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. ‘[T]he first effect of the Sputnik on American policy has been to emphasize the thermonuclear stalemate and to strengthen the case for supplementing or replacing massive retaliation by limited atom war—and for giving tactical atomic weapons to America’s allies’, wrote British MP Denis Healey.1
We seek a limited bomb which would be acceptable for defense purposes on the Continent of Europe without great risk, without destroying all the lives of the people we want to save. If you are going to have war and use these things in Europe you do not want to kill all the Europeans or the Hungarians and the Poles. Or, if the wind shifted, you would risk killing the British or the French or the Dutch.4
The official view was that the balance would be stable for the foreseeable future. In August 1956, Secretary of the Air Force Donald Quarles articulated a doctrine of ‘sufficiency’. War had become an ‘unthinkable catastrophe’ from which ‘neither side can hope by a mere margin of superiority in airplanes or other means of delivery to escape’. The absolute destructive power available to each side had resulted in a substantial invulnerability to interdiction. A ‘sufficiency’ of force was that required to perform the essential retaliatory mission, and was already possessed by the United States. It would take ‘some unforeseen technological breakthrough’, perhaps in the field of air defence, to cause these requirements to change. It was not expected that technological changes would ‘occur in such a revolutionary fashion’.5 The balance of terror was tending towards a stable equilibrium. Technology was not seen as a particularly disruptive force.
When Sputnik I was launched, Administration spokesmen dismissed it as a ‘gimmick’, and attempted, unsuccessfully, to reassure the public that there was no need to panic. To many this showed extraordinary complacency; the Administration seemed unaware of the vast changes taking place in the strategic environment, unable to share the sensation, excitement and fear of being in the midst of a technological revolution. In retrospect the Eisenhower Administration had a more accurate assessment of the state of the strategic balance and the likely impact of technology than did its critics. The programmes to which it gave high priority stabilized the balance while the more exotic programmes promoted in the post-Sputnik frenzy resulted in few changes in the military situation. Herbert York wrote in 1970: ‘Surprising as it may seem, the wild out-bursts of ideas inspired by Sputnik and the missile-gap psychology has produced nothing of direct value to our current strategic posture more than twelve years later’.6
Yet the immediate effect of Sputnik was to encourage the view that the superpowers were engaged in a technological arms race, particularly as it related to first-strike capabilities. A retrogressive tendency was introduced, resulting in an exaggerated appreciation of both the evolving technology and its impact on the strategic balance. The series of startling innovations of the past two decades was assumed to set a pattern for the future; if sufficient funds and ingenuity were applied to any given problem it could be solved; the results of the growing expenditure and scientific talent being applied to military problems could be spectacular; and also (and here came the major source of error) that any improvement in technology would result in a corresponding improvement in the state of the strategic art. A tendency for strategy to lag behind technology was noted and deplored, with lectures on the need to anticipate the coming technologies so that they could be better exploited. Persistent innovation was confused with strategic revolution.
Exemplifying this tendency was Herman Kahn, a devotee of science fiction since his youth and mesmerized by expectations of fantastic technical progress. He described his participation in 1950 on a Technical Advisory Board as ‘one of the most startling things that ever happened to me’. Here he ‘first came in contact with the philosophy which is willing to ask any question and tackle any philosophy’. The final one-third of his book On Thermonuclear War (virtually a transcript of a popular series of lectures) consisted of a set of predictions for the future. Kahn described eight wars, each one a ‘technological revolution ahead of its predecessor’. The first two were the familiar World Wars I and II; the second two were hypothetical conflicts of 1951 and 1956; the final four were speculations. As the date for World War VIII was put at 1973, it can be seen that Kahn was expecting at least four technological revolutions in the means of modern warfare in the coming thirteen years. Some of the predictions were remarkably accurate, others remarkably inaccurate or at least premature. One example of the former was the prediction that there would be a landing and take-off by manned vehicles from the moon by 1969. But this illustrates the difficulty with Kahn’s technological expectations. Putting a man on the moon was achieved through a well-funded crash programme, which had been made a national priority. The same was true of other of Kahn’s accurate predictions.
Kahn recognized that certain feasible developments would be eschewed. He observed to one audience that ‘questions of technological breakthroughs’ often turned out to be about cost. The post Korea rise in the budget had made developments such as the B-52 and Polaris affordable. The proper question was what might be afforded if the budget was pushed up even higher.7 In practice, however, some developments, such as ‘melting ice caps and diverting ocean currents’, would be deemed impractical because they ‘cost a little too much’; others because of a failure to perceive the need for them, a result of the adoption of a misguided doctrine.8 He considered it quite likely that the US would content itself with a limited deterrent capability, one which provided no options for taking the nuclear initiative. The US might fail by neglect to do enough in boosting air defence, air offence and civil defence. By 1961, given the ‘possible Soviet lead in missiles, their interest in a cheap but useful civil defense program and a sober attitude towards the risks of war and peace’, the Russians could have the upper hand. Eventually Kahn suspected there would be fewer inhibitions about exploiting technology. He described and prescribed a frantic search for methods for improving all capabilities. It must be remembered that Kahn’s basic assumption was that thermonuclear war would be an ever-present possibility and that though, if it ever came, the results would be tragic, the amount of tragedy could be reduced by the proper precautions. Any avenue promising an amelioration of the effects of an enemy attack was worth exploring.
The growing expectations of continual achievement in new technologies that would destabilize the strategic balance can also be detected in two official reports written in 1954–1955 and 1957 by panels of experts. Both were prepared under the auspices of the Science Advisory Committee of the Office of Defense Mobilization for presentation to the National Security Council. The first was the report of the Technological Capabilities Panel on ‘Meeting the Threat of Surprise Attack’. The second was the report of the Security Resources Panel on ‘Deterrence and Survival in the Nuclear Age’. They were known as the Killian and Gaither Reports after their respective Chairmen. Each included a forward-looking timetable, anticipating the course of the arms race in the coming decades.
The Killian Report, presented to the NSC in February 1955, characterized the current period as particularly dangerous.9 The US had a growing offensive capability. It was not yet of ‘multi-megaton’ dimensions and lacked reliable early warning and defensive capabilities. Strategic Air Command (SAC) was not properly protected against the rapidly improving Soviet offensive capabilities. Neither side could mount an atomic strike that would ‘surely be decisive’, but the USSR might be tempted to attack before the US forces had achieved the ability to deliver warheads measured in ‘multi-megatons’.
Soon this would be achieved. Despite improvements in defences both sides would be vulnerable to surprise attack. There was however a difference; ‘The US can mount a surprise attack; the USSR cannot’. For a ‘period of short duration’, possibly up to 1960, the US military position relative to that of the USSR would be favourable so that it could hope to emerge from war a ‘battered victor’. ‘Our military superiority may never be so great again.’ It was recommended that the possibilities for exploiting this situation for political benefit should be explored.
By the time the Russians acquired their own ‘multi-megaton’ weapons the Americans should have improved their defences and reduced the vulnerability of SAC. There was a warning that, if the US was laggard in this regard, it could be placed ‘in danger of surprise attack and possibly defeat’. This situation could arise as early as 1958, especially if the Russians made faster progress than the Americans with their ICBM programme. The first to win this race would gain an important relative advantage. Not surprisingly, the report impressed upon policy-makers the urgency of speeding up the US ICBM programme and of protecting the existing SAC bases.
The ability to achieve surprise will not affect the outcome because each country will have the residual offensive power to break through the defenses of the other country and destroy it regardless of whether the other country strikes first.
Should we arrive at a condition where the contest is drawn and neither contestant can derive military advantage, we need not assume that this state is unchangeable or that one country or the other cannot move again into a position of relative advantage. We see no certainty, however, that the condition of stalemate can be changed through science and technology. This does not mean that some new unimagined weapon or development, far afield from any present weapon system, might not provide an advantage to one side or the other.10
It could be argued that this statement was too dogmatic. Antiballistic missiles, multiple warheads with extraordinary accuracies, satellites and so on had yet to come. The nuances of the strategic relationship changed enormously. This picture of a stalemate impervious to technological breakthroughs nonetheless still captured the reality of the evolving relationship more accurately than some of the more dramatic presentations that became popular later in the decade.
The current vulnerability of SAC to surprise attack during a period of lessened world tension (i.e. a time when SAC is not on a SAC ‘alert’ status), and the threat posed to SAC by the prospects of an early Russian ICBM capability, call for prompt remedial action.
In order to maintain the US advantage and to prevent ‘both the Russians and our allies’, believing that the US will ‘feel increasing reluctance to employ SAC in any circumstance other than when the United States is directly attacked’, active and passive civil defence measures were urged, including ‘a program to develop and install an area defence against ICBMs at the earliest possible date’.
In its timetable of future relative strength, the Report confirmed the accuracy of the earlier Killian prediction of the 1956–1960 period as being one of comparative US advantage. ‘This could be the time to negotiate from strength, since the US military position vis-à-vis Russia might never be so strong again’. The precondition would be an adequate ‘alert’ status for SAC. Without this a surprise Soviet attack ‘might also completely disarm’ the ‘air atomic strike capability’ of the US. Similarly inadequate protection for the Soviet equivalent to SAC would leave them vulnerable. With neither properly protected a surprise attack could determine the outcome of a clash between these two major powers. In both Killian and Gaither Reports ‘decisive’ was defined as: (1) ability to strike back is essentially eliminated; or (2) civil, political or cultural life are reduced to a condition of chaos; or both (1) and (2).
The most worrisome prediction, erroneous as it turned out, was that the USSR was leading in the race for a significant ICBM capability. If successful this would render SAC vulnerable. The period 1959–1962 was thus described as ‘very critical’. By the mid-1960s SAC should be protected, an early warning capability developed and a start made on anti-ICBM defences. In such circumstances, the only way in which either side could avoid total destruction would be ‘a nationwide fall-out shelter program’.
The missiles in turn will be made more sophisticated to avoid destruction; and there will be a continuing race between the offense and the defense. Neither side can afford to lag or fail to match the other’s efforts. There will be no end to the technical moves or countermoves.
The strategic balance was seen to tend not towards stability but to an ‘extremely unstable equilibrium’, for ‘a temporary technical advance (such as a high-certainty missile defense against ballistic missiles) could give either nation the ability to come near to annihilating the other’.12
I assure you … that for the conditions existing today they [the US military forces] are both efficient and adequate. But if they are to remain so for the future, their design and power must keep pace with the increasing capabilities that science gives both to the aggressor and the defender.13
Groups of military technologists were pitting their wits against each other, attempting to gain strategic advantage through technical innovation. Yet there would be no definitive solutions to military problems. Though recent innovations had aided the offence, there was no reason in principle why future innovations should not favour the defence. Then, in solving one problem for the defence, a new one would be created for the offence. The solution to this would put new demands on the defence and so on. Thus ICBMs would render any progress in conventional air defence systems irrelevant, but it was conceivable that one day an effective anti-ballistic missile could be developed. Putting ICBMs in concrete shelters might protect them from incoming enemy missiles, but only until the enemy missiles improved their accuracy.
There were two quite distinct views presented in the two Reports concerning the likely and desirable character of the evolving strategic relationship. The Killian Report pointed to the development of parallel capabilities for destruction, and viewed this with gloom because the United States would have lost its advantage and a false move by either side could result in complete catastrophe. In early 1955 to recognize that the world’s two greatest powers could literally wipe out each other and much else besides, and that there was no obvious way out of this impasse, was profoundly disturbing. This was especially dangerous given the degree of antagonism and the American responsibility for holding back Soviet expansionism.
Technology is volatile. The advantage of surprise can be over-whelming. The forces-in-being are almost surely decisive—at least in all-out war. A major cause of instability is the very rate of technological change. Every country lives with the nightmare that even if it puts forth its best efforts its survival may be jeopardized by a technological breakthrough on the part of its opponent.14
The technological realities of this competition are constantly changing from month to month and from year to year. Are we to flee like haunted creatures from one defensive device to another, each more costly and humiliating than the one before, cowering underground one day, breaking up our cities the next, attempting to surround ourselves with elaborate shields on the third, concerned only to prolong the length of our lives while sacrificing all the values for which it might be worth while to live at all?15
Thus, by the late 1950s, prominent strategic and military figures both in the United States and the Soviet Union were advocating the development of a capacity for pre-emptive attacks. In both countries technological progress was being monitored carefully and anxiously for further indications of some imminent breakthrough that would provide one side or the other with a decisive advantage. Such a situation involved obvious dangers. To prepare for pre-emption, each side would have to build up large counter-force capabilities with an instant readiness to fire. Such an effort could suggest to the other side preparations for an unprovoked first strike, so providing an incentive to pre-empt. With both nervous about a surprise attack, even in the absence of any crisis or aggression, a climate of fear and mutual distrust could develop which could end in an unnecessary race to pre-empt. Kissinger warned in the article cited above how measures taken for self-defence could be ‘indistinguishable to the other side from a desire to launch a surprise attack’. The structure of strategic forces ‘may contribute to instability regardless of the intentions of the two sides’. Fears such as these were not novel. The rush to World War I left little time for diplomacy because of the perceived need to be the first to mobilize. There was already a view of the Cold War that it was sustained as much by mutual fear and distrust as by objective conflicts of interests. The precautionary measures taken by one side, based on its fears, provided cause for the fears of the other, in turn confirming the original fears. The Cold War came to be seen as self-sustaining. The concern now was that a similar spiral of misperception could result in an unnecessary hot war.16 The influence of this thought can be seen in an article by John Kennedy published in the late stages of his presidential campaign: ‘We have no right to tempt Soviet planners and political leaders with the possibility of catching our aircraft and unprotected missiles on the ground, in a gigantic Pearl Harbor’.17
The possibility that war could be prompted by purely military calculations had previously been associated with neglect. Inadequate military precautions by the peacefully inclined were seen as a temptation for aggressors. For example, failure to protect strategic forces offered an opportunity that men in the Kremlin would find hard to resist. In 1954 Brodie had spoken of how a ‘vulnerable strategic air force … is not merely of no value as a deterrent, it positively invites an attack that might otherwise not be contemplated’. On the same theme Kahn explained how ‘We do not want a potential enemy’s high command contemplating for months or years a possible opportunity to eliminate most of his supposed trouble at one blow’.18
If surprise carries an advantage, it is worthwhile to avert it by striking first. Fear that the other may be about to strike in the mistaken belief that we are about to strike gives us a motive for striking, and so justifies the other’s motive. But, if the gains from even successful surprise are less desired than no war at all, there is no ‘fundamental’ basis for an attack by either side. Nevertheless, it looks as though a modest temptation on each side to sneak in a first blow—a temptation too small by itself to motivate an attack—might become compounded through a process of interacting expectations, with additional motive for attack being produced by successive cycles of ‘He thinks we think he thinks we think … he thinks we think he’ll attack; so he thinks we shall; so he will; so we must’.19
For such a cycle to start, two conditions would have to be met. First strikes would have to carry a sizeable and perhaps decisive premium and both sides would require the capability to launch such a strike—otherwise the fear of pre-emption would not be mutual. This second condition added to the premium attached to the first strike for it could now deny the enemy the benefit of his first strike. For the temptation to pre-empt to arise, there would have to be a high state of tension between the two and a reasonable chance of an outbreak of war from another cause. As Glenn Snyder noted: ‘It is very hard to believe that any country would deliberately accept the certainty of severe retaliatory damage in preference to the uncertain prospect of being the recipient of a first strike.’ In addition, he noted, if only the enemy was allowed the second strike, and if his strategic forces were not eliminated, his attack was much more likely to be counter-city than it would have been as a first strike, so, perhaps, increasing the severity of the damage.20
A successful pre-emptive attack must reduce the potential damage of the enemy’s retaliatory strike to a manageable proportion to be disarming. Counter-force capabilities required large forces. If the other side had only a moderate force, they could be saturated by a sufficiently large attack and so removed. But in such circumstances the adversary would not have a counter-force option of its own, so there would be no mutual fear of surprise attack and the need for pre-emption would not arise. This need would only arise if the adversary enjoyed comparable counter-force capabilities. But then the problems of a disarming first strike would be that much greater. Indeed a strike of this sort would only be conceivable if each attacking weapon could destroy more than one of the equivalent weapons. The exchange must favour the offence. The only factor that could possibly alter this calculation would be the deployment of an effective ABM system to intercept the enemy’s retaliation. However, if ABMs were used to provide defence of the retaliatory forces, rather than cities, then the demands on the first strike would be increased further.
In terms of the model of an offence-defence duel there were therefore two profoundly destabilizing possibilities that would do grave damage to any stalemate. The first was the ability to launch a sudden disarming, counter-force attack taking out more offensive weapons than were being used to execute the attack. The second was the ability to block an incoming missile attack with active defensive measures. A possible third was civil defence measures sufficient to absorb an attack, reducing its effects to manageable levels.
The Gaither Report depicted an ABM as one of the most unsettling possibilities for the future, representing it as the logical next stage in the arms race. The early designs for air defence in the nuclear age had been concerned with bomber attacks. During the 1950s a defensive anti-aircraft system was developed in the United States. This involved a line of radars on sea and land to provide ‘distant early warning’, a variety of guided interceptors with supporting control facilities to get them to the right place at the right time, and a national command and control mechanism, intended to tie the local units together. Unfortunately, by the time the system had been developed, it had been rendered obsolete by the imminent arrival of ICBMs.
Study of ways to cope with this new threat began in 1956. Designing interceptor missiles was not the most serious problem. The real difficulty lay in detecting, identifying, tracking and predicting the trajectory of an incoming missile in sufficient time for the interceptor to be launched to meet it. To achieve this feat major technological breakthroughs would be required in a series of areas on a par with that of the ICBM itself. Herman Kahn noted that the statement: ‘in the air and missile age the offense has an intrinsic advantage over the defense’, was ‘only true, if at all, because our sensors are not reliable…. A breakthrough in this field comparable to the invention of radar in 1935 might well make all forms of air offense incredibly costly’.21
Even then, as every commentator was quick to point out, the requirements for successful defence would be exacting. The opportunities for deception and confusion by the offence would be considerable, while the tolerance of failure would be minimal. Kahn approved of air defence, even given its limitations, because it would impose constraints on the offence, ‘forcing the enemy to use a high-performance bomber, to put only a small number of bombs on the bomber, and to confine himself to saturation and deceptive tactics’. Its main value would be in complementing the vast civil defence effort he believed to be vital.
I envisage that one day, instead of SAC—Strategic Air Command—we’re gonna have SUC—Strategic Underground Command. And there’ll be a film about it, and it’s going to begin with some people deep down in a deep underground shelter. And they’re playing cards, and they’re dealing, and suddenly there’s kind of a big crash, and things rattle and shake. And one of the people says, “What was that?” and the other one says, ‘Oh, only about ten megatons.’ And the third one says, ‘Come on, deal.’22
His point was the need to be protected from a first strike but the prospect meant little to men whose lives had been about flying. Wohlstetter and his colleagues at RAND proposed providing each aircraft with a concrete shelter placed just below the ground as the optimum way of dealing with the problem. This was too defence-minded for the Air Force who preferred to concentrate on pre-emption to destroy Soviet offensive systems. The only precaution they would accept was continual airborne alert.23
Intermediate range ballistic missiles (IRBMS)—Thor and Jupiter—deployed in Europe to provide an early missile threat to the Soviet Union were as, if not more, vulnerable because of their fixed locations, lack of protection, slow reaction time (because of liquid fuelling), and proximity to the Soviet Union. The Minuteman ICBMs, then under development, would be less vulnerable. Dispersal would mean that it would not be possible for the enemy to destroy more than one with a single shot. Protection in underground silos would ensure that the enemy’s warhead would have to be extremely accurate to ensure destruction. Solid fuels would permit rapid launching and so a continuous high-alert status (hence the name Minuteman). The chances of survival could be further increased through mobility. Here the Polaris missiles, to be launched from submarines, also under development in the late 1950s, came into their own.
It challenges the enemy in an area (endless production of higher-yield, more-accurate missiles) where he is ready and able to respond impressively. Fortress-busting is always possible, since any fixed defenses, including all foreseeable anti-ICBM defenses, can be overwhelmed by numbers.
Numbers of missiles will avail the enemy nothing, if he does not know the location of his target. We in effect take an initiative which he can overcome only by maintaining hour-to-hour fire-comb surveillance of all our land areas and the vast oceans.
The Polaris submarines, with their locations unknown and unpredictable, would be a ‘comparatively cheap retaliatory system’, according to Admiral Burke, the Chief of Naval Operations. ‘It won’t be necessary to maintain large residual forces of Polaris submarines against the possible destruction of surprise attack’. A force of invulnerable submarines carrying nuclear weapons could guarantee deterrence, releasing resources to prepare for limited war, a much more plausible eventuality than all-out nuclear exchanges.25 The core argument was that the US would be safer without any land-based nuclear delivery systems. His deputy, Admiral Ruthven Libby, spelled out the implications in a memo to Burke. He denied ‘casting envious eyes’ on the SAC’s resources, for it was not the case that the Navy ‘needs the IRBM’ but that the ‘IRBM needs the Navy.’ The logic was that the country ‘would be better advised to channel funds and manpower in this direction rather than more B-52s, more airfields, more tankers, and more overseas bases in somebody else’s front yard, thereby increasing the number of No. 1 priority Soviet targets in the United States and Allied territory.’26
Not everyone was so convinced, including many in the Navy hierarchy who saw a strategic nuclear force as diverting funds away from the large surface ships they preferred. Another objection was the expense involved in basing missiles in submarines. Wohlstetter was concerned with the fragility of the communications links, a concern that extended to all mobile systems, whether missiles under the sea or on railroads (there was a plan to put Minuteman on rails) or bombers on airborne alert. The Air Force, not pleased to have another service poaching missions, argued that submarines might well be extremely vulnerable to counter-force attacks, especially given the size of the Soviet submarine fleet. Snyder noted, somewhat blandly, ‘lf the Soviets were to find a way to locate, identify, and trail all our Polaris submarines “on station” around the Soviet periphery, they might be able to destroy them all nearly simultaneously’.27 Kahn suggested other means for disabling submarines including indiscriminate area attacks on the ocean, perhaps using mines on the sea-bed. Kahn’s main objection was that opting for mobility would entail the acquisition of a lower performance system. The expense would mean that fewer would be bought and those that were bought would have only small and inaccurate warheads. This would preclude counter-force attacks altogether, so that the missiles might be inadequate for retaliation. Wohlstetter provided an example of five half-megaton weapons with an average inaccuracy of two miles. These weapons would destroy half the population of a city of 900,000 spread over 40 square miles. If the population were provided with shelters capable of resisting an over-pressure of 100 pounds per square inch, 60 weapons would be needed. If deep rock shelters were available, the requirement could be pushed up to 1000. (Minuteman, when it arrived, had about twice the yield and half the inaccuracy that Wohlstetter postulated.)
The short-range IRBMs, based in Europe, were suitable for counter-force attacks. George Rathjens calculated that, as guidance depended on the early powered portion of the missile’s flight, errors would increase with distance; a 1500-mile range IRBM should only have a quarter the delivery error of a 5500-mile ICBM. As IRBMs would be less than half the price of ICBMs, on a cost basis they might well be in the order of 35 times as effective as ICBMs against hard-point targets (i.e. bomber and missile bases). However, Rathjens added ‘that it cannot be emphasized too strongly that the closeness of [IRBM] bases to the Iron Curtain would make them appallingly vulnerable’.28
The effort to reduce vulnerability would require a loss of offensive capability. Bombers could carry a greater and more differentiated payload and deliver it with higher accuracies. They could assess damage and even engage in some searches for the most appropriate victims. With men in control, there was more flexibility than could possibly be achieved with a missile moving inexorably towards a single pre-planned target. Virtue could even be detected in a bomber’s lack of speed; in a crisis they could be put on alert and even sent part of the way to their targets, thus signalling resolve, with the option of recall still available. Above all, they could find and attack discrete military targets, possibly including protected ICBMs.29 Their main disadvantages in a counter-force role were that they might struggle to achieve surprise and get through air defences.
For those enamoured by counter-force and first-strike strategies the bomber was an attractive instrument of nuclear warfare. Going over completely to missiles would signal a commitment to second-strike strategies, a reduction of ambitions, and recognition that only a limited number of exceptional threats could be deterred. It would cast doubt on the extension of deterrence to other nations. Nor were missiles very good at fighting one another. Counter-force attacks by missiles against other missiles were likely to be costly and ineffectual because of the opportunities for protection. Active defence by anti-missile missiles was also apt to be ineffectual because of the speed of the attacking weapons. The only real duel left was between the offence and passive measures for the protection of cities and economic facilities. If these targets could be given some protection comparable to that being provided for the nuclear forces themselves, then the small warheads of the missile force would have their destructive potential reduced, perhaps to levels acceptable for the defender. If, however, bombers were maintained to provide a greater range of options and more destructive power for the offence, they would also provide valuable targets for missile attacks. Air defence missile systems might well get sufficient warning to intercept an attacking bomber force; bombers sitting idle and in the open at air bases provided relatively easy targets for ICBMs.
As long as bombers and IRBMs existed the tasks that all strategic forces could and would be required to perform were many and various. If it were decided to concentrate solely on long-range missiles then matters would be greatly simplified. This might come about because of improvements in the quality and quantity of missiles. Counter-city missions could then be performed with greater ease and effectiveness. If bombers were replaced by mobile or protected ICBMs then counter-force missions would become less feasible. With no bombers and IRBMs there would be little incentive to get forces launched at the slightest hint of an enemy strike lest they be caught on the ground. The premium on surprise attacks would be drastically reduced with both sides sure that their forces would survive a first strike and then be able to inflict a devastating retaliatory blow. In these circumstances there would be more and not less stability.
All this indicated the error of assigning to technology a predominantly disruptive role. With the move from the established bombers to the novel long-range missiles, some qualities would be gained while others would be lost. The net result would be to enhance strategies based on second strikes at the expense of those based on first strikes. One consequence of this move would be to dampen fears of a cycle of mutually reinforcing fears of surprise attacks; it would clearly take a number of missiles in a counter-force strike to be sure of destroying a single enemy missile. In such circumstances, even if one believed that war was extremely likely, rather than pre-empt it might be better to let the enemy strike first. An attacker using up all its striking force would still not be able to obliterate the target’s retaliatory force. The damage caused by retaliation even by a reduced force—so long as it was specifically directed at the cities of the aggressor—would probably be greater than the indirect damage to one’s own cities resulting from an all-out counter-force attack.
The advantages of the resultant stability were such that some argued that the US should move to embrace it, even at the expense of renouncing counter-force as an objective, and even encouraging the development of invulnerable Soviet systems, so that they need not feel anxious about US surprise attacks. Oskar Morgenstern stated the principle: ‘In order to create a nuclear stalemate under conditions of nuclear plenty it is necessary for both sides to possess invulnerable retaliatory forces.’30
Others balked at this. Snyder wrote that, given the US need to ‘present the Soviets with at least some risk that we would strike first if sufficiently provoked’, it could not ‘be in the US interest … for the Soviets to make their weapons invulnerable to our counter-force fire’. In order to be able to fight all-out war more efficiently and deter less than all-out Soviet attacks on Europe, Snyder advocated keeping some IRBMs and bombers in the force, despite their vulnerability.31 With the US provision of credible nuclear threats providing the basis of NATO’s strategy, Snyder’s concern was understandable. Yet, with the declining opportunities for counter-force attacks that would result as the Russians took steps to protect their own forces, there would be a corresponding decline in the attractiveness of any strategy that could require taking the nuclear initiative. Instead of technology offering new ways out of this dilemma, it was confirming the stalemate. As James King noted the ‘dominance of the offensive’, a theme that also runs right through Brodie’s book Strategy in the Missile Age, was linked to ‘the nuclear phase of the Air Age’, and was likely to be replaced by the ‘dominance of the deterrent’ in the missile age.32