Monday
25 October 1999
0900-1100 (L)
Thus far the chief purpose of our military establishment has been to win wars. From now on its chief purpose must be to avert them. It can have almost no other useful purpose.
Bernard Brodie
Introduction:
World War II was a significant catalyst in modern history that spurred new thinking about military theory. It precipitated at least three major lines of thought: limited war theory, a subject addressed in conjunction with the following topics on the Korean and Vietnam Wars; revolutionary warfare theory, which we will also address subsequently; and nuclear strategy, the subject here. Concerning nuclear strategy, it is telling that its sudden and overwhelming prominence resulted from the employment of just two weapons: the atomic bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki in August 1945. The employment of atomic weapons to end the war in the Pacific not only brought to the fore the significance and role of nuclear weapons, it also brought into question the very utility of war as a tool of statecraft, as indicated in the above quote from Bernard Brodie, one of the early nuclear strategists. To many military theorists, atomic/nuclear weapons created a profound revolution in military affairs that reshaped the character and conduct of war.
The development of atomic, and then nuclear and thermonuclear, weapons provided a menacing backdrop that endured throughout the Cold War between the United States and the Soviet Union. Tensions between the two World War II allies were apparent well before the war ended. Cracks in the "Grand Alliance" soon became fissures, and by 1947 President Harry S Truman announced that the United States would actively try to thwart communist aggression around the world. This containment doctrine would guide American foreign policy for almost half a century. Throughout most of this span, the threat of nuclear holocaust loomed large indeed. In 1949, the Soviets tested the atomic bomb, and soon both sides had acquired nuclear weapons. American and Soviet military planners assumed that these weapons, while immensely destructive, could be employed, and would be if the circumstances warranted. Admittedly, there were important targeting considerations stemming from nuclear weapons' unique characteristics that affected planning for their use, but their use was, and still is, contemplated from the tactical to the strategic level.
Primarily in the United States, however, some strategists maintained that the advent of atomic and nuclear weapons had given military power a decidedly different purpose. Believing nuclear escalation would be impossible to control, leading to the extinction of life as we know it, these strategists argued that use of nuclear weapons in virtually any set of circumstances was indefensible, an option governments should not-and indeed probably would not--be able to choose. Instead, those nations possessing nuclear weapons should use them to deter war rather than to wage it, creating a fundamentally different condition in the international environment. Furthermore, because of fear of escalation, nuclear powers should also do all they could to avoid major conventional conflict. This notion was the essence of deterrence theory, which posited a new primary function for military establishments: to avert war in order to avoid the risk of escalation.
Reinforcing the emphasis on deterrence strategies in the United States was another post-war American phenomenon--the idea, at least among civilians, that the nation should no longer entrust the principal responsibility for both the prevention and conduct of war solely to military professionals. Beginning in the 1950s, civilian nuclear theorists dominated U.S. strategic military thinking. One might legitimately question why, if it were the statutory role of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and, after 1986 of the Chairman, to advise the President on military matters, the Joint Chiefs were not the leading theorists on the prevention and conduct of nuclear war?
In the Soviet Union, thinking about nuclear strategy took a different turn, as Dave Rosenberg shows in his article, "The History of World War III, 1945-1990." The Soviets appeared much more willing to regard nuclear weapons as simply more destructive rather than as fundamentally different systems. Repeatedly, they asserted their conviction that, if called for, they could fight, win, and survive a nuclear war. Hand in hand with this conviction went an apparently greater willingness to use the threat of nuclear employment as a tool of policy. Significantly, the "civilianization" of military strategy never took place in the Soviet Union. Military theory and practice remained the exclusive domain of the Soviet Armed Forces, specifically, the General Staff.
The readings survey the general evolution of nuclear and deterrence theory and then introduce you to the writings of two of the most influential American nuclear strategists, Bernard Brodie and Henry Kissinger. As you read, you need to think about the relation of these ideas to those of the classical theorists you've already encountered. Are these ideas part of a continuity flowing from the past or do they represent a distinct departure? What is the fundamental purpose of military power in the nuclear age?
Objective:
- Understand how the development of nuclear weapons has affected military thought and strategy.
Issues for Consideration:
- For the better part of the Cold War, was averting war the chief purpose of the military establishments of both the U.S. and the USSR? Why, or why not? Was the same thing true of other nuclear powers?
- To what extent do nuclear weapons invalidate what you have previously concluded about the nature of political and military objectives in war, the nature and relative strengths of offense and defense, mass on mass and the indirect approach, and the relative importance of moral and physical factors in war? Why?
- How was the deterrence theory described by Brodie different from other theories about the use of military force? How significant are these differences?
- In light of the lethality and magnitude of modern conventional weapons, are tactical nuclear weapons as "different" from modern conventional weapons as they were in earlier decades? Is this due to the inherent nature of nuclear weapons, or have there been more fundamental societal, intellectual, and attitudinal changes toward war and its utility?
- What were the ethical implications--for strategies of deterrence and employment--of the introduction of nuclear weapons? To what extent did nuclear weapons change thinking about just war? To what extent should they have changed thinking about just war?
- With the demise of the Soviet Union and the possibility of proliferation of nuclear weapons to many more states, have theories of deterrence and of the possible employment of nuclear weapons changed? Should they?
Required Readings:
* David Alan Rosenberg, "The History of World War III, 1945-1990: A Conceptional Framework," in Robert David Johnson, ed., On Cultural Ground: Essays in International History (Chicago: Imprint Publications, 1994), pp. 197-235. (Reprint)
* Bernard Brodie, Strategy in the Missile Age (Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1959), pp. 264-304 and 390-409. (Reprint)
* Henry A. Kissinger, The Necessity for Choice (New York, NY: Harper and Brothers, 1961), pp. 27-56. (Reprint)
Supplemental Readings:
* Aaron Friedberg, "A History of the U.S. Strategic Doctrine, 1945-1980," Journal of Strategic Studies, December 1980, pp. 37-71.
* Henry A. Kissinger, "The Problems of Limited Nuclear War," Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy, abridged (New York, NY: W.W. Norton and Company, 1969), pp. 145-168.
* Thomas C. Schelling, Nuclear Weapons and Limited War (London, UK: Oxford University Press, 1960), pp. 257-266.
* Lawrence Freedman, The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy (New York, NY: St. Martin's Press, 1981).
* Louis J. Halle, The Elements of International Strategy: A Primer for the Nuclear Age (New York: University of America, 1984).
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