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The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy

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Abstract

The preoccupation with ‘essential equivalence’ in the US was a consequence of anxiety, in the face of a sustained Soviet build-up, over the real state of the strategic balance, compounded by continual negotiations in SALT to find a formula to express that balance in a mutually satisfactory manner. It was a concept which members of Congress and diplomats could readily understand, though they may have found the details unduly complicated. It was not, however, a concept which naturally appealed to the community of professional strategists.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    William R. Van Cleave and Roger W. Barnett, ‘Strategic adaptability’, Orbis, XVIII:3 (Autumn 1974), pp. 655–76.

  2. 2.

    Albert Wohlstetter, ‘Threats and promises of peace: Europe and America in the new era’, Orbis, XVII:4 (Winter 1974), p. 1126. This point was made forcefully in the 1950s by Kahn.

  3. 3.

    Michael May, ‘Some advantages of a counterforce deterrent’, Orbis, XIV (Summer 1970), p. 274.

  4. 4.

    ‘What the President Saw: A Nation Coming into its Own,’ Time, July 29, 1985, pp. 48–53.

  5. 5.

    H.R. Haldeman with Joseph DiMona, The Ends of Power (New York: Times Books, 1978), p. 83.

  6. 6.

    William Burr and Jeffrey Kimball, ‘Nixon’s Secret Nuclear Alert: Vietnam War Diplomacy and the Joint Chiefs of Staff Readiness Test, October 1969’, Cold War History, Vol. 3, No. 2, 2003, pp. 113–56; Scott D. Sagan and Jeremy Suri, ‘The Madman Nuclear Alert: Secrecy, Signalling, and Safety in October 1969’, International Security, Vol. 27, No. 4, Spring, 2003, pp. 150–83; Jeffrey Kimball, Nixon’s Vietnam War (Lawrence, KS: University Press of Kansas, 1998). See pp. 76–86 for discussion of the ‘madman theory’.

  7. 7.

    Memorandum for the Record, Washington, October 24/25, 1973, 10:30 p.m.–3:30 a.m., FRUS, 1969–1976, Volume XXV, Arab-Israeli Crisis and War, 1973. Doc. 269.

  8. 8.

    ‘Personal Letter from the Head of the KGB, Yuri Andropov to the General Secretary of the Communist Party of the Soviet Union, Leonid Ilyich Brezhnev,’ 29 October 1973, https://digitalarchive.wilsoncenter.org/document/198187. Sergey Radchenko, ‘Stumbling Towards Armageddon’, New York Times, 9 October 2018.

  9. 9.

    An Interview with Henry A. Kissinger: “We Were Never Close to Nuclear War”, Washington Post, 11 August 1985.

  10. 10.

    Phil Williams, Crisis Management: Confrontation and Diplomacy in the Nuclear Age (London: Martin Robertson, 1976).

  11. 11.

    Minutes, Verification Panel Meeting, “Nuclear Policy (NSSM 169),” August 9, 1973, Available at: https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB173/SIOP-22.pdf.

  12. 12.

    Kissinger, The White House Years, p. 216.

  13. 13.

    Richard M. Nixon, United States Foreign Policy for the 1970s (18 February 1970), pp. 54–5.

  14. 14.

    Ibid. (25 February 1971), pp. 54–5.

  15. 15.

    “Notes on NSC Meeting 13 February 1969,” 14 February 1969. Available at: https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB173/SIOP-6.pdf.

  16. 16.

    Minutes of a National Security Council Meeting, Washington, February 19, 1969, FRUS, 1969–1976, Volume XXXII, SALT I, 1969–1972. Doc. 5. Available at: https://history.state.gov/historicaldocuments/frus1969-76v32/d5.

  17. 17.

    Minutes, Verification Panel Meeting, “Nuclear Policy (NSSM 169),” August 9, 1973, Available at: https://nsarchive2.gwu.edu/NSAEBB/NSAEBB173/SIOP-22.pdf.

  18. 18.

    Address by Major General Richard A. Yudkin to the Symposium on Tactical Nuclear Weapons, Los Alamos, New Mexico, September 3, 1969.

  19. 19.

    Kissinger cited in William Burr, “‘Is this the best they can do?” Henry Kissinger and the US Quest for Limited Nuclear Options, 1969–75’, in Mastny, Holtsmark and Wenger (eds) War Plans and Alliances in the Cold War, p. 121.

  20. 20.

    The Nixon administration’s deliberations leading up to NSDM-242 are discussed in: Terry Terriff, The Nixon Administration and the Making of U.S. Nuclear Strategy (Ithaca: Cornell Studies in Security Affairs, 1995).

  21. 21.

    William Burr, ‘“Is this the best they can do?” Henry Kissinger and the US quest for limited nuclear options, 1969–1975’ in Vojtech Mastny, Sven G. Holtsmark and Andreas Wenger, War Plans and Alliances in the Cold War: Threat Perceptions in the East and West (Abingdon, Oxon: Routledge, 2006), pp. 118–40; William Burr, ‘The Nixon Administration, the “Horror Strategy,” and the Search for Limited Nuclear Options, 1969–1972 Prelude to the Schlesinger Doctrine’, Journal of Cold War Studies, Vol. 7, No. 3, Summer 2005, pp. 34–78.

  22. 22.

    Record of Interview with James R. Schlesinger by John G. Hines, October 29, 1991.

  23. 23.

    J. R. Schlesinger, ‘Quantitative analysis and national security’, World Politics, XV (1963), pp. 295–315.

  24. 24.

    Idem., Arms Interaction and Arms Control (Santa Monica, Calif.: RAND, September 1968), pp. 16–7.

  25. 25.

    Idem., European Security and the Nuclear Threat since 1945 (Santa Monica, Calif: RAND, April 1967), pp. 12–3. This passage came in the context of the feasibility of such forces for European states. The requirements were described as ‘onerous’.

  26. 26.

    The main discussion of the policy was in a press conference of 24 January 1974 and the Department of Defense Reports for Fiscal Years 1975 and 1976 (4 March 1974 and 5 February 1975 respectively). Schlesinger was questioned in detail by members of the Senate Foreign Relations Committee in two sets of hearings: US and Soviet Strategic Policies (March 1974) and Briefing on Counterforce Attacks (September 1974).

  27. 27.

    Report of Secretary of Defense, James Schlesinger to the Congress on the FY 1975 Defense Budget and FY 1975–79 Defense Program (4 March 1974).

  28. 28.

    The debate, such as it was, which embraced the general questioning of assured destruction and the concern over perceptions is well covered in Ted Greenwood and Michael Nacht, ‘The new nuclear debate: sense or nonsense’, Foreign Affairs, LII:4 (July 1974). Among critiques of the Schlesinger doctrine see Herbert Scoville Jr., ‘Flexible madness’, Foreign Policy, No. 14 (Spring 1974) and Barry Carter, ‘Nuclear strategy and nuclear weapons’, Scientific American, 230: 5 (May 1974). A useful compilation of relevant articles and documents is Robert J. Pranger and Roger P. Labrie (eds.), Nuclear Strategy and National Security: Points of View (Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute, 1977).

  29. 29.

    Carter, op. cit., p. 30 (Scoville used a similar phrase).

  30. 30.

    Bernard Brodie, ‘The development of nuclear strategy’, International Security, II:4 (Spring 1978), pp. 78–83.

  31. 31.

    Carter, op. cit., pp. 24, 31.

  32. 32.

    Report on FY 1975 Defense Budget, p. 39.

  33. 33.

    Benjamin S. Lambeth, ‘Selective nuclear options and Soviet strategy’, in Johan Holst and Uwe Nerlich, Beyond Nuclear Deterrence (London: Macdonald & Janes, 1978).

  34. 34.

    William Van Cleave, ‘Soviet doctrine and Strategy’, op. cit.

  35. 35.

    Lambeth, op. cit., pp. 97, 100.

  36. 36.

    Warner, The Military in Contemporary Soviet Politics, p. 150.

  37. 37.

    See for instance: ‘Strategic Research Monthly Review’, CIA, August 1975, pp. 11–14. Available at: https://www.cia.gov/library/readingroom/docs/CIA-RDP86T00608R000700160002-7.pdf.

  38. 38.

    Memorandum for the President, ‘Subject: Implications of Major Reductions in Strategic Nuclear Forces’, January 28, 1977. Accessed via National Security Archive website; Edward Walsh and George C. Wilson, ‘Carter to Get Study on A-Deterrence’, The Washington Post, January 28, 1977.

  39. 39.

    Vance cited in: Murray Marder, ‘Vance Arrives in Moscow to Push ‘Deep Cuts’ in Arms’, Washington Post, March 27, 1977.

  40. 40.

    See for instance, reference to this in: Minutes of Special Coordination Committee Meeting, April 4, 1979.

  41. 41.

    Harold Brown interview transcript, WGBH; Walter Slocombe, ‘The Countervailing Strategy’, International Security, Vol. 5, No. 4 (Spring, 1981), pp. 18–27.

  42. 42.

    Department of State cable 154,183 to all NATO Capitals, “NPG: Discussion of Strategic Employment Doctrine,” 11 June 1980.

  43. 43.

    Slocombe, op. cit., pp. 21, 23.

  44. 44.

    Marc Ambinder The Brink: President Reagan and the Nuclear War Scare of 1983 (New York: Simon & Schuster, 2018), p. 26.

  45. 45.

    Comments by Harold Brown in Special Coordination Meeting, Detailed Minutes, Subject: Strategic Forces Employment Policy, April 4, 1979.

  46. 46.

    See for instance: Memorandum for Brzezinski from Odom, Subject: Draft PD on Nuclear Targeting, March 22, 1980; Memorandum for President Carter from Brzezinski, Subject: Nuclear Targeting Policy, July 24, 1980.

  47. 47.

    Desmond Ball, Developments in US Strategic Nuclear Policy under the Carter Administration (California: Seminar on Arms Control and Foreign Policy, 1980).

  48. 48.

    Ambinder, The Brink, 29.

  49. 49.

    This document can be accessed at: https://fas.org/irp/offdocs/pd/pd59.pdf.

  50. 50.

    Odom, pp. 187–8; Memorandum for President Carter from Brzezinski, Subject: Nuclear Targeting Policy, July 24, 1980.

  51. 51.

    Colin S. Gray and Keith Payne, ‘Victory is possible’, Foreign Policy, No. 39 (Summer 1980), p. 21.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of War Studies, King’s College London, London, UK

    Lawrence Freedman

  2. Department of Defence Studies, King’s College London, London, UK

    Jeffrey Michaels

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Freedman, L., Michaels, J. (2019). Selective Options. In: The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57350-6_31

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