The evolution of American nuclear strategy1

¹ An earlier version of this chapter was published as McDonough, ‘Nuclear Superiority or Mutually Assured Deterrence: The Development of the US Nuclear Deterrent’, International Journal , vol. 60, no. 3, Summer 2005, pp. 811–23.

Abstract

In 2002 the Bush administration completed a Nuclear Posture Review that introduced a ‘new triad’ based on offensive–strike systems, defences and a revitalised defence infrastructure. The new triad is designed for a new strategic threat environment, characterised not by a long–standing nuclear rivalry with another superpower, but by unstable relationships with rogue–state proliferators, alongside more ambiguous relations with nuclear–weapon powers.

Providing a historical context to these modifications to US nuclear strategy, this paper details how the new triad, which strongly emphasises the need to bolster the credibility of the nuclear deterrent and to prepare for nuclear use when deterrence fails, is founded on previous efforts to secure nuclear superiority against the Soviet Union and counter–proliferation capabilities against WMD–proliferant adversaries. It illustrates how the evolution of American nuclear strategy towards more effective counter–force capabilities, regardless of the current threat environment, has led to a host of counter–force developments. It discusses how this strategy is based on the long–standing American desire to control conflict escalation and how it may invite crisis instability with regional adversaries and disquiet among established nuclear powers. It proposes a limited approach, which could maximise the strategic advantages of the strategy and minimise the potential for strategic instability with Russia and China.

Notes

¹ An earlier version of this chapter was published as McDonough, ‘Nuclear Superiority or Mutually Assured Deterrence: The Development of the US Nuclear Deterrent’, International Journal , vol. 60, no. 3, Summer 2005, pp. 811–23.

² For more on the argument for the tactical use of nuclear weapons during the Second World War, see Barton J. Bernstein, ‘Eclipsed by Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Early Thinking about Tactical Nuclear Weapons’, International Security , vol. 15, no. 4, Spring 1991, pp. 149–73. An excellent account of the linkage between strategic bombardment and nuclear weapons can be found in Freedman, The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy , 3^rd edn (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003), esp. chs 3–4.

³ For more on the nuclear taboo, see Nina Tannenwald, ‘The Nuclear Taboo: The United States and the Normative Basis of Nuclear Non-Use’, International Organization , vol. 53, no. 3, Summer 1999, pp. 433–68 and ‘Stigmatizing the Bomb: Origins of the Nuclear Taboo’, International Security , vol. 29, no. 4, Spring 2005, pp. 5–49.

⁴ Cited in Scott D. Sagan, Moving Targets: Nuclear Strategy and National Security (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1989), p. 14.

⁵ David Alan Rosenberg, ‘The Origins of Overkill: Nuclear Weapons and American Strategy, 1945–1960’, International Security, vol. 7, no. 4, Spring 1983, p. 14.

⁶ This comment refers to the 1949 Dropshot plan, which was the most systematic of these early nuclear-war plans. Other plans included: the Broiler, Bushwacker and Half-moon plans of 1947–48, which emphasised hitting industrial facilities, economic infrastructure and other ‘retardation’ targets; and the 1949 Trojan plan, which added ‘withhold’ options against certain key cities. See Desmond Ball, Targeting for Strategic Deterrence , Adelphi Paper 185(London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1983), ch. 1.

⁷ Betts, Nuclear Blackmail and Nuclear Balance (Washington DC: Brookings, 1987), ch. 2. The Korean War saw ambiguous remarks by Truman during a press conference, in which he stated that ‘every weapon’ was under consideration for the conflict. The Berlin crisis saw the movement of 60 B-29 bombers, famous for their role in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, to Britain – a signal that can be considered the ‘shadow of deterrence’. In addition, the Strategic Air Command was placed on initial alert and, in December 1948, a war plan was approved that called for atomic attacks on 70 Soviet cities, with casualties estimated at 6.7m. See Sagan, Moving Targets , ch. 1.

⁸ Cited in Sagan, Moving Targets , p. 16. The National Military Establishment was the precursor organisation to the DoD, which combined the previously separate Department of War and Department of Navy. It was created by the National Security Act of 1947, and would be renamed the DoD in 1949.

⁹ See Rosenberg, ‘The Origins of Overkill’, pp. 3–71.

¹⁰ See Robert S. Norris, ‘Where They Were’, The Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists , vol. 55, no. 6, November/December 1999, pp. 26–35. Much of this article's evidence comes from the declassified ‘History of the Custody and Deployment of Nuclear Weapons: July 1945 Through September 1977’, which is a historical narrative that documents the growth of the US nuclear arsenal and the global deployment of nuclear weapons.

¹¹ NSC-68, United States Objectives and Programs for National Security (Washington DC: The White House, 7 April 1950), Section 8: http://www.fas.org/irp/offdocs/nsc-hst/nsc-68.htm.

¹² Marc Trachtenberg, ‘A “Wasting Asset”: American Strategy and the Shifting Nuclear Balance, 1949–1954’, International Security , vol. 13, no. 3, Winter 1988/89, p. 6. For more on preventive-war thinking during this period, see Gian P. Gentile, ‘Planning for Preventive War, 1945–1950’, Joint Forces Quarterly , no. 24, Spring 2000, pp. 68–74.

¹³ Cited in Trachtenberg, ‘The Bush Strategy in Historic Perspective’, in James L. Wirtz and Jeffrey A. Larsen, eds, Nuclear Transformation: The New US Nuclear Doctrine (Basingstoke: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), p. 13. A number of military officers would continue to express sympathy for preventive war after NSC68 had effectively rejected it, including General George Kenney, Curtis Lemay, Thomas Power, Nathan Twining, Thomas White and Hoyt Vandenberg. See Sagan, ‘The Perils of Proliferation: Organization Theory, Deterrence Theory, and the Spread of Nuclear Weapons’, International Security , vol. 18, no. 4, Spring 1994, pp. 78–9.

¹⁴ For more on the ‘new look’, see John Lewis Gaddis, Strategies of Containment: A Critical Appraisal of Postwar American National Security Policy (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1982), ch. 5 and Saki Dockrill, Eisenhower's New-Look National Security Policy, 1953–61 (New York: St Martin's Press, 1996).

¹⁵ Cited in Freedman, The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy , p. 78.

¹⁶ Ibid ., p. 119.

¹⁷ Cited in Rosenberg, ‘The Origins of Overkill’, p. 33.

¹⁸ See Gordon H. Chang, ‘To the Nuclear Brink: Eisenhower, Dulles, and the Quemoy–Matsu Crisis’, International Security , vol. 12, no. 4, Spring 1988, pp. 96–123. The six cases of nuclear blackmail are (1) the Korean War; (2) French Indochina in 1954;(3)Matsu and Quemoy in 1954–55; (4) Suez in 1956; (5) Lebanon in 1958; and (6) Matsu and Quemoy in 1958. See Betts, Nuclear Blackmail and Nuclear Balance , ch. 2.

¹⁹ Owing to the lack of adequate air-defence systems, the US remained highly vulnerable to Soviet bomber attacks. This vulnerability was only increased by the Soviet thermonuclear capability. A February 1953 research group calculated that a Soviet attack on 100 urban areas with 100 bombs (of which 11 were thermonuclear with a one-megatonne yield) would lead to 19m fatalities. Betts, ‘A Nuclear Golden Age?’, pp. 12.

²⁰ Rosenberg, ‘The Origins of Overkill’, p. 66.

²¹ Definitions of tactical nuclear weapons have often rested on the characteristics of the weapon, whether it be range, yield, target, national ownership, delivery vehicle or capability. A better definition would be based on the role of the weapon, whereby strategic use would be based on their independent impact against the enemy and tactical use would be in support of conventional operations. For more on tactical nuclear weapons, see Alistair Millar and Brian Alexander, Uncovered Nukes: Arms Control and the Challenge of Tactical Nuclear Weapons , Policy Brief (Washington DC: Fourth Freedom Forum, 30 November 2001).

²² For more on the formation of SIOP-62, see Rosenberg, ‘The Origins of Overkill’, pp. 3–71 and Ball, ‘The Development of SIOP, 1960–1983’, in Ball and Jeffrey Richelson, eds, Strategic Nuclear Targeting (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986), pp. 57–83.

²³ Rosenberg, ‘The Origins of Overkill’, p. 63.

²⁴ Freedman, Kennedy's Wars: Berlin, Cuba, Laos, and Vietnam (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2000), pp. 94–5. With this plan in mind, the United States called for the creation of 32 fully manned, combat-ready divisions on NATO's central region, of which the US portion would be increased to six divisions.

²⁵ Cited in Sagan, Moving Targets , pp. 26, 28.

²⁶ Ball, ‘Development of the SIOP’, p. 66. For a more critical examination of US first-strike capability, see Betts, ‘A Nuclear Golden Age?’, pp. 3–33.

²⁷ See Francis J. Gavin, ‘The Myth of Flexible Response: American Strategy in Europe during the 1960s’, International History Review , vol. 23, December 2001, pp. 847–75.

²⁸ Cited in Ball, ‘Development of the SIOP’, p. 65.

²⁹ Freedman, The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy, p. 230. The 1961 Berlin crisis seems to have played a pivotal role in the policy of strengthening nuclear-counterforce capabilities. The USAF advocated a nuclear first-strike during the 1961 crisis in order to limit damage to the United States, while civilian staff planner under Assistant Secretary of Defense Paul H. Nitze developed a secret Berlin-related contingency plan involving a first-strike counter-force attack. See Betts, ‘A Golden Age?’, p. 18 and Fred Kaplan, ‘JFK's First-Strike Plan’, Atlantic Monthly, vol. 288, no. 3, October 2001, pp. 81–6.

³⁰ Ball, ‘Development of the SIOP’, p. 70.

³¹ William Burr and Richelson, ‘Whether to “Strangle the Baby in the Cradle”: The United States and the Chinese Nuclear Program’, International Security, vol. 25, no. 3, Winter 2000/01, p. 67.

³² Cited in Terry Terriff, The Nixon Administration and the Making of US Nuclear Strategy (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1995), p. 22.

³³ Richard Smoke, National Security and the Nuclear Dilemma: An Introduction to the American Experience in the Cold War, 3^rd edn (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1993), ch. 10.

³⁴ Burr, ‘The Nixon Administration, the “Horror Strategy”, and the Search for Limited Nuclear Options, 1969–1972: A Prelude to the Schlesinger Doctrine’, Journal of Cold War Studies, vol. 7, no. 3, Summer 2005, p. 54. The concept of sufficiency was, however, still a highly ambiguous one, insofar as it did not fully elaborate on what was sufficient. Any policy could, therefore, be justified. As then-Deputy Secretary of Defense David Packard remarked on the meaning of suf-ficiency: ‘It means that it's a good word to use in a speech. Beyond that it doesn't mean a God-damned thing.’ Freedman, The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy, p. 325.

³⁵ The triad concept may be associated with Laird, but it does appear to be a concept that has been retroactively applied to previous policies and used as a means to justify the parochial interests underlying those policies. As Freedman notes, the triad appears to have been ‘derived less from intellectual compulsion than political convenience’, particularly ‘the acceptance by the civilian leadership of the pre-existent division of responsibities between the Services’. Freedman, The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy, p. 326.

³⁶ Cited in Burr, ‘The Nixon Administration’, p. 48.

³⁷ Press conference of Schlesinger at the National Press Club, Washington DC, cited in Terriff, The Nixon Administration, p. 1.

³⁸ For more on a winnable ‘nuclear war’, see Colin S. Gray, ‘Nuclear Strategy: The Case for a Theory of Victory’, International Security, vol. 4, no. 1, Summer 1979, pp.54–87 and Gray and Payne, ‘Victory is Possble’, Foreign Policy, no. 39, Summer 1980, pp. 14–27. For arguments critical of this perspective, see Charles-Philippe David, Debating Counterforce: A Conventional Approach in a Nuclear Age (Boulder, CO: Westview Press, 1987) and Jervis, The Illogic of American Nuclear Strategy, esp. ch. 3.

³⁹ This scenario was originally detailed in Paul H. Nitze, ‘Assuring Strategic Stability in an Era of Dènte’, Foreign Affairs, vol. 54, no. 2, January 1976, pp. 207–32. Also see Gray, ‘The Strategic Forces Triad: End of the Road?’, Foreign Affairs, vol. 56, no. 4, July 1978, pp. 771–89. For a concise critique of this type of vulnerability, see John D. Steinbruner, ‘Launch under Attack’, Scientific American, January 1984, pp. 37–47.

⁴⁰ Walter Slocombe, ‘The Countervailing Strategy’, International Security, vol. 5, no. 4, Spring 1981, p. 21. For an insightful examination of the development of this strategy, see Warner R. Schilling, ‘US Strategic Nuclear Concepts in the 1970s: The Search for Sufficiently Equivalent Countervailing Parity’, International Security, vol. 6, no. 2, Fall 1981, pp. 48–79.

⁴¹ Freedman, The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy, p. 387.

⁴² Jervis, The Illogic of American Nuclear Strategy, p. 130. Escalation dominance has its intellectual roots in the work of Herman Kahn at RAND in the 1950s, specifically his idea of the escalation ladder and the need to control and dominate the escalation process.

⁴³ Ball and Robert C. Toth, ‘Revising the SIOP: Taking War-Fighting to Dangerous Extremes’, International Security, vol. 14, no. 4, Spring 1980, p. 68. For more on Reagan's prevailing strategy, see Sagan, Moving Targets and Freedman, The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy, ch. 26.

⁴⁴ As pointed out by Jervis, while public pronouncements have changed dramatically, changes to actual targeting and SIOPs have been ‘evolutionary’. Jervis, The Illogic of American Nuclear Strategy, p. 65.

⁴⁵ Terriff, The Nixon Administration, p. 3.

⁴⁶ Jervis, The Illogic of American Nuclear Strategy, p. 72. For more on the ethnictargeting controversy, see David T. Cattell and George H. Quester, ‘Ethnic Targeting: Some Bad Ideas’, in Ball and Richelson, eds, Strategic Nuclear Targeting (Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1986), pp. 267–84.

⁴⁷ Ball and Toth, ‘Revising the SIOP’, p. 68. For a good look at the threat of decapitation, see Steinbruner, ‘Launch Under Attack’, pp. 37–47 and ‘Nuclear Decapitation’, Foreign Policy, no. 45, Winter 1981–82, pp. 18–28.

⁴⁸ Other weapon concepts included shallow and rigid earth-penetrator weapons; manoeuvrable re-entry vehicles, which would be able to evade Soviet interceptor missiles, to slow down to minimise the impact and to position the warhead for maximum penetration; larger nuclearweapon yields (up to 22 megatonnes); and rapid retargetable Minuteman ICBMs. For more on these concepts, see Ball and Toth, ‘Revising the SIOP’, pp. 65–92.

⁴⁹ Ibid., p. 66.

⁵⁰ See Walter J. Boyne, ‘The Rise of Air Defense’, Air Force Magazine, vol. 22, no. 12, December 1999. The United States, in cooperation with Canada, developed the Pinetree Line and the Distant Early Warning Line in the Arctic. These radar networks were complemented with the Mid-Canada Line, which was initiated by Canada and built entirely with its own resources.

⁵¹ Brennan, ‘The Case for Missile Defense’, Foreign Affairs, vol. 47, no. 3, April 1969, p. 433. Of course, it should be noted that the Johnson administration was not the first to examine the feasibility of missile defence. BMD dates back to the 1956 Nike–Zeus ABM system pioneered by the US Arny. The Nike–Zeus ABM system was finally shelved in 1962, but its successor, the Nike–X, would go on to form the core of the Johnson administration's Sentinel ABM system.

⁵² Reagan, ‘Address to the Nation on National Security’, 23 March 1983, http://www.fas.org/spp/starwars/offdocs/rrspch.htm.

⁵³ For more on the various programmes of the SDI, see Sidney D. Drell, Philip J. Farley and David Holloway, ‘Preserving the ABM Treaty: A Critique of the Reagan Strategic Defense Initiative’, International Security, vol. 9, no. 2, Fall 1984, pp. 51–91 and John A. Jungerman, The Strategic Defense Initiative: A Critique and a Primer, Policy Paper 8 (San Diego, CA: Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, University of California, 1988).

⁵⁴ Studies by the Strategic Defense Initiative Organization and the Defense Nuclear Agency cited in Ball and Toth, ‘Revising the SIOP’, pp. 81–2.

⁵⁵ Reagan, ‘Address to the Nation on National Security’.

⁵⁶ See Douglas A. Ross, Coping with Star Wars: Issues for Canada and the Alliance, Aurora Papers 2 (Ottawa, ON: Canadian Centre for Arms Control and Disarmament, 1985).