nuclear strategy

nuclear strategy, the formation of tenets and strategies for producing and using nuclear weapons.

Nuclear strategy is no different from any other form of military strategy in that it involves relating military means to political ends. In this case, however, the military means in question are so powerful and destructive that it has been doubted whether any worthwhile political purpose could be served by their use. On the one hand, it has been questioned whether any country with pretensions to civilization could unleash such a devastating force as nuclear weapons. On the other hand, it has been noted that their use against an opponent similarly endowed would result in an equally ruinous retaliation. The central issue for nuclear strategy, therefore, is less how to win and wage a nuclear war than whether by preparing to do so it is possible to create a deterrent effect. The minimum objective would be to deter another’s nuclear use, and the maximum would be to deter any aggression, on the grounds that any hostilities might create the extreme circumstances in which the restraints on nuclear use would fall away.

That maximum objective, which was the one adopted by both superpowers during the Cold War period, required close attention to the links with more conventional strategy and also to the wider political context, including alliance formation and disintegration. However, nuclear strategists paid little attention to this wider context because of the East-West conflict’s remarkable continuity, with two alliances each dominated by a superpower—the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) by the United States and the Warsaw Pact by the Soviet Union. Although attempts to reproduce those alliances in continents other than Europe met with scant success, their stability within Europe meant that they were virtually taken for granted. Nuclear strategy then became associated with more technical questions relating to the capabilities of various weapons systems and the range of potential forms of interaction with those of an enemy under hypothetical scenarios.

With the end of the Cold War, most of those scenarios became moot, raising the question of whether there was still a role for nuclear strategy. The answer seemed to lie largely in how the consequences of nuclear proliferation fit into a much more complex international system. With the rise of tensions around the peripheries of both Russia and China, however, it became most possible to imagine circumstances in which a great power war might break out, which would always carry a risk of nuclear escalation.

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World Wars

The atomic bomb and American strategic thought

The first successful test of the atomic bomb took place in New Mexico in July 1945 as the leaders of Britain, the Soviet Union, and the United States met at the Potsdam Conference to discuss the shape of the postwar world. That context coloured the early American appreciation of the potential foreign-policy role of the new weapon, with the result that nuclear strategy thereafter became bound up with the twists and turns of the Cold War between East and West.

However, the decision to actually use the bomb against Japan reflected the more immediate urge to end the war as soon as possible and certainly before it became necessary to mount an invasion of the mainland. The atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945 was a means of shocking Japan into surrender. The choice of civilian rather than purely military targets, and the consequent immense loss of life, reflected the brutalizing experience of the massive air raids that had become commonplace during the war. Afterward it was assumed that any future atomic bombing would also be against cities. As weapons of terror, they appeared to have brought 20th-century trends in warfare to their logical conclusion.

The first nuclear weapons were in the range of other munitions; the bomb that destroyed Hiroshima was equivalent to the load of some 200 B-29 bombers. Also, at least initially, the weapons were scarce. The key development introduced by atomic bombs was less in the scale of their destructive power than in their efficiency. By the start of the 1950s, though, that situation had been transformed by two related developments. The first was the breaking of the U.S. monopoly by the Soviet Union, which conducted its first atomic bomb test in August 1949. Once two could play the nuclear game, the rules had to be changed. Anyone who thought of initiating nuclear war would henceforth need to consider the possibility of retaliation.

The second development followed from the first. In an effort to extend its effective nuclear superiority, the United States produced thermonuclear bombs, based on the principles of nuclear fusion rather than fission, upon which the atomic bombs were based. That made possible weapons with no obvious limits to their destructive potential. Opposition to that development by influential nuclear scientists, such as Robert Oppenheimer, was disregarded by U.S. Pres. Harry S. Truman on the grounds that the Soviet Union would not suffer from any comparable moral inhibitions.

That move was not matched by a pronounced nuclear bias in U.S. strategy. The weapons were still scarce, and it seemed only a matter of time before any advantages accruing to the United States through its lead would be neutralized as the Soviet Union caught up. The Truman administration assumed that the introduction of thermonuclear weapons would extend the time available to the United States and its allies (including NATO) to build up conventional forces to match those of the Soviet Union and its satellites. A series of events, from the Berlin blockade of 1948 to the Korean War of 1950–53, had convinced the United States that the communists were prepared to use military means to pursue their political ambitions and that this could be countered only by a major program of Western rearmament.