
Did the US Plan a Nuclear First Strike Against Russia in the Early 1960s? - yurisagalov
http://www.unz.com/runz/american-pravda-did-the-us-plan-a-nuclear-first-strike-against-russia-in-the-early-1960s/
======
ufmace
I sure hope we did. "Plan" in the context of national militaries has a very
different meaning from making a "plan" with your buddies. Any national
military planners wouldn't be doing their job if they didn't have a plan for
attacking any country they could conceivably reach. It's their job to have
plans available and ready for the political leaders, and it's those leaders'
jobs to decide which plans to actually execute and when.

Consider: If you're, say, the Secretary of Defense, at any meeting, the
President might tell you "Country X just went nuts! We have to deal with this
now! What can we do?". You don't wanna tell the President "Umm, I dunno, let
us look into it". You wanna be able to say something more like "We could go
with a nuclear strike, using units A, B, and C. Expected casualties in country
X are Y military and Z civilian, and we estimate a possible retaliatory
nuclear strike against at least 10 US cities, with casualty estimates as
described. Or we could launch a conventional strike with Carrier Group D,
attacking these government and infrastructure targets, optionally following up
with a land invasion with these units or special forces attacks, with enemy
and friendly casualty estimates."

Clearly, we want to have plans for every possible way of attacking every
country we would be capable of attacking, all continuously updated to reflect
our forces and their readiness, as well as estimated enemy forces and their
readiness. We also want to be able to talk intelligently about possible force
level changes. If the President wants to, say, dissolve one or more Army
divisions, raise another one, buy or sell aircraft, retire nukes or build
more, etc, we want to be able to describe how that would affect our ability to
attack and defend against attacks from various countries.

~~~
Spooky23
The point of the story is that it wasn't an academic war plan.

This was a serious proposal, probably made by a sociopath like Gen. LeMay, to
execute a specific attack in 1963, before Soviet capability caught up.

Per LeMay:

> Native annalists may look sadly back from the future on that period when we
> had the atomic bomb and the Russians didn't. Or when the Russians had
> aquired (through connivance and treachery of Westerns with warped minds) the
> atomic bomb - and yet still didn't have any stockpile of the weapons. That
> was the era when we might have destroyed Russia completely and not even
> skinned our elbows doing it.

~~~
marcoperaza
Failing to use the foreseeably short period of being the sole nuclear power to
prevent any other nuclear powers from rising is probably the biggest blunder
in the history of the world. Permanent world peace was at hand and we totally
blew it.

~~~
tomjen3
Downvote the parent and this if you must, but consider that at several points
during the cold war, the scales _almost_ tipped. How bad is the result of a
few 1940is bombs on Moscow (absolutely horrific) versus a world-scale nuclear
catastrophe? Heck the Soviet union was super evil, what if it hadn't taken 70
years to die, but only 30? Heck the soviet-afghan war killed between 800000
and 1500000 civilian Afghans.

High numbers for the casualties in Nagasaki are 150000, ie ten times fewer.

Sometimes your choices in life are not white and black, but black and black.
This is one of the times, Marcoperaza may advocate a viewpoint you strongly
disagree with, but that has never been an acceptable reason for downvoting on
HN.

~~~
ufmace
I would even agree that the Soviet Union was super evil, but I don't think
it's worth the casualties of a major nuclear exchange to try to end it 40
years sooner. And there's no way to be sure that a major nuclear attack would
actually end the Soviet regime. Wouldn't the surviving Russians now think that
America is not just a worrying rival, but a catastrophically dangerous enemy?
Why wouldn't they unite behind the strongest regime they can make to defend
themselves and strike back? AFAIK, quite a few Russians are still sympathetic
to Stalin even today based on the idea that nobody else could have
industrialized Russia fast enough and led with enough determination to resist
the Nazi invasion. They lost millions of casualties and had huge swaths of
territory occupied and destroyed and still went on to win the war. Do you
really think they're just gonna give up after a few nukes?

Also, try making a list of the biggest mass murders in history. Hitler and
Stalin would be on the list. Also Mao Tse-Tsung. Possibly a few leaders of
Communist regimes in SE Asia, depending on whether you look at the proportion
of population killed instead of raw deaths. Do you want to see America at the
top of that list? Based on a vague theory that the world would be better off
somehow?

------
Jtsummers
Military plans such as these are rarely intended to be acted upon. They're
plans from a strategic perspective. A question is posed: What if we executed a
first strike? Related questions come up: When should we do it, what would be
the retaliation, what would be the economic impact, etc. These get put
together into a report, and it's set aside.

Military plans are not statements of intent on their own.

~~~
usrusr
Not to mention the nice side effect of having a much better idea of how the
other side might proceed if they wanted to do a first strike (which is a
rather strong "if", but America back in the day surely felt different about
that).

But what gives the Unz interpretation a bit of weight is the element of "if
you ever want to first strike, it's now or never" that was clearly present.
This can easily turn a purely theoretical game-plan into a purely theoretical
game-plan with a zealous PR department.

------
karma_vaccum123
At the very least, Nixon at one point decided a good tactic would be for the
Soviets to believe he was unstable and was willing to embrace the idea of
conflict, so as to scare them off of aggression.

His quote was "I want them to think I am nuts".

During this period of his presidency, Nixon was known to become so drunk that
Kissinger effectively took over many of his duties in private

To reinforce the idea that he was "nuts", Nixon ordered at least one bomber-
wing approach of Soviet airspace. I don't recall if the planes actually
carried nuclear weapons, but IIRC, it was Nixon's intent that they should.

Not sure if this qualifies as a "plan", but it was rehearsed.

A neighbor who was once was stationed in a Titan ICBM silo also recounted a
story that seemed extremely scary: during the Arab/Israeli war there was
apparently a report by US intelligence of a Russian missile launch, and in his
silo he claims they had their hands on the keys ready to turn (weapon was
armed, fueled, they were literally waiting for the launch order)...although
they were later informed to stand down when the missile was confirmed as a
test. I asked him if he would have turned the key, and he said absolutely.

~~~
honkhonkpants
Wasnt the Titan II always fueled and armed? The Titan I had to be fueled but
the Titan II that lines up with that war could be launched in less than a
minute.

~~~
blakeyrat
"it's fueled and armed" is not mutually-exclusive with "it's always fueled and
armed".

------
hollerith
>the motivation [for building fallout shelters] had never made much sense to
me, since in most cases the supplies would only have been sufficient to last a
few weeks or so, while the deadly radioactive fallout from numerous Soviet
thermonuclear strikes on our urban centers would have been long-lasting.

Uh, fallout _is_ only deadly for a few weeks or so even after thousands of
nuclear weapons are used on a country.

The radioactive elements produced in a nuclear explosion are very different
from those produced in a nuclear power plant: the latter _can_ stay deadly for
years.

The reason fallout shelters were so popular during the Cold War is that
they're a cost effective way of avoiding a major cause of death during a
nuclear war.

~~~
7952
A few of the fallout products have a long half life and can cause harmful
effects. Do you consider those to be not deadly? Could they exist in
sufficient quantities to be an issue?

Also a ground bursting weapon could interact with other elements present at
ground zero so it seems more complex than just "wait a few weeks and it's
safe".

~~~
hollerith
Ground bursts do produce a lot more fallout than air bursts, but that's been
taken into account. The worst fallout would probably be downwind of the ICBM
silos both because of the number and the size of the weapons used and the fact
that they'd be ground bursts. Downwind of the ICBM silos, one might have to
stay in a fallout shelter for 4 weeks or even a little longer.

Fallout can be even higher IIRC within a few miles of the explosion, but
implicit in the concept of the fallout shelter (as opposed to the much more
expensive blast shelter) is the assumption that the shelter will be outside of
the range in which the explosion is immediately deadly to humans (through
blast, through heat / infrared radiation and through "prompt" radiation).

Note that even before the START treaties, the Soviets only ever had enough
weapons to cause immediate death to humans over approximately 5% of the area
of the United States. Consequently, many suburban and rural American could and
_can_ realistically expect to survive the immediate effects of the explosions
with fallout being the main danger in the weeks immediately after the attack.
After a few weeks, starvation starts to become the main danger although note
that as of a 1985 survey, the US had enough food stored (mainly on farms,
mostly wheat, corn, grain sorghums, and soybeans) to keep 200 million
Americans from starving for 6 years.

This information comes from Cresson Kearny's Nuclear War Survival Skills,
revised 1986 or 1987, which is available for free in PDF form on the internet.
Kearny was employed by the American civil-defense establishment.

~~~
TeMPOraL
> _This information comes from Cresson Kearny 's Nuclear War Survival Skills,
> revised 1986 or 1987, which is available for free in PDF form on the
> internet. Kearny was employed by the American civil-defense establishment._

I'm not sure how much faith to put into that despite the source you just
cited. From what I heard, a _lot_ of the nuclear war survival measures (like
city evacuation plans) were just methods to calm the population down. I.e.
they weren't really meant to work at all, but as long as people believed they
will, they carried on with their lives.

~~~
mikeash
There is a ton of misinformation out there, and it tends to greatly
overestimate the dangers of nuclear weapons.

For example, it's a common assumption that global thermonuclear war would wipe
out humanity, or even all life on Earth. That's not even close to true.
Billions would die and civilization would be wrecked, but the human race would
continue.

For an example specific to civil defense, the old "duck and cover" routine is
widely ridiculed. Which is bizarre, because it's great advice which would have
saved many lives in the event of nuclear war. But people don't understand how
this stuff works, and just think that nuclear war is a moment where all die, O
the embarrassment.

With sufficient warning, evacuating cities would have saved many lives. Such
warning wouldn't have been available for ICBM strikes, but in the 50s and 60s
the threat was bombers, which would have provided hours of warning.

~~~
7952
Of course a full on nuclear war could cause hurricane force winds and fire
storms. Does anyone really know how far that could spread? There is a lot of
vegetation in close proximity to targets, and in places little to stop a fire
spreading for hundreds of miles through crops and forest.

Also, you would have to deal with the fallout from the nuclear power plants
that have just been mixed into those hurrican force winds.

Humanity may survive but the effects could be felt far beyond the blast radius
of the bombs.

~~~
mikeash
Of course, but there would still be many survivors (especially in the 50s and
60s) and good civil defense measures would have greatly increased that number.

------
mmcconnell1618
I'm pretty sure we (the United States) have plans in place for an invasion of
Canada. That doesn't mean Canada should be worried. It means our planners want
to cover every scenario they can think of so that should the need arise, we
have put some thought into how to handle that situation.

~~~
karma_vaccum123
Just a heads-up, the US is 0-2 for invading Canada...there were failed
incursions during both the Revolutionary War and the War of 1812.

In the bizarro-event of an invasion, Canada could just go scorched-Earth and
dump nuclear waste into the Great Lakes and obliterate the habitability of the
northeast. Or just create a Chernobyl-like disaster at a nuclear plant to
coincide with weather patterns blowing southward. If the US retaliated with
nuclear weapons, it would just blanket itself with more fallout.

Protip: a nuclear neighbor is not a good invasion target.

~~~
dogma1138
I doubt that Canada would dump nuclear waste or go into a scorched-Earth, this
isn't North Korea.

Any normal country would surrender in order to prevent further casualties and
likely a complete destruction of its civilian infrastructure. The most
dangerous thing one can do is force the enemy to a position in which they
cannot surrender, one of the main reasons the US did not want to invade Japan
is that it knew that an invasion regardless of how devastating it was would
make surrender impossible, for this same reason it did not nuke Tokyo, this is
also why you do not usually go after the government during a war you need some
one to be able to surrender or negotiate a truce.

P.S. Dumping nuclear waste is effectively worse than getting nuked, Canada is
probably better off with getting every major city nuked than dumping nuclear
waste anywhere. Nuclear weapons, especially modern ones are not as "dirty" as
people think, yes there will be some lasting effects due to fallout and
radiation but it's not that bad, most of the isotopes created by a nuclear
bomb are pretty unstable and decay fairly quickly which is bad because it
releases a lot more secondary radiation but it's not as bad as dumping nuclear
waste which will not decay for millenniums to come.

~~~
mindslight
I'm pretty sure the reason governments don't go after each other in wars is
similar to why guns aren't used to win games of chess.

~~~
ianamartin
This is seriously one of the best comments I've ever seen anywhere. Well done,
sir or ma'am.

------
bifrost
I always imagined we had, interesting to find some details. We planned, and
still do to some extent, for every eventuality.

~~~
Retric
The DoD writes up plans to attack 50+ countries every year. This is a useful
exercise in part because doing so well take a long time and show where
capability might be lacking. But, it's also simply a good way to train for the
current war instead of falling into the trap of preparing to fight the last
one.

PS: It's also not clear how serious this stuff is. The DoD does a lot of stuff
simply because it's budget and manpower is insane. And nothing says people are
not simply taking the plan written in 1983 changing the name of the aircraft
and dating it 2016.

~~~
lostlogin
> train for the current war instead of falling into the trap of preparing to
> fight the last one < This is likely true, but they haven't done all that
> well in the last few they started. The completely flat-footed occupations
> have been more than a little humbling I'd have thought.

~~~
rhino369
The US occupations have been pretty successful from a military prospective.
I'm not sure you could do a much better job in the 21st century (without
resorting to insane brutality).

It was the geopolitical result that was disasterous. Blame that on the
administrations that ordered the occupations, especially, the state department
and intelligence agencies.

The occupation of Iraq was a stupid move, but the military could have
sustained it indefinitely.

~~~
lostlogin
The ability to sustain losses is very different to what the GP was discussing
- learning from the past to deal with the present. Of course the US can
sustain losses easily - that has been a hallmark of the industrialised world.
However the US did not pay attention to the experiences of others with
experiences when occupying Afghanistan or Iraq. This did not appear to be an
easy learning experience with IEDs, suicide bombing and insurgency being a
departure from what the US expected to face. At least that's what it looked
like from afar.

~~~
mikeash
Our political leaders sold Iraq on the basis that it would be cheap and easy
and that we would be welcomed as liberators. Fighting an insurgency requires
abandoning those assumptions, which was politically nearly impossible. The
problems we faced there weren't with planning, they were with ignoring
planning.

------
emeraldd
A military that does not plan to eliminate everyone else in the "room", no
mater who they are, is remiss in it's duties. It doesn't take much for a
former "friend" to turn into a countries worst nightmare.

------
finid
There were knuckleheads on both sides who thought they could get away with a
first strike. During the Russian-Georgian war, the Bush administration
actually toyed with the idea of striking Russia. Bush was given the option,
but he declined.

Edit: The option was not nuclear, though.

~~~
mikeash
In the early 1960s, the US _could_ get away with a first strike. The
inevitable Soviet retaliation would hurt, but it wouldn't wreck the country.
The disparity between American nuclear forces able to strike the USSR and
Soviet nuclear forces able to strike the US was completely ridiculous. MAD
didn't really become a thing until the late 60s or early 70s. Europe would
have been utterly devastated, but the US would have come out of it mostly
intact.

There was a fairly lengthy period (a decade or so) where the USSR was
threatened with complete annihilation and the only thing holding it back was
the fear of losing European allies, and the general unwillingness of American
leadership to kill tens or hundreds of millions of civilians. And we wonder
why they were so paranoid about us....

~~~
karma_vaccum123
Exactly. A good read is the book "Two Minutes To Midnight" about the Cuban
missile crisis...it discusses the disparity between the capabilities
Khrushchev claimed and what US intelligence knew to be true.

~~~
finid
You have to take "what US intelligence knew to be true" with a grain of salt.

Just recently, Obama dismissed Russia as a 3rd-rate military power. You have
to believe that was based on intelligence briefings. That tune changed quickly
when Russia started flexing muscle in Syria.

~~~
mercutio2
Is there something about Russia's muscle flexing in Syria that doesn't
indicate its conventional forces are third rate?

If so, I haven't heard of it. The Syrian war is a minor skirmish. If
significant strategic interests were actually at risk, the great powers would
just invade and ignore the resulting loss of life. Instead, we standby and
generally still ignore the loss of life.

~~~
dnh44
Well for a start, before Syria no one knew the Russians had cruise missiles.

~~~
sgt101
Errm, I did, I knew they had cruise missiles in the 1980's they were talked
about on UK radio, I remember a particularly rabid friend talking about the
threat of a communist take over in Ireland (dear jesus that guy was crazy) and
how "The Russians" would station cruise missiles there!

~~~
dnh44
I think it was the range of the missiles that were the surprise in Syria.
3000km I believe. It was quite big news in the UK at the time.

[http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/10/09/world/middleeast/russia...](http://mobile.nytimes.com/2015/10/09/world/middleeast/russias-
kalibr-cruise-missiles-a-new-weapon-in-syria-
conflict.html?referer=https://duckduckgo.com/)

------
piyushpr134
Is it even surprising ? USA is the only country in the world to have used
nuclear weapons. You have already used it in first strike mode which did not
even have nukes. Why is it surprising that it would not happen again ?

~~~
Teever
I don't think that is necessarily a valid conclusion to draw.

If anything the first use of nuclear weapons was a corner case.

------
gtrubetskoy
It is not a secret that Von Neumann's work on Game Theory at RAND corporation
in the 50's was precisely commissioned by the US government to answer the
first strike question.

Here is a quote from Wikipedia: "In 1950, the first mathematical discussion of
the prisoner's dilemma appeared, and an experiment was undertaken by notable
mathematicians Merrill M. Flood and Melvin Dresher, as part of the RAND
Corporation's investigations into game theory. RAND pursued the studies
because of possible applications to global nuclear strategy."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_theory](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Game_theory)

And another on RAND corp: "Its most visible contribution may be the doctrine
of nuclear deterrence by mutually assured destruction (MAD), developed under
the guidance of then-Defense Secretary Robert McNamara and based upon their
work with game theory."

[https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAND_Corporation](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/RAND_Corporation)

A great fun and entertaining book on the subject:
[https://www.amazon.com/Prisoners-Dilemma-William-
Poundstone/...](https://www.amazon.com/Prisoners-Dilemma-William-
Poundstone/dp/038541580X)

------
WalterBright
The military has plans for everything, because plans take time to prepare, and
they don't want to be winging it should a need suddenly arise.

------
douche
It would be almost criminal if the DOD didn't prepare a plan for that
contingency. It is their job to be prepared for every possibility.

------
jomamaxx
The US military has _definitely_ planned 'first strike' ops, as well as every
other conceivable option they could possibly face.

It's called 'preparation'. It's their job to prepare for any circumstances
that they can possibly foresee.

Example: every bridge in Europe is 'pre-prepared' for demolition. Normally, a
combat engineering team has to scout the bridge, plan, then figure out how to
disable it. In the event of ww3 - the plans are already done. A combat
engineer need only draw the plan for the database and execute one of the
options.

It goes much further than that.

~~~
j1vms
> Example: every bridge in Europe is 'pre-prepared' for demolition (..) the
> plans are already done. A combat engineer need only draw the plan for the
> database and execute one of the options.

You would think. But in reality, these one-off type preparations probably have
a actual low chance of going as planned or being executed in a timely manner.
The only exceptions being contingencies that are actively, regularly simulated
by computer or otherwise. I don't think it'd be surprising to find that,
bureaucracy & budgets working the way they do, no one there is simulating
demolitions like that (at least not since the 50s or 60s).

~~~
jomamaxx
I don't think you understood the comment.

A bridge reconnaissance does not change once it's done unless the bridge
changes materially.

The hard part of a bridge recon plain is taking measurements of the abutments,
the deck, types of materials etc..

The attack plan is easy once you have that.

Also - there is nothing to simulate based on computers in this case.

The only variable that changes is demolition technology and the availability
of air support to do demolitions which forgoes the requirement to have
Engineers do it.

~~~
jomamaxx
FYI - I'm an ex Combat Engineer :)

------
king_magic
"I quickly read the article and was stunned." ... "Could such a momentous
historical discovery have been so totally ignored by our mainstream
journalists and historians that I’d never heard of it during the previous
twenty years?"

Ugh, come on, enough, Internet, enough with the over-sensationalization of
everything. Is the author really that naive? Of course we planned a nuclear
first strike against Russia. And China. And likely the entire Eastern Bloc. It
would have been irresponsible for our war planners to do otherwise, as it's
one of many contingencies that may ultimately arise.

The United States is _not_ a "no first use" country. So it absolutely, 100%
stands to reason we would have planned out first strikes against many
countries.

~~~
rhino369
A first strike against Russia and China is probably a part of Obama's nuclear
playbook even today.

I'm curious what a US first strike would look like. Would we assume any strike
would devolve into nuclear terror bombing? If so, maybe we'd hit their cities
in a first strike. But there is a possibility that a first strike purely
against Russian nuclear weapons wouldn't cause the Russians to bomb US cities.
In that scenarios Russia might retaliate against US military targets but not
civilian targets. I wonder where we came down on that.

~~~
TheOtherHobbes
A few years ago there was an online story about the US plans for Moscow -
which apparently even Dick Cheney was shocked by, because the idea was to
destroy it with _hundreds_ of warheads.

I seem to remember 600 or so.

Obviously no one has any idea what that would do because it's never been
tested. But I'd guess it would remove absolutely all trace of the city and
leave only a glassy layer of bedrock, which might take a few centuries to
cool.

US and Russian cities have significant missile defence systems, so I guess the
rationale is to make sure that at least some warheads get through.

If that's the plan for the biggest capital cities on both sides, details
become academic.

~~~
shabble
"During his first week on the job, Butler asked the Joint Strategic Target
Planning Staff to give him a copy of the SIOP. General Colin Powell and
Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney had made clear that the United States needed
to change its targeting policy, now that the Cold War was over. As part of
that administrative process, Butler decided to look at every single target in
the SIOP, and for weeks he carefully scrutinized the thousands of desired
ground zeros. He found bridges and railways and roads in the middle of nowhere
targeted with multiple warheads, to assure their destruction. Hundreds of
nuclear warheads would hit Moscow—dozens of them aimed at a single radar
installation outside the city."

From _Command & Control_ by Eric Schlosser

