The Bomb: Presidents, Generals, and the Secret History of Nuclear War

by Fred Kaplan

But Mattis also heard two new arguments. One was floated by retired General Bob Kehler, the former head of StratCom who had helped Obama’s security team plumb the nuclear war plan and who had been the main author of the letter to the Wall Street Journal defending the Triad. Kehler pointed out that, since President George H. W. Bush’s unilateral initiatives, none of America’s bombers had been on runway alert and few were loaded with nuclear bombs. If there were a nuclear war, it would probably be preceded by spiraling tensions, which would give the president time to put the planes on alert—though it was possible he wouldn’t take that step, knowing it might escalate tensions. In any case, on a day-to-day basis, the United States already had a dyad; eliminating the ICBMs would leave just one leg, the submarines, and if some technological breakthrough made the submarines vulnerable, the entire nuclear arsenal would be obsolete. Kehler’s argument—which he had outlined to a few previous defense secretaries from his perch at StratCom—had appeal to senior officials whose jobs swayed them toward extreme caution about security. The second argument, which had germinated inside the Pentagon’s Joint Staff, was known as the “sponge theory.” The idea was that, without the ICBMs, there would be only five “strategic” targets in the continental United States—three bomber bases (in North Dakota, Missouri, and Louisiana) and two submarine ports (in Bangor, Washington, and Kings Bay, Georgia)....