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

by Fred Kaplan

During one of his early trips to Omaha, Klinger asked one of the officers at JSTPS to analyze whether the treaty’s prospective cuts would affect their ability to fulfill their mission—whether they could continue to deter nuclear war and limit damage if deterrence failed. The officer replied that he didn’t do that sort of analysis. Klinger, thinking he wasn’t making himself clear, rephrased the question. The officer said that he understood the question perfectly well. He explained that JSTPS was prohibited from setting requirements or analyzing whether a certain kind of attack, with a certain number of weapons, would be militarily effective. This prohibition had been laid down in 1960, with the first SIOP, when Navy admirals feared that Air Force generals would use the war plan as a tool for controlling the Navy’s arsenal and budget. Klinger was astonished. The officers who drew up the war plan didn’t know—weren’t allowed to figure out—how many weapons they needed to protect the nation? What did they do then?