Live Long and Prosper: Ministry of Peace
For such is the logic of war.
If people do not display wisdom, they will clash like blind moles.
And then mutual annihilation will commence. …
What good would it have done me in the last hour of my life to know that,
though our great nation and the United States were in complete ruins,
the national honor of the Soviet Union was intact?
— Nikita Khrushchev (1894 – 1971), October 1962 & 1963.
[Peace is] the necessary rational end of rational men. …
[The] expenditure of billions of dollars every year on weapons acquired for the purpose of making sure we never need to use them [is not] the most efficient, means of assuring peace. …
[In] the final analysis, our most basic common link is that …
- we all inhabit this small planet …
- we all breathe the same air …
- we all cherish our children's future, and
- we are all mortal.
—John Kennedy (1917 – 63), Commencement Address, American University, Washington, 10 June 1963)
Harry Haldeman (1926 – 93) [White House Chief of Staff, Nixon Administration, 1969–73]:
When Eisenhower arrived in the White House, the Korean War was stalemated.
Eisenhower ended the impasse in a hurry.
He secretly got word to the Chinese that he would drop nuclear bombs on North Korea unless a truce was signed immediately.
In a few weeks, the Chinese called for a truce and the Korean War ended.
(The Ends of Power, Times Books, 1978)
Daniel Ellsberg (1931):
Whether such threats actually affected the Chinese decision makers or whether they even received them remains uncertain and controversial.
What is neither uncertain nor inconsequential is that the Eisenhower administration, including [then vice president] Richard Nixon, regarded them as successful.
In line with this belief, Eisenhower and Dulles relied on such threats repeatedly, in a series of crises.
[And later Nixon, as president, made similar threats towards the North Vietnamese.]
(pp 311-2)
[Eisenhower’s judgment was] that no war between any significant forces of the United States and the Soviet Union could remain limited more than momentarily.
Therefore, if such a conflict were pending, the United States should immediately go to an all-out nuclear first strike rather than allow the Soviets to do so. …
[Any] alternative approach was unacceptable from a fiscal point of view.
[His economic advisors had convinced him] that preparation to fight even a limited number of Soviet divisions on the ground … would compel an increase in defense spending that would cause inflation, precipitating a depression and "national bankruptcy."
(pp 94-5)
In 1961, [within the US] arsenal there were some 500 bombs with an explosive power of 25 megatons.
Each of these warheads had more firepower than all the bombs and shells exploded in all the wars of human history. …
The preplanned targets for the whole force included … every city in the Soviet Union and China.
There was at least one warhead allocated for every city of 25,000 people or more in the Soviet Union.
(pp 98-9)
In 1986, the US had 23,317 nuclear warheads and Russia had 40,159, for a total of 63,836 weapons.
(p 144)
[The Strategic Integrated Operations Plan:]
- provided for no distinction between the USSR and China; …
- allowed for no avoidance or postponement of attacks on cities; …
- allowed for no option to minimize nonmilitary casualties; …
- offered no option for preserving enemy command and control capability, [and]
- allowed for no Stop order once an authenticated Execute order was received by [Strategic Air Command] forces.
Since this unleashed attacks on all major Sino-Soviet urban-industrial centers and governmental and military control centers, this policy maintained no plausible basis for inducing any Soviet commanders or units to terminate operations prior to expending all their weapons upon US and allied cities.
(pp 126-7)
David Shoup (1904 – 83) [General, US Marine Corp]:
[Any] plan that murders 300 million Chinese when it might not even be their war is not a good plan.
That is not the American way.
(p 103, emphasis added)
Daniel Ellsberg (1931):
Deterring a surprise Soviet nuclear attack — or responding to such an attack — has never been the only or even the primary purpose of our nuclear plans and preparations.
The nature, scale, and posture of our strategic nuclear forces has always been shaped by the [imperative] to limit the damage to the United States from Soviet or Russian retaliation to a US first strike against the USSR or Russia.
(p 12)
The … arrangements made in Russia and the United States have long made it highly likely, if not virtually certain, that a single Hiroshima-type fission weapon exploding on either Washington or Moscow — whether deliberate or the result of a mistaken attack (as in Fail Safe or Dr Strangelove) or as a result of an independent terrorist action — would lead to the end of human civilization (and most other species).
(The Doomsday Machine, Bloomsbury, 2017, p 305)
Robert McMahon:
By 1960, the United States [had achieved] the coveted ‘triad’ of bomber-, land-, and submarine-based nuclear weapons, each part of the triad capable of obliterating major Soviet targets.
The total US nuclear arsenal had grown from approximately 1,000 warheads in 1953, Eisenhower’s first year in office, to 18,000 in 1960, his last.
By then, the US Strategic Air Command (SAC) boasted a total of 1,735 strategic bombers capable of dropping nuclear weapons on Soviet targets. …
Aided by secret reconnaissance photographs [Eisenhower knew] that the United States maintained a formidable lead over its rival in deliverable nuclear weapons.
Still, a political frenzy surrounded the supposed missile gap, and the non-existent gap actually emerged as a galvanizing issue in the 1960 presidential election.
(The Cold War: A Very Short Introduction, Oxford University Press, 2003, pp 74‒6)
Friedrich Nietzsche (1844 – 1900):
Madness is something rare in individuals — but in groups, parties, peoples, [and] ages, it is the rule.
(Aphorism 156, Beyond Good and Evil, 1886)
Rationality Alone Will Not Save Us
Against stupidity
The Gods themselves
Contend in vain
— Friedrich von Schiller (1759 – 1805)
India and Pakistan have fought three vicious conventional land wars.
Yet despite their border disputes [they] have not fought a major conflict since since they generated nuclear capacity in the 1970s. …
Post-WWII history is littered with examples of deterrence preventing powers from using nuclear weapons in an offensive manner.
During the long peace of the Cold War there was actually a very limited chance of nuclear war.
Why?
Because Washington and Moscow were rational calculators of nuclear risks. …
Now it's true that Pakistan could one day implode into chaos and one or more of its nukes could fall into the hands of jihadists who are irrational enough to use them.
Still, the lesson [of history] is clear: nuclear deterrence works.
— Tom Switzer (1971), India and Pakistan nuclear tests 1998, ABC Between the Lines, 31 May 2018.
(Susan Bellows, JFK, PBS American Experience, WGBH, 2013)
(Adriana Bosch, Eisenhower, PBS American Experience, WGBH, 1993)
(Nuclear Nightmeres, While the Rest of Us Die: Secrets of America's Shadow Government, Episode 5, Season 2, Vice, 2021)