Introduction to the Logic of the Cold War Arms Race •
One of the most important elements in the study of the Cold War is the role the development of new weapons technologies, particularly nuclear weapons, played in the shaping of US and Soviet foreign policy. In many ways the pace of technological change helped to shape the attitudes of both sides and created a self perpetuating cycle of one‐
upmanship that began during World War II and continued unabated until the end of the Cold War. •
In this presentation I will attempt to present the logic behind the Cold War arms race. My examination will focus on four distinct Cold War eras: 1) The arms race during and shortly after WWII; 2) The era of Mutual Assured Destruction and nuclear proliferation; 3) The period of Detente which began in the 1970s; and 4) The Regan years and the Strategic Defence Initiative. •
It should be noted I limit my observations to the United States and the Soviet Union and not the UK, France and China which played a more ancillary role in the conflict. WWII and the Beginnings of the Cold War Arms Race •
[Slide] Before and during WWII there was a great deal of concern on the part of top US scientists regarding the possibility of German investigations into nuclear fission resulting in a usable atomic weapon, the possibility of which had been discussed in academic circles since the early 30s. •
The response to these concerns was the formation of the joint US, British and Canadian Manhattan Project in 1942 at the behest of individuals such as Albert Einstein. Einstein urged President Roosevelt to develop nuclear capability before the Germans, who since the invasion of Poland had been conducting extensive experiments into nuclear fission and heavy water under the German Army Ordnance office. •
Although the German program never resulted in a breakthrough, the fear prompted by its existence provided the funding necessary to conduct proof of concept experiments. In 1942 under the scientific leadership of Robert Oppenheimer the scientists of the Manhattan Project confirmed that a nuclear weapon was theoretically possible – although very complex questions regarding practical considerations remained. •
With this confirmation came an extraordinary level of support from the US Government and Military, anxious to develop a weapon not only before the Germans did the same, but to use in the ongoing global conflict. •
[Slide] Operating primarily out of: Los Alamos, New Mexico where principal research and assembly was conduct in extraordinary secrecy; Oak Ridge, Tennessee where uranium enrichment occurred; and Richland, Oregon where Plutonium was produced – the Manhattan Project grew to enormous proportions. It would eventually employ 130,000 people in various functions and cost nearly $24 billion dollars (inflation adjusted). •
So secret was the program however that even though the Oak Ridge facilities covered an area of 243 square km and when in operation consumed 1/6 of the total electrical production of the United States, even the state governor was not informed of its existence until after the war. Entire secret cities were constructed in these locations in which scientists, workers and their families were brought in secret to live for the duration of the war. They maintained this level of secrecy by classifying their actions top secret and by most importantly splitting up the work into specific tasks that required little or no knowledge of the bigger picture. People knew they were helping the war effort – but they didn’t know exactly how. •
[Slide] The culmination of this effort resulted in the successful Trinity test at the Alamogordo, New Mexico test site on July 16 1945 – the first detonation of an atomic weapon in history. [Slide] •
[Slide] Within a week the project delivered two workable Atomic weapons to the Army Air Force: Little Boy and Fat Man, which were used on the Japanese cities of Hiroshima and Nagasaki by executive order of President Truman on August 6th and 9th respectively. Japan surrendered on August 15th. The World had entered the Atomic Age with terrifying consequences. [Slide x3] •
In relation to the Cold War the Manhattan Project played a very interesting role. It began the nuclear arms race even during WWII as the US, Britain and Canada came together in great secrecy to pursue the project, realizing its massive implications for the global balance of power in the future. They saw the Soviet Union with its massive military might and authoritarian anti‐capitalist regime as a possible post‐war enemy. •
[Slide] As such they purposely excluded the Soviet Union from the project in every possible way, with President Truman informing Stalin about the US possession of atomic weapons at the Potsdam Conference on July 24th, less than 2 weeks before the weapons were used. When Stalin was given the news however he took it rather calmly, with Truman questioning whether he had heard him correctly and understood the implications. The truth was that Stalin had known about the program since its creation, due to the penetration of the project by numerous Soviet agents, who had been funnelling status reports and nuclear secrets to the USSR. Several of whom were latter imprisoned or executed for espionage. •
Although the US possessed the world’s only nuclear weapons, having constructed several dozen more bombs in the weeks and months after the end of the war – the political climate was such that they were unable to use them as a threat to receive any major concessions from the Soviets. However, very importantly, the military advantage provided by the bombs and political considerations (i.e. an early reluctance by policy makers to see the Soviets as a military adversary after their assistance in crushing the Nazis) allowed for a major decrease in the size of the US military. •
During the war the US military had increased in size to 12 million men – almost 10% of the US population of 140 million at the time. By March of 1946 military machine was down to 400,000 troops, the vast majority abroad in the occupation forces of Germany and Japan. The Soviet Union maintained much of its war‐time military machine however maintaining 5‐6 million troops, 50,000 tanks, and 20,000 aircraft in Eastern Europe as well as vastly increasing submarine production. •
[Slide] The US was confident however, even this early in the Cold War, using the concept of a nuclear deterrent in lieu of conventional force superiority. Their expectation was that even given the iron curtain that was descending on Eastern Europe, the battle should be waged in the hearts and minds of the Europeans rather than in the trenches – epitomized by the policies of containment, the Marshall Plan, Radio Free Europe, etc. Meanwhile the Soviets were deeply sceptical of Western intentions and put utmost importance on border security and territorial integrity. •
US strategists believed they would have the time to make their plan work, seeing the Soviet acquisition of the bomb as likely only by the mid‐50s. This assumption was shattered however when the Soviets conducted their first nuclear test “Joe‐1” in August 1949, a mere four years after Hiroshima. Owing to stolen US nuclear secrets, the Soviet weapon was a close copy of the US Fat Man weapon used on Nagasaki. Now in an arms race both sides raced to build and develop more powerful weapons. •
[Slide] It is important to note that at this stage however the consequences of a nuclear war, if one were to occur, were not close to certain. With a limited number of weapons on either side and only having piston aircraft as their delivery systems, not to mention a lack of a full understanding of the long term radiation effects, a nuclear war was still seen as “winnable”. For the Americans if they could deliver their more numerous weapons against Soviet armies and cities and for the Soviets if they could quickly overrun Europe (they planned for 9 days to France) and the US bomber sites. In fact during the Korean War 1950‐53 General Douglas MacArthur called on President Truman to authorize the release of up to 50 nuclear weapons against Chinese military and civil targets to force them to surrender. Truman, racked with guilt over Hiroshima, and fearing a Soviet retaliation in Europe, declined. Fortunately the conflict stayed contained to the Korean peninsula and did not spill out into a wider conflict. Mutual Assured Destruction •
[Slide] By the early 50s there had been speculation for a great deal of time about the possibility of a much more powerful type of nuclear weapon utilizing a fusion as opposed to a fission reaction. There was a great deal of debate among the American nuclear scientists over the morality of creating such a weapon as it could only be used against cities or other large areas and was therefore by definition a weapon of genocide. Proponents countered that although that was correct, the Soviets would develop their own fusion bombs regardless of the moral implications and that it was their duty to not put America at a military disadvantage thus inviting war. •
[Slide] This was the logic of a great deal of Cold War thinking, morality is irrelevant if you are simply doing it to not be put at a strategic disadvantage. For the part they were mostly correct, the Soviets were hard at work on their own domestically produced fusion weapons, operating under the same assumption – that the Americans would do it anyway, and use it to reach their imperialist goals. •
[Slide] Sure enough when the United States tested their first “thermonuclear” fusion weapon, dubbed the Hydrogen Bomb in November of 1952, the Soviet Union quickly followed with their own H‐Bomb test less than a year later, and in fact surpassed the Americans as their weapon wasn’t simply a test bed, it was small enough to actually be delivered by aircraft. •
The power of these new weapons cannot be over emphasized. The fission weapon used against Hiroshima was equivalent to 13‐18 kilotons of TNT, in other words 13,000‐
18,000 tons or 13 million to 18 million kg of high explosive and killed over 100,000 people. The Ivy Mike US H‐Bomb test produced an explosion of 10.2 megatons, 450 times more powerful than the Hiroshima blast, equivalent to over 10 billion kilograms of conventional explosives. •
During this same period the Korean War was continuing and with it a quadrupling of the US defence budget to fight the war. The war weary US population was anxious to end the war, avoid future conflicts and the large expenditures that accompanied them. Dwight Eisenhower was elected in 1953 and resolved to end the Korean War as quickly as possible, reduce military spending, and instead focus heavily on US nuclear superiority to continue fighting the Cold War. Eisenhower's secretary of state, John Foster Dulles, initiated a "New Look" for the containment strategy, calling for a greater reliance on nuclear weapons against US enemies in wartime. Dulles also crafted the doctrine of "massive retaliation", threatening a severe US response to any Soviet aggression. In other words even a conventional invasion could elicit a nuclear response. •
[Slide] The logic again was that with such massively powerful weapons, if the US could maintain its superiority they would possess the edge at the bargaining table (such as during the Suez crisis) while being able to maintain only a modest conventional military. The forces that the US maintained in Europe were therefore completely unable to resist any Soviet aggression as the Soviets continued to outnumber them over 10 to 1 in terms of manpower and equipment, their only hope would be the use of a nuclear bombardment against tens of thousands of soviet tanks. War planners on both sides still considered a war winnable however due to the limited range of bombers and missiles at the time, meaning that if one side were to conduct a first strike against bombers and missile launch sites, the likelihood of effective retaliation would be limited. Meanwhile the Europeans were less optimistic about their chances for survival. [Slide] •
[Slide] This thinking was upset in 1957 with the launch of the first satellite – Sputnik, and the first intercontinental ballistic missile by the Soviets. These technologies shocked American leaders and the general public as for the first time it became clear that if war were to occur, oceans would not provide protection against Soviet nuclear weapons. The US had had natural advantages in the Cold War arms race up until this point due to their ability to station intermediate range ballistic missiles in Europe, while the Soviet Union had to rely on vulnerable bombers to attack the US directly. If the US initiated a first strike, such bombers (easily detected on Radar and intercepted by comparison to missiles) would be destroyed in the opening hours of the war, allowing the US to get off relatively unscathed while Europe and Eurasia blew each other to bits. The protection of the US mainland therefore factored heavily into US Cold War strategy up until this point. •
[Slide] With this protection eliminated by nuclear tipped intercontinental missiles that could hit American cities within less than an hour after launch, civil defence was further prioritized with fallout shelters being constructed for the countries leadership, a continuation of programs put in place in the early 50s. The interstate highway system was also prioritized to allow quick movement of troops and equipment in the event of a nuclear attack. •
Development of the space program was seen in America as a new priority, with the formation of NASA, as the rockets developed by the program could be directly applied to ICBM production while maintaining the cover of scientific pursuit and a challenge to Soviet technological supremacy at the time. Although the US still possessed a tremendous nuclear deterrent, the Soviet developments led presidential candidate Kennedy to famously describe the situation as a “missile gap”. The situation was not helped by Khrushchev’s “we will bury you” statement and several comments boasting about the ability of Soviet missiles to wipe out any American city. For his part Kennedy once elected was vehemently anti‐communist and due to his support of nuclear expansion into Turkey was thought of by Khrushchev as a dangerous militarist. •
[Slide] The 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis, in which Soviet intermediate range nuclear missiles were placed on Cuban soil, resulted in Soviet missiles being placed within minutes of American cities. The move was in response to the placement of US IRBMs in Turkey, leaving them 16 minutes from Moscow and the American nuclear submarine force’s supremacy in force strike scenarios. The move resulted in a US naval blockade and subsequent standoff with the world on the brink of nuclear war. The conflict was only resolved by tense negotiations in which Premier Khrushchev agreed to remove the weapons from Cuba in exchange for a pledge by President Kennedy that the US would not invade Cuba in the future and would remove their weapons from Turkey. •
[Slide] Two major conclusions were drawn from the crisis with respect to the arms race by both sides: 1) That neither superpower was prepared to use nuclear weapons against the other for fear of the retaliatory response. 2) That the greatest element that factored into that fear was not the bomber forces or the short range weapons in Europe, but the ICBMs (which at this point both sides possessed) and very importantly SLBMs that could not be shot down once launched and would invariable cause massive devastation. In these circumstances the concept of a “winnable” nuclear war was completely discarded. •
[Slide] Instead its replacement was a policy of Assured Destruction crafted by Defence Secretary McNamara. Initially the policy was based around preventing either side from attaining a first strike capability in which they could strike first with a nuclear attack that would limit the ability of the enemy to retaliate. It became clear however that this was an impossibility as although one could detect ICBM launches and respond thereby ensuring mutual destruction, with the introduction of submarine launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) in the mid 60s one side could use stealth to position their subs just off the enemy shoreline and launch missiles that could hit their targets in under 10 minutes, much less than the time that would be necessary to make a response decision. •
[Slide] Instead a two stage system developed whereby if one side initiated a nuclear attack against the other, surviving land based ICBMs and strategic bombers would do as much damage to the enemy as they could, with submarine based nukes obliterating what was left, as part of what was dubbed “second strike” capability. Together the three elements comprised what is called the Nuclear Deterrence Triad. •
Of course the possibility of the destruction of an enemy capital in less than 10 minutes after launch raised the question of how to maintain command and control with most or all of a nation’s leadership structure killed in the opening salvo. To accommodate this possibility both the US and the Soviet Union put in place contingency programs, called fail‐deadly in the US and Dead Hand in the Soviet Union. The principle however was the same – in the event of an unexpected loss of communications or data indicating a nuclear attack was underway, the officer in charge of the bomber, submarine or missile silo would then launch their ordnance if independent confirmation was impossible. Of course this raised the risk of accidental initiation of a nuclear war which almost occurred several times as a result. •
[Slide] So the program, dubbed Mutual Assured Destruction by its critics, or MAD, came to mean that even if a first strike was initiated, both sides would be completely obliterated, militarily and as nations. Such was the power of their nuclear arsenals, which by this point had reached the point where even factoring in first strikes there would be enough weapons to achieve Mutual Assured Destruction. When factoring in the impact of such an exchange including the massive nuclear fallout, any such nuclear war would mean near total global destruction, even in countries far removed from the conflict. Détente •
[Slide] MAD remained the status quo, with ever increasing numbers of warheads, ICBMs and nuclear submarines being constructed by both sides with the logic of maintaining the “balance of power” and the function of the logic of assured destruction. Basically a continuation of tit for tat technology increases. If the American’s built hardened missile silos requiring more direct nuclear hits to destroy them, the Soviets would too. If the Soviets built faster and more numerous weapons to counter those hardened silos, the Americans would do the same. After the early 60s, nuclear war meaning the end of the world became very certain, making the tit for tat increases more of a psychological tool to continually reinforce MAD in the minds of the other side, as well as demonstrate technological superiority. •
[Slide] It is also during this period that a number of illustrative media representations regarding nuclear war such as Dr. Strangelove and Fail‐Safe were produced (both released in 1964), satirizing the absurdity of the situation and particularly in the case of the former presenting the conflict in terms of sexual superiority (who has the biggest...stick) – it was no longer about tactical superiority, but psychological. This further became clear once very close nuclear parity was achieved between the two powers in virtually all elements in the late 60s early 70s. The film also satirized the concept of a missile gap as a “doomsday gap.” •
[Slide] Detente refers to the period that began in the early 70s and marked recognition of the absurdity of the then current state of affairs to a certain extent. Premier Brezhnev believed the arms race placed an unsustainable economic burden on the Soviet economy. Vietnam was also costing the American economy billions of dollars and was widely unpopular. Finally the Sino‐Soviet split had Soviet policy makers worried, particularly given improved US relations with China, which had also cooled American fears of communism as a system. •
[Slide] Nixon and Brezhnev thus moved towards improved relations between the two states, building on the partial test ban treaty of 1963 (which limited atmospheric nuclear tests), the outer space treaty of 1967 (developing outer space law and preventing WMDs in space), and the nuclear non‐proliferation treaty 1968 (written in response to the spread of nuclear weapons to new nations). The Soviets held out the offer of talks and the Nixon Administration accepted, culminating in the Strategic Arms Limitation Treaty (aka SALT 1) 1972. The new treaty froze the existing number of ICBM launchers for both sides (although aging weapons could be replaced). Also that same year limitations were placed on anti‐ballistic missiles. •
SALT II continued the arms limitation work by limiting strategic forces of all categories to 2,250 (including bombers, submarine based missiles, ICBMs, etc) and banned new missile programs leading to an agreement in 1979. Also joint cooperation in the space programs occurred during this period. •
[Slide] Although these treaties and the detente era provided a much needed decrease in Cold War tensions, they achieved very little in actual arms reduction due to a new technological development. Multiple Independent Re‐entry Vehicles, or MIRVs, allowed the superpowers to place not one warhead on a single ICBM, but many warheads (usually between 6 and 10). As a result, although the number and type of the missiles used remained static, each weapon now possessed the firepower of a half‐dozen or more ICBMs before this development. [Slide] •
[Slide] Also to meet the requirement for the new MIRVs, warhead production skyrocketed with the American stockpile almost tripling between 1968 and 1982. Likewise the Soviets, who had relied on a smaller number of more powerful missiles, increased their warhead total almost 10 times during the period. Behind the scenes the MAD ideology was alive and well, despite an overt cooling of tensions. •
Detente began to unravel in 1979 with the embarrassing Iranian Hostage Crisis (Americans seeing the event as part of decline in American international power) and very importantly the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan in 1979. This precipitated a large increase in defence spending and assisted in the election of President Ronald Reagan on an anti‐Soviet platform. Strategic Defence Initiative •
[Slide] The early Reagan era marked a shift away from detente to a policy of confrontation. Reagan’s policies ramped up defence spending significantly (the largest in peacetime history), rejected disarmament and denounced the Soviet Union as an “evil empire”. He began new ICBM construction, pulled out of SALT II and placed nuclear cruise missiles in Europe (in response to the Russian development of mobile launchers SS‐20). He also implemented the Strategic Defence Initiative (SDI) program in 1983 to produce a missile defence shield capable of intercepting Soviet ICBMs utilizing a combination of ground and space based missile interceptors and lasers. •
[Slide] This marked a shift in strategy away from MAD and began in the last year of the Carter Administration through the Reagan Administration. The “countervailing strategy” as it was dubbed under Carter involved a shift from massive retaliation to any Soviet aggression to a strategy of quick escalation. The plan called for the destruction of Soviet military and command facilities in concert with a conventional war should the Soviet initiate an attack (this included new conventional weapons such as new attack helicopters and aircraft to negate the Soviet advantage in conventional forces such as tanks) – the goal being to force the USSR to surrender if possible before shifting to annihilation of the country and its cities as a whole. This marked a shift back to the “winnable nuclear war” calculation. •
[Slide] Critics called SDI “Star Wars” and accused the administration of temping nuclear war by disrupting the balance of power that existed under MAD. Proponents however disagreed on the basis of proportional response – that if Soviet tanks rolled into West Germany, the first response should not be the end of the world, but instead MAD as a final resort. •
The increases in spending under Reagan were far out of reach for the flagging Soviet economy however, that by this point was suffering terribly from the investment of 25% of its GDP on the military, and failed domestic policies – most notably collectivized farming that had led to major grain shortages. Instead of investing in new programs the Soviets continued building new ICBMs as a counter to the perceived threat of SDI. •
The situation almost exploded violently during the Able Archer 83 exercise held in 1983. It was a detailed NATO exercise simulating a period of conflict escalation, culminating in a coordinated nuclear release. It incorporated a new, unique format of coded communication, radio silences, participation by heads of state, and a simulated DEFCON 1 nuclear alert. Soviet leaders misinterpreted the exercise as a prelude to attack and almost initiated a nuclear response. Reagan realized how close they had come to nuclear war, and coupled with his new understanding of the devastating consequences of any war with the Soviet Union, began to reconsider some of his policy decisions. •
In his diary Reagan wrote: "We had many contingency plans for responding to a nuclear attack. But everything would happen so fast that I wondered how much planning or reason could be applied in such a crisis… Six minutes to decide how to respond to a blip on a radar scope and decide whether to unleash Armageddon! How could anyone apply reason at a time like that?" •
And later: "Three years had taught me something surprising about the Russians: Many people at the top of the Soviet hierarchy were genuinely afraid of America and Americans. Perhaps this shouldn't have surprised me, but it did … During my first years in Washington, I think many of us in the administration took it for granted that the Russians, like ourselves, considered it unthinkable that the United States would launch a first strike against them. But the more experience I had with Soviet leaders and other heads of state who knew them, the more I began to realize that many Soviet officials feared us not only as adversaries but as potential aggressors who might hurl nuclear weapons at them in a first strike … Well, if that was the case, I was even more anxious to get a top Soviet leader in a room alone and try to convince him we had no designs on the Soviet Union and Russians had nothing to fear from us." •
[Slide] This realization coupled with the ascension of Mikhail Gorbachev to head of state of the Soviet Union and his more western friendly attitudes led to a new period of “rapprochement”. Talks began again and although Reagan refused to budge on SDI, several agreements were hammered out. In 1987 the Intermediate‐Range Nuclear Forces treaty banned all conventional and nuclear missiles with ranges between (500‐
5,500 km) (but excluding US cruise missiles). •
[Slide] The culmination of rapprochement occurred in 1991, just months before the end of the Cold War, with the signing of START I, which limited its signatories to less than 6,000 nuclear warheads atop a total of 1,600 ICBMs, submarine‐launched ballistic missiles, and bombers. Although this is still a very large number, by its final implementation, it resulted in the elimination of about 80% of all strategic nuclear weapons. Later treaties further reduced the nuclear arsenals, but the talks took place with the new government of Russia. Conclusions •
First, a peaceful settlement should have been sought at all times – the logic of confrontation simply invites further confrontation and in the case of nuclear Superpowers like the US and the Soviet Union, any such military confrontation would invite global Armageddon. That being said however as the Cold War played out and it became clear that both sides would remain overtly hostile for the foreseeable future, the logic that was employed was in many ways a necessity. Particularly before the widespread deployment of ICBMs armed with thermonuclear warheads, the arms race operated in a logical progression – that of survival. Both sides did not doubt the other would use their weapons if they believed they could do so without resulting in their own annihilation. Under such circumstances it would have been foolish for either side to stop their pursuit of more and better weapons lest such a point be reached. •
Once ICBMs and thermonuclear were developed, as they were guaranteed to do so under such circumstances, policy makers identified that a policy that eliminated the threat of a first strike was ideal. Again basing it on the best information that those policy makers had available – the fear that the enemy would strike first. Unfortunately Mutual Assured Destruction developed into a type of paranoia that necessitated ever more powerful weapons to fill unfounded “gaps” in the MAD program. The result being the production of new weapons ad absurdum. •
I would contend that after the mid‐late‐60s, once both sides possessed formidable submarine deterrents, the arms race in terms of ever greater missile production became quite irrelevant. For MAD to operate successfully the most important factor was the elimination of a successful first strike stopping retaliation. With nearly invincible stealth subs and missiles that were impossible to intercept the point became moot. •
The profound psychological impact of the Sputnik launch on the US population had been addressed; humanity was on the verge of walking on the moon, further numbers were unnecessary. The situation I describe is very similar to that which exists today – the primary US nuclear deterrent is submarine based: 14 Ohio Class ballistic missile submarines each armed with 24 Trident missiles, each missile tipped with 4 warheads – for a total of 1344 warheads on 14 silent and unstoppable ships – more than enough to wipe out any nation on Earth many times over (it should be noted however that Russia in particular continues to field a large land ICBM force and the US still retains around 450 ICBMs). •
What should have been invested in was the reduction of tensions and therefore the risk of an accidental launch based on misinterpretations – and the elimination of any conception of a winnable nuclear war. Discussion of which, combined with nuclear brinksmanship, represented the greatest threat to continued human life on earth during the period.