Weapons ◽  
Damage Limitation ◽  
The Cold War

Current U.S. nuclear strategy identifies new nuclear counterforce missions as a means of impeding the proliferation of weapons of mass destruction. The strategy appears to overvalue these counterforce missions. U.S. conventional weapons can destroy most targets that can be destroyed with nuclear weapons; only moderately deep and precisely located targets can be destroyed only by nuclear weapons. In addition, the benefits of nuclear counterforce-which could include deterrence, damage limitation, and the continued ability of the United States to pursue its foreign policy objectives-are relatively small, because the United States possesses large nuclear forces and highly effective conventional forces. Finally, nuclear counterforce would bring a variety of costs, including an increased probability of accidental war and unnecessary preemptive attacks in a severe crisis. Nevertheless, the case for nuclear counterforce is stronger than during the Cold War, when the enormous size and redundancy of U.S. and Soviet forces rendered counterforce useless. When facing a small nuclear force, the United States may decide to use counterforce to limit damage. Although complex trade-offs are involved, if there are critical targets that can be destroyed only with nuclear weapons, then under a narrow set of conditions the benefits of planning for damage limitation might exceed the dangers. The United States must not, however, rely on nuclear counterforce to support a more assertive foreign policy; doing so would unjustifiably increase the probability of nuclear war.

scholarly journals L’évolution de la doctrine nucléaire américaine de contreforce

2005 ◽  
Vol 17 (1) ◽  
pp. 5-31
Author(s):  
Charles-Philippe David
Keyword(s):  
United States ◽  
Nuclear Weapons ◽  
Reagan Administration ◽  
The United States ◽  
Nuclear War ◽  
Nuclear Strategy ◽  
Strategic Consensus ◽  
Conventional Weapons ◽  
Central Purpose ◽  
The U.S

There has been a tendency lately in the United States to talk about the breakdown of the domestic consensus on the purpose of American nuclear strategy. The Reagan administration policies have been largely responsible for the growing felt need by many to question the doctrine and plans underlining that strategy. Why did the erosion of the strategic consensus take place ? One explanation examined in this paper is that the U.S. government has appeared in its nuclear strategy to emphasize more and more counterforce and limited nuclear war plans as its nuclear weapons policy, and therefore has become increasingly receptive to the idea that atomic bombs can be treated like conventional weapons and thought in ways characteristic of the pronuclear world. The central purpose of this article is to analyze how those two phenomenons - the attractiveness of counterforce and the erosion of the strategic consensus - are related to one another. The evolution of the doctrine of counterforce is assessed through a survey of the literature from 1974 to 1984, and particularly from 1980 with the coming to power of the Reagan administration.

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