The term nuclear war returned to the news in 2022 in the wake of the fallout from the Russian war on Ukraine. Fred Kaplan's book "The Bomb: Presidents, Generals, and the Secret History of Nuclear War" examines how nuclear weapons shape the US military and the country's foreign policy and analyzes the actions of presidents in nuclear crises. From Truman to Donald Trump.

Readers know the American strategic historian Kaplan through his famous book "The Wizards of Armageddon", which is a classic of books that study American power politics. In his new book, he focuses on the ambitious and often unsuccessful efforts by American presidents and their civilian advisers to impose some restraint on the size of nuclear arsenal, and shifting targeting plans away from a comprehensive strike to more “manageable” options.

Kaplan introduces us to the people and personalities who shaped and plan to use the US nuclear arsenal, while taking us through deep discussions inside the Pentagon, the White House, and at Strategic Air Command (SAC), telling exciting stories of presidents who often stand in their way. Their hard-line military advisors to avoid engaging in a nuclear war or even just trying to control arms.

Journalist and historian Fred Kaplan's book "The Bomb: Presidents, Generals, and the Secret History of Nuclear War" (American Press)

nuclear weapon buildup

The rivalries between the land army, navy, and air force, and the adoption of nuclear policy in the early years after 1945 (America's bombing of Japan and the end of World War II) set a precedent for the ongoing nuclear weapons build-up and the US nuclear war plan that threatened comprehensive nuclear strikes on the Soviet Union and China, according to the report. Presentation of the magazine "Arms Control Association Today".

Since nuclear weapons have not been used since 1945, nuclear war planning is an abstract exercise conducted in the absence of any evidence of its applicability, leading one researcher to refer to nuclear strategy as "a science fiction." The book's chapters delve into the efforts of presidents and their advisors, beginning with From Kennedy, to searching for alternatives to a massive first strike plan to an "integrated operational plan" (SIOP) and even nuclear war, which would have killed millions of Soviet and Chinese citizens.

Civilian leaders also faced persistent resistance from generals in the Strategic Air Command and the Joint Chiefs of Staff, which would effectively control the nuclear strike strategy. Robert McNamara, Kennedy's Secretary of Defense, became famous for the idea of ​​the "counterforce" doctrine targeting Soviet missiles instead of cities, but he abandoned it when he realized that he It will lead military commanders to order more weapons.

In the end, McNamara conceded by agreeing to possess 1,000 ICBMs, more than he thought was necessary to deter the Soviet Union, and also agreed to a publicly stated principle of "certain destruction," a policy he knew was incompatible with the plans of the Soviet Union. The first strike within the integrated operations plan.

The paradox became pervasive in US nuclear strategy. In the 1970s, President Richard Nixon and Secretary of State Henry Kissinger, frustrated by a lack of options, struggled to solve the puzzle of how to fight a "limited" nuclear war to protect allies in Europe and Asia.

Given that no one could figure out how to keep a limited war in check, they could not come up with a scenario in which the United States would be better off using nuclear weapons first.

Kaplan traces how Carter, who abhorred nuclear weapons, reluctantly agreed to medium-range missiles in Europe, because they were politically useful despite their marginal military value. Ironically, the author explains, under the hard-line Reagan administration, which advocated Sovereignty" in a nuclear war, began the first effective effort to limit the Special Operations Plan.

Kaplan's account shows that civilian leaders from Kennedy to Obama, as well as some military officers, were dismayed by the massive exaggeration of war plans, as every US president faced stiff resistance in trying to wrest control of the nuclear arsenal from the Strategic Air Command and the Joint Chiefs of Staff.

Regardless of the professed nuclear doctrine, the generals pushed for first-strike capability and remained skeptical of the idea of ​​tiered options.

The message Kaplan's book concludes is a sobering one that despite the much-touted civilian control of the military that is supposed to be in the United States, the story told in the book suggests otherwise, as it did not reflect the "operational plan". “integrated” necessarily the desires or policies of the political leadership, moreover, when war plans seemed to contain options, a closer look would reveal that even the smallest blow was still huge.

nuclear horror world

Although nuclear weapons have not been used in war since America's bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945, but there were many terrifying events that occurred, in 1956, a B-47 bomber (B-47) disappeared over the White Sea The Mediterranean, with two nuclear weapons on board, was never found.

In 1960, in the United States, nuclear early warning systems were launched by mistake, and the same thing happened because of a flock of migratory geese.

In 1966, a B-52 crashed in mid-air and dropped 3 thermonuclear bombs on a Spanish village (the bomb cores did not explode).

Bernard Brody, an academic at Yale University and then the RAND Corporation, described the fallout from nuclear weapons in 1946: “There can be no winners in the traditional sense, and the advantage is in threatening rather than executing. To deter an attack, all you have to do is show that if you are exposed To strike it will respond, and when a country declares it has the ability to carry out a second retaliatory strike, it is almost inconceivable that it would be subjected to a nuclear attack in the first place,” according to a presentation written by Tom Stephenson for the London Book Fair.

The question for the United States was this: In a world with nuclear weapons, how would it continue to exercise its global power? Thus it was necessary to maintain the imperial protectorates, which included Western Europe.

During the Eisenhower administration, US policy was to threaten the Soviet Union with "massive retaliation", and Admiral Arthur Radford summed up the thinking in US military circles when he described nuclear weapons as the "essential munition of war."

The Joint Chiefs of Staff had already begun listing possible Soviet cities, power plants, and oil installations.

limited war

The book examines the notion that threatening to respond to minor aggression with all-out nuclear war was an ineffective trick or "bird hunting with a cannon," and explains how practical maintenance of US imperial and semi-imperial positions required conventional military forces and alliances in Germany, Taiwan, and South Korea.

And there were other ways to wage "limited war." In 1957, Henry Kissinger advocated smaller, user-friendly tactical nuclear weapons. America had already deployed tactical nuclear weapons in Europe. About 100 American nuclear bombs remain on bases in Germany, Italy, Belgium, and the Netherlands.

Elbridge Colby, Trump's deputy assistant secretary of defense, the architect of the 2018 National Defense Strategy, has been an advocate of the use of tactical nuclear weapons in "potential armed conflicts both with hostile small rogue states and with closest peers."

Fear of thermonuclear war peaked in the late 1950s and early 1960s, and this era was also the period of complete nuclear dominance of the United States, at that time, and US intelligence estimates overestimated the number of Soviet ICBMs by 10 times (the legendary missile gap). and greatly exaggerated the number of Soviet warheads and bombers that could in no way have reached the United States without refueling at vulnerable Arctic bases.

In fact, until the mid-sixties, the Soviet Union was not able to survive a US nuclear attack, and was not confident in its ability to launch a major retaliatory strike, according to the author.

Thus, the times when deliberate nuclear war seemed imminent were better known, and nations with nuclear weapons often claimed that only their head of state or government could order their use.

But in practice, countries know that this will leave them vulnerable. What if the president dies? That is why most countries allow some mandate, so that subordinates or military commanders in extreme cases can order nuclear strikes, so all nuclear strategies contain an element of insanity under the name nuclear deterrent.