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It is often assumed that the nuclear strategy of the United States is more easily codified than that of the USSR because of the much freer dissemination of information. While much has been written by analysts and advisers, and much has been said by both military men and politicians, the true nuclear strategy, planned or unplanned, can only be deduced by an examination of the overall targeting plan at any given timee. It is tempting to suggest that a particular strategic doctrine was being implemented during a given period, and then to demonstrate how the military posture supported this doctrine; but this approach is less than honest. The development of new weapons may be in response to a change in strategy, but may also be the result of the pressures of industrial or military lobby groups, the momentum of research, or the inertia of the procurement organisation.
To examine the development of nuclear strategy in the United States, it is necessary to compare the capabilities with the declared policies in the light of the perceived threat.
When World War II ended, the United States found it prudent to build up a stockpile of atomic bombs. Any potential nuclear weapon state is limited by the time that it takes to produce weapons' grade fissile material. The American stockpile grew, even though there was no strategy in the immediate post-war period for the specific use of nuclear weapons. There was, however, sufficient concern about the future implications of such weapons for the Administration to push hard for the international control of all nuclear activities through the Baruch Plan. By 1948, the arsenal contained 50 atomic bombs, which could be delivered by a total of 32 suitably modified B-29s (l). While the strategic thinkers, such as Bernard Brodie (2) were announcing the advent of deterrence, the military were absorbing the new weapons into their contingency planning. Atomic bombs were seen as more effective aerial bombardment weapons, which could be employed in future conflicts to reenact the strategic bombing of World War II with greater success.
The American perception for the threat of Communist expansion grew during the period. The Truman Doctrine, in 1947, formalised the opposition to the spread of Communism and by mid-1948, when the Soviets blockaded Berlin, war between the United States and the Soviet Union was an imminent possibility. The study by George and Smoke (3) concludes that the Blockade was an example of the failure of the American nuclear supremacy to deter lower level confrontations. It would seem as valid to suggest that it was the nuclear element which deterred sufficiently to keep the conflict at a low level.
The Soviet Union tested its first successful atomic device on 23 September 1949. This did not instantly make it capable of effective nuclear retaliation to any attack by the United States. It did, however, concentrate the minds of the planners to the prospect of a future where a nuclear strike might be reciprocated. Michael Mandelbaum describes the 'New Look' of the Eisenhower Administration in 1953 as the first time that the American government had given a formal answer to what political purposes atomic weapons would serve, and how they should be deployed to serve these purposes.(4)
The Secretary of State, John Foster Dulles, in a speech in 1954 stated that it was the aim of the United States to deter the Soviets, by meeting a range of Communist acts of aggression with the full might of 'massive retaliation'. However by April, he had tempered this view slightly, and was saying:
In many cases any open assault by Communist forces could only result in starting a general war. But the Free World must have the means for responding effectively on a selective basis when it chooses. (5)
The policy retained a degree of ambiguity: massive retaliation, with a flavour of flexible response to make it more digestible.
Professor Rathjens, who was involved with target planning, recalls that there were three types of strategic targets considered. These were the 'Bravo' against military targets in the Soviet Union; the 'Delta' destruction mission aimed at the Soviet war-making potential; and the 'Romeo' mission designed to retard the movement of Soviet forces into Western Europe. Discussion over priorities reveals the relative importance accorded to each:
As might have been expected, there was conflict over allocation or effort to the three missions: arguments about which allocation would have the most favourable effect on war outcome - significantly, not about whether allocating more resources to, say, the Delta' mission would enhance deterrence. (6)
Aaron Friedberg confirms the wide range of targets during this period.(7) Despite the political debate over whether the policy of retaliation against the enemy's cities and industry was the right one, an increasing target list of Soviet military installations was being developed. However, while counter-force targeting might have its military (and moral) attraction, it was technically impractical because of the limited weapon accuracy.
Defence policy had played a significant part in the presidential election campaign of John F. Kennedy. It was inevitable that his coming into office, in January 1961, would be an occasion for a wide scale review of American nuclear strategy. He had dwelt much on the forecast 'missile gap', which echoed the country's new realisation that it was from hence forwards directly vulnerable in war. He quickly made it clear that the policy of deterrence through massive retaliation was to be maintained. His Secretary of Defense, Robert S. McNamara, saw the problem initially as ensuring that the deterrent remained credible, even if the enemy could launch a preemptive attack. The policy must be to provide a survivable retaliatory force:
We can no longer hope to have such a deterrent merely by maintaining a larger stockpile of nuclear weapons. Our weapons must be hardened, dispersed, and mobile so that they can survive an enemy attack ...(8)
In this speech in February 1962, McNamara elaborated how these survivable forces could be used. The single massive attack was one option. They could be used to 'limit damage to ourselves, and our allies, by knocking out the enemy's bases before he has time to launch his second salvos'. A third possible use was as a bargaining weapon to terminate a war. The new policy offered the flexibility to choose from several operational plans, without requiring any specific advance commitment. He emphasised the need to balance nuclear strength with adequate non-nuclear capability.
In June 1962, the strategy was considerably refined when McNamara said that the 'principal military objectives, in the events of a nuclear war stemming from a major attack on the Alliance, should be the destruction of the enemy's military
forces, not of his civilian population'. He went on to indicate that the ability to destroy an enemy society would still be available, and that this would give 'the strongest imaginable incentive to refrain from striking our cities'.(9)
The Cuban missile crisis of October 1962 made the practical application of nuclear strategy an imminent possibility. Robert Kennedy writes of the attention which the President gave to every detail of both the diplomatic and the military aspects of the crisis.l° From this, it seems inconceivable that, if nuclear weapons had been used, it would have been other than very selectively: individually and expressly approved by the President.
George and Smoke, in their analysis of the crisis, conclude that:
Thereafter, both sides substantially lowered their expectations regarding the extent to which deterrence and counter deterrence strategies could be used on behalf of foreign policy objectives. (11)
In any event, the economic implications of a counter-force strategy, and the reluctance of the public to relish a war-fighting scenario, led the Administration to concentrate on the question of the size of nuclear forces, rather than on strategy. Thus in 1965, McNamara talked of the forces being required for two purposes: assured destruction and damage limitation. By quantifying the necessary level of assured destruction as 'say, one quarter to one third of its population and about two thirds of its industrial capacity', the required force could be calculated and defence expenditure restrained. He went on to explain the difficulty of the damage limiting role:
If we were to try to assure survival of a very high percentage of our population, and if the Soviets were to decide to frustrate this attempt because they viewed it as a threat to their assured destruction capability, the extra cost to them would appear to be substantially less than the extra cost to us.(12)
McNamara's conversion from the invulnerable counter-force capability, with the reserve retaliatory force, was complete by 1967, when he stated that:
It is our ability to destroy an attacker as a viable 20th Century nation that provides the deterrent, not our ability to partially limit damage to ourselves.(13)
A politician can announce a change of strategy in an instant; it takes rather longer for the military to turn new policy into operational practice. How did the Pentagon keep pace with the changes in priorities? The indications are that it continued unruffled by the changing doctrine. The decade had begun with the first attempt at overall coordination of nuclear targeting: the Single Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP) for the conduct of nuclear war. The first SIOP was an 'optimum mix' of military, industrial and government control targets, for use in a single massive attack. The revision of the SIOP in 1961, to meet the new counter-force requirement, distinguished between the three tasks of attacking nuclear threat targets, other military forces and urban/industrial targets. It also provided options for withholding attack from individual countries or from cities.(14) This was the strategic flexibility of which McNamara had spoken in his speech at Ann Arbor. He had also called upon NATO to 'strengthen further their non-nuclear forces'.(15) The strategy of strong conventional forces coupled with a wide range of nuclear options was to form the basis of the 'flexible response' concept.
At the strategic level, the target list increased as weapons became available, and no particular emphasis on city (massive retaliation) targets was given, as the Administration view swung back towards mutual assured destruction. The military targets were considered to be the most urgent, should war start, and so received the greater effort. While the cities were nominally the first priority, all that was required was a high level of confidence in the ability to destroy them. Theatre nuclear weapons were increasingly deployed in Europe, although firm Presidential control was retained through locking devices, known as Permissive Action Links (PALs).(16) No significant improvements in conventional forces were made.
The 1960s and early 1970s were characterised by the political realisation that a nuclear war could not be fought and won. The deterrent effect of mutual assured destruction must prevent the war. The credibility of massive retaliation was to be maintained by flexible response. That the forces and planning were not tailored to the concept was highlighted by President Nixon's dramatic question in 1970:
Should a President in the event of a nuclear attack be left with the single option of ordering the mass destruction of enemy civilians, in the face of the certainty that it would be followed by the mass slaughter of Americans?(17)
Although he had rather more options than his rhetorical question would suggest, the preplanned flexible response involved options each of which used large numbers of weapons. In 1974, the Secretary of Defense, James R. Schlesinger, admitted that this had been the case since 1961.(18)
The credibility of a deterrent posture, which could involve the total devastation of the United States of America in the defence of Western Europe, was as questionable in 1974 as it had been in 1961. The solution was again to develop some practical options which would save the President from the stark choices of surrender or suicide. The doctrine of flexible response had not provided the practical options at the operational level. It was accepted that deterrence might fail, and that the planning must take that into account. In 1974, Secretary Schlesinger made this clear:
Deterrence can fail in many ways. What we need is a series of measured responses to aggression which bear some relation to the provocation, have prospects of terminating hostilities before general nuclear war breaks out, and leave some possibility for restoring deterrence.(19)
At the same time, he emphasised the need to preserve the ultimate sanction of massive retaliation, invulnerable at all times. However, for lower levels of action, it was essential to have a wide range of target options. These options must include a capability for accurate attacks, with minimum collateral damage. He also stated that the US would avoid any combination of forces which might appear to the USSR to be providing a first strike disarming capability.
From the military planning aspect, the new policy gave authority to continue targeting military installations, nuclear forces and urban/industrial centres as before. Technology was providing greater accuracy of weapons, more warheads per missile, less vulnerability, shorter response time and greater quantities of battlefield information available to the commander (in theory). The new weapons, with their rapid retargeting facility, greater accuracy and range of warhead sizes, are well suited o a plan which requires many options. It is less certain whether the strategy generated the technology, or vice versa. In a recent study, Donald Snow concluded:
The simple fact, as has been suggested earlier, is that improved targeting accuracy has been an incremental outcome of guidance technology and, akin to MIRV, is a classic case of technology leading doctrine. Doctrinal rationalisation and virtue have had to be developed after the fact, and, in all likelihood, no conscious a priori decision was ever made to try to attain a hard-target kill capability.(20)
Certainly the balance of evidence seems to support this view of the development of American nuclear strategy.
The gradual transition to a formulation of a posture suited to the best outcome should deterrence fail was added to in 1977. Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld changed the emphasis of the massive retaliation mission to that of retarding the ability of the USSR to recover from a nuclear exchange and regain the status of a 20th century power more rapidly than the United States(21) His successor, Harold Brown, voiced the concern that still existed over the range of crises which could be deterred by nuclear forces:
We no longer seriously believe (if we ever did) that we can credibly deter most hostile action by the threat of nuclear retaliation. Nuclear forces are useful primarily as a deterrent to nuclear actions and to overwhelming non-nuclear attacks.(22)
The wide range of targets was confirmed by President Carter in his Presidential Directive 59 in July 1980. He directed that war planning should emphasise the effectiveness of attacks against military targets, although retaining the destruction of the Soviet economic and industrial base as a principal objective. The 'number and variety of options available to the President in the event of Soviet attack, at any level' were increased.(23)
Much of the same doctrinal ground had been covered in the 1960s as was covered in the 1970s. The new doctrine of limited nuclear options, was, in effect, flexible response with the appropriate weapons and operational plans. Doubts remained at the political level about the credibility of deterrence at lower levels. Doctrine in military circles centred on what to do if deterrence failed.
The examination of American nuclear strategy over the past 36 years suggests that the analysts and politicians have made little headway out- of the paradoxes of credible extended deterrence. The military capability has steadily increased, from the 50 atomic bombs of 1948 to the 10,000 weapons available today for the 40,000 targets of SIOP-5.(24) The consistent thread throughout the period has been the securing of an invulnerable massive retaliation capability. The submarine force is likely to provide this capability into the future, barring an unexpected breakthrough in either anti-submarine warfare, or anti-ballistic missile defence.
The Reagan Administration made the modernisation of nuclear forces the major factor in its defence policy. Defense Secretary Caspar Weinberger expressed the rationale as:
The specificc objectives of President Reagan's program are to regain and to maintain the strategic balance with the Soviet Union, where balance is the key to deterring any attack by them against ourselves or our allies.(25)
This doctrine of deterrence through balance, rather than through specific capabilities, reflects a prevalent feeling that relative numbers are psychologically important. Among the new developments which Weinberger outlined, he made a particular point of the requirement for an improvement in accuracy of the land-based missiles. This is probably another instance of technology determining policy, but it has generated considerable criticism. Greater accuracy is of use for strategic missiles if they are to be aimed at the enemy's hardened missile silos. As there is limited value in destroying empty silos, and the land-based missiles are themselves vulnerable to attack, the critics see the new proposals as being directed at the development of a first strike force, which they believe is destabilising.
In 1983, President Reagan announced a new direction in strategic thinking:
Let me share with you a vision of the future which offers hope. It is, that we embark on a program to counter the awesome Soviet missile threat with measures that are defensive ... What if free people could live secure in the knowledge that their security did not rest upon the threat of instant US retaliation to deter a Soviet attack; we could intercept and destroy strategic ballistic missiles before they reached our own soil or that of our allies?(26)
This desire for a policy based on strategic defence echoes back to McNamara's search for a damage limitation strategy in the early 1960s. The technological, financial, tactical and strategic questions which need to be answered make it still an uncertain venture. The President's own Commission on Strategic Forces remains skeptical:
At this time, however, the Commission believes that no ABM technologies appear to combine practicality, survivability, low-cost and technical effectiveness suf- ficiently to justify proceeding beyond the stage of technology development.(27)
In summary, the politicians have throughout the period tried to find ways to make nuclear deterrence credible for all levels of conflict by various declaratory postures. The military have evolved their plans for action should deterrence fail. The scientists have produced weapons with the traditional military improvements of accuracy, range, reliability, effectiveness, flexibility and invulnerability. The sum has been to produce a force, greatly in excess of any massive retaliation requirement, but one of such power that it is difficult to conceive of an enemy taking the risk of unleashing it.
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