Abstract
Those who had warned throughout the 1950s that persistent Western nuclear superiority was a dangerous illusion saw Sputnik and the evident growth of Soviet nuclear capabilities as doing no more than confirming expectations. The folly of a strategy of massive retaliation was even more evident. Proponents of limited war felt their case to be strengthened.
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Notes
- 1.
Denis Healey, ‘The Sputnik and western defence’, International Affairs, XXXIV:2 (April 1954), p. 147.
- 2.
‘The meaning of Stalemate’, Army (August 1958).
- 3.
John Foster Dulles, ‘Challenge and response in US policy’, Foreign Affairs, XXXVI:1 (October 1957). Memorandum for the Record, Washington, April 7, 1958. FRUS, 1958–1960, National Security Policy; Arms Control and Disarmament, Volume III, https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1958-60v03/d18.
- 4.
Cited in Toshihiro Higuchi, “‘Clean bombs’: Nuclear technology and nuclear strategy in the 1950s”, Journal of Strategic Studies, 29: 1 (2006), p. 112.
- 5.
Cited in Samuel P. Huntington, The Common Defense: Strategic Programs in National Politics (New York: Columbia University Press, 1961), p. 101.
- 6.
York, Race to Oblivion, p. 144.
- 7.
Herman Kahn talk to Overseas Press Club, June 16, 1965 https://www.wnyc.org/story/5785-herman-kahn?tab=transcript.
- 8.
On Thermonuclear War, p. 484.
- 9.
The text of the Killian Report is available in FRUS, 1955–1957, National Security Policy, Vol. XIX, Doc. 9 and can be accessed at: https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1955-57v19/d9.
- 10.
Emphasis in the original. Quotations from report are taken from section reproduced in James R. Killian Jr., Sputniks, Scientists and Eisenhower, pp. 71–9.
- 11.
The text can be found in FRUS, 1955–1957, National Security Policy, Vol XIX, Doc. 158 and can be accessed at: https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1955-57v19/d158.
- 12.
Security Resources Panel of the Scientific Advisory Committee, Deterrence and Survival in the Nuclear Age, Washington DC: November 1957 (declassified January 1973).
- 13.
Quoted in Morton Halperin, ‘The Gaither Committee and the Policy Process’, World Politics, XIII:3 (April 1961), p. 370.
- 14.
Henry Kissinger, ‘Arms control, inspection and surprise attack’, Foreign Affairs, XXXVIII:3 (April 1960), p. 557.
- 15.
Kennan, Russia, the Atom and the West, p. 54.
- 16.
See J. David Singer, Deterrence, Arms Control and Disarmament: Towards a Synthesis in National Security Policy (Ohio State University Press, 1962).
- 17.
He was reviewing Basil Liddell Hart’s book, Deterrence or Defence? for the Saturday Review on 3 September 1960.
- 18.
Brodie, The Reporter (18 November 1954); Kahn, On Thermonuclear War, p. 192.
- 19.
Thomas Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict (New York: Oxford University Press, 1960).
- 20.
A decade later this particular scenario would become prominent in the American debate. See Chapter 32. Snyder, Deterrence and Defense, p. 108.
- 21.
Kahn, On Thermonuclear War, p. 495. (He considered this a possibility for 1969).
- 22.
Transcript of interview with Alain Enthoven, February 22, 1986. Can be accessed at: http://openvault.wgbh.org/catalog/V_75CBC1D800E24C0EA2F792AEE69CF778.
- 23.
Bernard Brodie, ‘The Development of Nuclear Strategy’, International Security, II:4 (Spring 1978), p. 68.
- 24.
‘The Finite Deterrent System’ versus Launching a ‘World Holocaust’, Arleigh Burke for All Flag Officers, ‘Views on Adequacy of U.S. Deterrent/Retaliatory Forces as Related to General and Limited War Capabilities,’ 4 March 1959. Can be accessed at: https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu//nukevault/ebb275/07.pdf. pp. 7–10.
- 25.
The quotations are from an unclassified summary of National Policy Implications of Atomic Parity (Naval Warfare Group Study, Number 5, 1958) and a speech by Admiral Burke to the Press Club on 17 January 1958. They are taken from George Lowe, The Age of Deterrence, a rendition of the arguments against the Air Force view from the viewpoint of a Navy partisan. For similar arguments see George Fielding Eliot, Victory without War: 1958–61 (Annapolis, MD: US Naval Institute, 1958).
- 26.
Admiral Libby to Chief of Naval Operations, “Railroad: Running of,” 1 February 1957, Top Secret. Available at https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu//nukevault/ebb275/01c.pdf. See also Deputy Chief of Naval Operations for Plans and Policy Admiral Ruthven E. Libby to Chief of Naval Operations, “Guided Missile Sites in the Middle East,” 25 January 1957, Available at: https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu//nukevault/ebb275/01a.pdf.
- 27.
Snyder, Deterrence and Defense, p. 88 (pp. 85–95 provides a thorough discussion of the issues discussed in this section).
- 28.
George Rathjens Jr, ‘NATO strategy: total war’, in Klaus Knorr (ed.), NATO and American Security (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959), pp. 78–9.
- 29.
Kahn, op. cit., p. 13.
- 30.
Oskar Morgenstern, The Question of National Defense (New York: Random House, 1959), p. 74.
- 31.
Snyder, op. cit., pp. 110, 94–5.
- 32.
J. King, ‘Air Power in the Missile Gap’, op. cit., p. 635.
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Freedman, L., Michaels, J. (2019). The Technological Arms Race. In: The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57350-6_13
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