First edition published 1981
Second edition 1989
Third edition 2003
Fourth edition 2019
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Cover illustration: design by Tjaša Krivec and Fatima Jamadar
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When this book was first published in 1981 it was 36 years since the first and still the only use of nuclear weapons in anger. At the time of publication tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union were on the rise and the nuclear issue had moved to the centre of political debate across the western world. A nuclear war was being actively discussed as a real possibility. This new edition is published with another 38 years having passed. There have been many terrible events during these years, including vicious conflicts that have left millions dead, wounded or displaced from their homes, but still a catastrophic nuclear war has been avoided. This fortunate state of affairs means that this fourth edition like the second and third can tell a continuing story of non-use while considering the preparations for war as well as attempts to reduce the risk through measures of disarmament and arms control. Unlike the second and third editions, however, which added new chapters to describe developments since 1981 this edition not only updates the story of nuclear weapons but also provides a complete revision of the original book.
There are a number of reasons for this updated and revised edition. The most obvious is that a mass of material has been published since 1981 on the first decades of the nuclear age, adding to our knowledge of the major strategic thinkers of the period and also the relationship between how the key issues were debated in public and how they were viewed by policy-makers in private. This is also true for the periods covered in the second and third editions. In particular we now know a lot more about the development of Soviet nuclear strategy so the account can be less one sided. The opportunity to compare the internal policy debates with what was being discussed in public makes it easier to evaluate the actual influence of some of the big books and ideas in contemporary strategic theory. Secondly, while it remains the case that the innovators in nuclear strategy have largely been American, with many more nuclear states and the Cold War over, it is important to review not just superpower strategies but the whole range of approaches to the nuclear issue, including those of states that decided that they could abandon their weapons programmes. Third, it is hard to get a unity of style when bringing together chapters written at different times over the past forty or so years.
Both Freedman and Michaels wish to acknowledge their debt to their colleagues and students at King’s College London. Michaels is also grateful for the backing of the John D. and Catherine T. MacArthur Foundation and the support of Professor Wyn Bowen.
Just after 7 am on 6 August 1945 a single aircraft flew over the Japanese city of Hiroshima. This B-29, known as Straight Flush, was checking weather conditions over the primary target for the dropping of the first atomic bomb. Two other aircraft were checking the conditions over the second and third possible targets. The all clear was sounded in the city below as the aircraft flew away. Another B-29, named Enola Gay after the mother of the pilot, Colonel Paul Tibbets, now prepared to drop the bomb it was carrying. Two other B-29s followed just behind carrying scientific instrumentation and cameras. One was named Great Artiste and the other was later named as Necessary Evil. An hour later at 8.15 am the bomb was dropped. At least 66,000 people died almost immediately from the explosion and fire-storm that followed. Tens of thousands more died in the aftermath, and many died over subsequent years as a result of their injuries and exposure to high doses of radiation. Three days after the first explosion, a second bomb was dropped on the Japanese city of Nagasaki. The immediate dead numbered some 40,000 people. The hilly terrain meant that the devastation was not as complete as with Hiroshima, although the explosion was larger. About 40 per cent of the city’s structures were destroyed or severely damaged, as against 80 per cent in Hiroshima. On 15 August Emperor Hirohito announced Japan’s surrender.
Thus began the nuclear age. It opened with key propositions: the bombs’ effects were devastating; cities were their natural targets; there was no obvious defence; and they could win wars. Each of these propositions could be qualified or challenged. When announcing the destruction of Hiroshima President Truman had described the target as ‘an important military base’. This choice of words, indicating unease about targeting civilians directly, foreshadowed later debates about the purposes that might be served if nuclear weapons were directed against the enemy’s armed forces. Those who had planned the attack were surprised by the death toll. They had assumed that people would have taken shelter, not realising how little alarm would be caused by the appearance of so few aircraft. As the weapons became even more powerful the possibility of surviving an attack declined, but concepts of defence based on intercepting weapons before they reached their targets continued to be explored. Later a debate began about whether the destruction of these two cities really did cause the Japanese surrender, especially as the Soviet Union coincidentally declared war on Japan. But first impressions count, and these reinforced the view that atomic bombs were transformational weapons. Despite their apparent ability to win wars the horrific human consequences of their use raised questions from the start as to whether they could ever be treated as normal weapons of war. Soon the emphasis was on deterring wars rather than winning them. This preference was reinforced once the Soviet Union acquired its own nuclear capabilities and the US monopoly was lost. In this respect the context of the developing Cold War between these two countries and their respective alliances shaped thinking about nuclear weapons. If the victors of 1945 had avoided a new round of conflict then they might have been able to work together to impose stricter controls on how nuclear energy was exploited for military purposes. Proposals were made but they soon foundered on Cold War suspicions. In these ways the big issues—of targeting, survival, deterrence and control—were framed from early on in the nuclear age and they continue to shape debates about their development, deployment and potential use.
The weapons that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki produced explosions equivalent to that produced with roughly 14,000 and 20,000 tons of TNT respectively, an explosive power described as being 14 or 20 kilotons. Many of the nuclear warheads now in the possession of the major powers are in the megaton range; that is they would result in explosions equivalent to that produced with 1 million or more tons of TNT. If a 1-megaton bomb is exploded at the height necessary to achieve maximum destruction, all brick houses would be destroyed out to 3½ miles, with comparatively minor damage out to 13 miles. The blast would create winds sufficient to hurl objects (and even people) through the air at lethal speeds, out to 6½ miles. Within a radius of about 6 miles most fabrics and paper will burst into flame. As far out as 11 miles the explosion could cause second-degree burns and ignite dry leaves. The explosion would take its toll in human life for the following weeks and months through radiation sickness.
Plans for war during the first decades of the nuclear age assumed that any use would be on a massive scale. Later it became possible to envisage use on a limited scale, especially in a war between the smaller nuclear powers. It is unclear at what point in a nuclear war there would be a breakdown of social organization, with the consequential economic collapse and the spread of poverty, disease and hunger, nor the nature of the political and social consequences, although they would always be extreme.
One of the most profound thoughts to develop during the 1950s was just how quickly all or much of this could be accomplished. If the deed were to be done it could be done quickly. It remains within human decision. Our collective future has become hostage to continuing acts of self-restraint by the leaders of the world’s major powers. It is not surprising that at times these leaders did not, and still do not, seem wholly suited to this responsibility, or that events appeared to be propelling them to a point where caution, and eventually everything else, might be thrown to the winds. Mass movements were mobilized on the basis of such anxieties, and pushed the question of prevention of nuclear war to high on the political agenda. The remedies proposed ranged from attempting to make nuclear weapons more usable by controlling their effects, to making them virtually impossible to use on the grounds that their effects could never be controlled. Some addressed the problem as essentially one of command and control; others were concerned with the size of the nuclear inventories and argued that they could and should be reduced dramatically—if possible to zero.
Advocacy of a nuclear-free world continues. Proponents of nuclear disarmament have been regular winners of the Nobel Peace Prize, no less than eight times, most recently the International Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (ICAN) in 2017. The only prize for an advocate of deterrence was to Thomas Schelling in 2005, and that was for economics and not peace. 1 Despite the advocacy and the practical work done on how to move to a nuclear-free world this remains a distant prospect. So long as we do not have a conflict-free world, so long as nuclear weapons remain attractive as symbols of power, and so long as the fear that the widely spread knowledge of how to develop and produce nuclear weapons will be exploited by the unscrupulous, there will continue to be limits placed on the possibilities for complete disarmament. Even if current stocks were eliminated, during the course of a conflict new stocks could be produced (especially if civilian nuclear facilities had not been eliminated). Nor do nuclear explosions exhaust the possible horrors that human beings can inflict on each other. More positively, the record suggests—even if it cannot prove—that the risk of nuclear disaster has been the source of a welcome caution in international politics over the past seven decades. For the moment it is as difficult to comprehend a future without nuclear weapons as it is to comprehend the consequences of their use.
This book is largely concerned with a different problem: given the horrific consequences of their use, and the possibility that any use might lead to retaliation in kind, how do states attempt to incorporate nuclear weapons into their security policies? Can they be used to deter any war between nuclear powers, or just nuclear use in those wars? In the event of war how might they be employed to gain a military advantage? To what extent does the credibility of deterrence depend on forms of effective and potentially decisive use being identified? Though these are questions that have preoccupied some of the best minds of our time there have been no definitive answers. The thankful lack of experience of nuclear warfare since 1945 has rendered highly speculative all thoughts on the likely causes of nuclear war, its course and its finale. Even when nuclear powers have confronted non-nuclear powers they have yet to take advantage of their supposedly decisive superiority. The likely dynamics and consequences of nuclear employment remain matters for inference and conjecture.
There are many aspects to the history of nuclear weapons—the science behind them, the construction of the first weapons and their use, the various means of delivering them and how these have been developed over time, forms of defence, practical steps to achieve arms control and disarmament, their role in holding together alliances and managing crises, proliferation and the possibility of ‘terrorist bombs’, and so on. All of these matters need to be considered in a history of nuclear strategy, which is the focus of this book. As strategy is concerned with the relationship between political ends and military means our interest is with the theoretical and practical issues raised by attempts to extract political benefits from nuclear arsenals. Unlike most military strategy, which is about how forces might be employed against armed opponents, the discussion of nuclear strategy has been bound up with deterrence and how to cope if it fails. Deterrence is a notoriously difficult subject to pin down, for it succeeds when nothing happens and depends on how threats are communicated and understood. At moments of crisis governments do talk about the risks of nuclear war but at other times they tend to avoid speculating on the circumstances in which nuclear weapons might be used.
The ‘evolution’ in this book’s title suggests a learning curve, implying steady progress in levels of understanding. Though in some respects that is true, because there has at least been an accumulation of knowledge, there is also a marked cyclical character to the debates. Moreover, if there is an underlying trend, it may be less towards the refinement of a theory strong in its inner core, but towards a steady resistance to the idea of an operational nuclear strategy. Operational concepts are still developed and plans are made but any implementation must confront the likelihood that the repercussions of use, foreseen and unforeseen, will outweigh any gains.
To make sense of all this, and to keep the strategic debates in context, requires addressing a vast and rich literature. It is difficult not to be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of the material that has been generated. In addition to professional writings of writers from the military and reflections of politicians presiding over nuclear arsenals, there has been a vast outpouring of books, articles, papers, and memos from civilians representing many academic disciplines and often organized into new research institutes concerned with few things other than the problems of modern strategy. As time has passed and archives have become declassified a vast documentary record of high-level deliberations, war plans and nuclear guidance has become available. The literature threatens to overwhelm any would-be historian of ideas. To help order and explain such a novel situation, new and arcane concepts have been developed, which sometimes serve to clarify but often only obfuscate. The uninitiated has to work through a forbidding miasma of acronyms and jargon.
An attempt to note each intended contribution to contemporary strategy would result in a work of great length and tedium. Inevitably a large proportion of the material is repetitive and derivative. In the same way that a military historian is not expected to record every campaign so a historian of ideas does not have to record every documented thought. This work is selective, and in consequence the discussion of some areas such as conventional strategy, and particularly naval warfare, is inadequate; also, we have concentrated on the strategic debate in the United States, the most vigorous and fertile, though without neglecting the parallel debates elsewhere. Over time these parallel debates have become more important and distinctive, which is why they receive additional attention in this new edition of the book. The aim is to provide a systematic and reasonably comprehensive treatment of the major themes of nuclear strategy. To this end, the most important individual contributions to the debate have been analysed in some detail, but this is not a collection of critiques of great texts and so some favourite authors may not have got the attention they deserve. Similarly, while this is also not a history of decision-making we have sought to check declared policy with what was being said in private meetings in governments and international organisations. The number of strategic debates to be addressed has expanded with the number of nuclear powers. As these new powers face different challenges to those of the original powers we have explored the extent to which they have shown strategic innovation or have been caught by the same dilemmas and formulations which caught the others.
A book about strategy ought to begin with a definition of the subject. A comparable book in the Soviet Union would have opened with elaborate distinctions between military strategy, art, science, and doctrine. But as indicated above we have avoided restrictive terms of reference. Furthermore, there has been no constant and generally accepted definition of strategy, even during the post-war years. The origins of the word ‘strategy’ lie in the Greek strategos , meaning the art of the general. The word returned to the European vernacular in the late eighteenth century, just in time for the Napoleonic Wars, but it was defined largely in military terms, as military thought was fixated on battle. Strategy was about getting into the best position for a battle; tactics was about how it should be fought. By the twentieth century it was becoming harder to avoid questions of policy, covering peacetime preparations for future wars, including alliance formation, the purposes for which they might be fought, and the mobilisation of all national resources, economic and political as well as military, to win them. The relationship between military means and political ends was captured during the interwar years by Basil Liddell Hart—‘the art of distributing and applying military means to fulfil the ends of policy’. 2 It was non-committal about how military means were to be distributed while stressing the role of the political sphere as the source of strategic objectives. It also maintained the connection with military means. This is why Liddell Hart’s definition still works, even in the nuclear age. The difference that nuclear weapons made to the concept of strategy was to turn the focus away from war-fighting to war prevention, and to forms of coercion and intimidation, including deterrence, as well as crisis management and arms control. When all the means of national power—political and economic as well as military—are being considered this is now normally described as grand strategy. It is reasonable to consider this wider context of diplomacy and general international relations but it remains important to remember that we are dealing with ‘functional and purposive violence’. 3
A further complication comes with the particular way the term strategy has come to be used in connection with nuclear weapons. When fledgling air forces, after World War I, were anxious to demonstrate that they possessed a means for getting right to the heart of the enemy’s power and destroying it with some well-chosen blows, they described this as a ‘strategic’ capability. Thus they spoke of ‘strategic bombardment’, using ‘strategic bombers’, eventually under a ‘Strategic Air Command’ (SAC). In this spirit nuclear weapons, best able to perform this mission, came to be known as ‘strategic weapons’, and a war in which they were to be used would be a ‘strategic war’. This use of the adjective ‘strategic’ has very little to do with the noun ‘strategy’. The connection has now become even more tenuous, with ‘strategic’ now tightly defined, as in the ‘strategic arms reductions talks’, by reference to the ranges of certain weapons. A weapon that can be directed from the homeland of one superpower against the homeland of the other is strategic. Nuclear weapons designed to be used against enemy forces in battle were described as ‘tactical’, although any authorisation to use even these smaller-scale weapons would still be a highly strategic matter. It is difficult to avoid this sort of terminological usage, as it became the language in which nuclear issues are discussed. It also indicates the extent to which the dramatic entrance of atom bombs on to the international stage meant that they were discussed and understood in terms derived from the established theories of airpower.
Eventually, nuclear weapons became more powerful, more numerous and, crucially, possessed by more than one nation. New concepts and approaches developed in an attempt to come to terms with the possibility of a war in which the use of the most formidable weapons available would mean, in all probability, that it would be catastrophic for all concerned. Could any useful purpose be served by employment of devices which invited discussion using words such as ‘holocaust’, ‘doomsday’ and ‘Armageddon’? And could any employment of nuclear weapons be sufficiently deliberate and controlled to ensure that political objectives were met. At issue has been whether a ‘nuclear strategy’ is a contradiction in terms. To the extent that there has been an effective nuclear strategy thus far it has depended on non-use, by deterring major war and helping to hold together alliances. The most intense debates over nuclear strategy took place during the Cold War but though that ended many years ago the weapons remain, ready for use. Behind the question of whether strategies based on non-use still have a role to play is the even larger question of whether it is possible for the habit of non-use to be sustained. There has been no use of nuclear weapons since August 1945. It is an impressive record, but is it one that can be sustained indefinitely?