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posture of our strategic nuclear forces has always been shaped by the requirements of quite different purposes: to attempt to limit the damage to the United States from Soviet or Russian retaliation to a U.S. first strike against the USSR or Russia.
The required U.S. strategic capabilities have always been for a first-strike force: not, under any president, for a U.S. surprise attack, unprovoked or “a bolt out of the blue,” but not, either, with an aim of striking
Though officially denied, preemptive “launch on warning” (LOW)—either on tactical warning of an incoming attack or strategic warning that nuclear escalation is probably impending—has always been at the heart of our strategic alert.
U.S. presidents have used our nuclear weapons dozens of times in “crises,” mostly in secret from the American
public (though not from adversaries). They have used them in the precise way that a gun is used when it is pointed at someone in a confrontation, whether or not the trigger is pulled. To get one’s way without
He was continuing a policy of threatening possible American initiation of nuclear war that has, outside
Posing as it does the threat of nuclear attack by the United
States to every state that might potentially be in conflict with us (like North Korea), this persistent rejection by the United States of a no-first-use commitment has always precluded an effective nonproliferation campaign.
President Eisenhower had secretly delegated authority to initiate nuclear attacks to his theater commanders under various circumstances, including the outage of communications
American plans for “decapitation” of Soviet command and control led to the institution and maintenance of a “Dead Hand”19 system of delegation that would assure retaliation to an American attack that destroyed Moscow and other command centers.
events spiraled out of control, coming within a handbreadth of triggering our plans for general nuclear war.
There would be no limiting of damage to the superpower attacker—or to its allies, or the “enemy” population or that of neutrals throughout the globe—by
The present risks of the current nuclear era go far beyond the dangers of proliferation and non-state terrorism that have been the almost exclusive focus of public concern for the past generation and the past decade in particular.
The hidden reality I aim to expose is that for over fifty years, all-out thermonuclear war—an irreversible, unprecedented, and almost unimaginable calamity for civilization and most life on earth—has
and before these, World War I, a catastrophe waiting to happen,
William F. Ogburn’s notion of “cultural lag.”
Bad enough that bombs already existed that could destroy a whole city block. They were called “block-busters”:
I thought: We got it first. And we used it. On a city.
A feeling, new to me as an American, at fourteen, that my country might have made a terrible mistake.
How could he? The answer is that he believed, even before others, that they were racing Hitler to the attainment of this power.
Truman proposed U.S. readiness to support “free peoples” anywhere from the imposition of “totalitarian regimes,” a phrase he used four times in his speech.
Korea a limited, conventional war, rejecting General Douglas MacArthur’s recommendations to expand the war to China and to use nuclear weapons.
They shared a feeling—soon transmitted to me—that we were in the most literal sense working to save the world.
I couldn’t believe that the world would long escape nuclear holocaust.
but by what the Soviets could foresee would be our “second-strike capability” to retaliate to their first strike.
was that adequate deterrence for the United States demanded a survivable, assured second-strike capability to kill more than the twenty million Soviet citizens who had died in World War II.
having “strategic” warning of an imminent enemy attack—an intelligence warning received prior to any enemy weapons having been launched against us. But planning on strategic warning is dangerous,44 and this cannot be overemphasized.… If we are to be realistic and accurate before the event, the most positive answer we can ever expect to the question, “Are the Soviets going to attack us?” is “Perhaps.” And the answers to the other important but vexing questions, “When?” and “Where?” will be even more uncertain.… The real
U.S. nuclear attacks could be initiated only by a presidential decision at the time of the attacks. The general public believed that as well, and believed further that the president would never delegate this authority under any circumstances.
I recall that the plan called for a total of forty megatons—megatons—on Moscow, about four thousand times more than the bomb over Hiroshima and perhaps twenty to thirty times more than all the non-nuclear
bombs dropped by the Allies in both theaters during more than four years of WWII …
“May I ask a question?” General Power turned again in his front-row seat, stared into the darkness and said, “Yeah, what is it?” in a tone not likely to encourage the timid. “What if this isn’t China’s war?” the voice asked. “What if this is just a war with the Soviets? Can you change the plan?” “Well, yeah,” said General Power resignedly, “we can, but I hope nobody thinks of it, because it would really screw up the plan.”
felt as if I were witnessing a comparable descent into the deep heart of darkness, a twilight underworld governed by disciplined, meticulous and energetically mindless groupthink aimed at wiping out half the people living on nearly one third of the earth’s surface.
public.) I also wanted to make civilian authority aware of the extreme degree of reliance on delegation, as well as all the other risks of unauthorized action I had discovered.
The director said, “But we’ve never released that. I can’t.” Bundy told him, “You don’t seem to be hearing me. It’s the president who wants it.” “We’ll brief him on it.” Bundy said, “The president is a
great reader. He wants to read it.”
revealed in Whole World on Fire71 the bizarre fact that the war planners of SAC
and the Joint Chiefs—throughout the nuclear era to the present day—have deliberately omitted entirely from their estimates of the destructive effects of U.S. or Russian nuclear attacks the effects of fire.
These effects arose from another neglected consequence of our attacks on cities: smoke.
This would reduce sunlight and lower temperatures72 worldwide to a point that would eliminate all harvests and starve to death—not all but nearly
all—humans (and other animals that depend on vegetation for food).
the phenomenon of nuclear winter wasn’t predicted by environmental scientists until decades after the Cuban missile crisis.
There is much evidence that such catastrophic “major attack options”73 were among the choices offered to presidents Carter, Reagan, and George H. W. Bush, i.e., until the end of the Cold War.
Ever since then, there have existed two Doomsday Machines, each on high alert and subject to possible false alarms and the temptation to preemption, a situation much more than twice as dangerous as existed in the early sixties.
In 1986, the U.S. had 23,317 nuclear warheads
Russia had 40,159, for a total of 63,836 weapons.
“he should reach his own clear conclusion in advance as to what he would do, and that he should tell no one at all what that conclusion was.”
I believed that for the United States to initiate limited or general
nuclear war under any circumstances would be catastrophic.
secretly advised President Kennedy, and after him
President Johnson, that under no circumstances whatever should they ever initiate nuclear war.†
