Protracted Nuclear War the Reagan Pentagon Wanted to Plan for It

USAF photo Protracted Nuclear War The Reagan Pentagon wanted to plan for it. Then, all hell broke loose. By Richard Halloran uring a trip to Europe in the weapons will be used, or aggressor and 1980s, Undersecretary of De- defender will be totally destroyed.” D fense Fred C. Iklé sat down to Ever since the 1945 atomic bomb- breakfastbreakfast oneone morningmorning andand fellfell intointo a ings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, discussiondiscussion aboutabout howhow a nuclearnuclear warwar strategic thinkers such as Iklé have mightmight bebe fought.fought. AfterAfter severalseveral minutes,minutes, struggled to imagine how a nuclear war thethe RReaganeagan AAdministrationdministration aaideide ppaused,aused, might unfold, even as they sought to thenthen said,said, “Of“Of course,course, nonenone ofof usus re-re- shape doctrine and procure weapons allyally knowsknows whatwhat hehe isis talkingtalking about,about, for fighting such a war. For many rea- becausebecause wewe havehave nono empiricalempirical feedbackfeedback sons, that intellectual exertion reached onon nuclearnuclear war.”war.” a climax in the early 1980s. Iklé, a well-known nuclear theorist, In retrospect, the pivot was the new laterlater expandedexpanded onon thatthat thought,thought, writ-writ- Reagan Administration’s concept of inging thatthat thethe “instantaneous“instantaneous terror”terror” ofof “protracted nuclear war,” often cast nuclearnuclear warwar “is“is soso unfathomableunfathomable thatthat in shorthand as “fighting and winning peoplepeople tendtend toto thinkthink aboutabout itit inin all-all- nuclear war.” It was hardly a military or-nothingor-nothing fashion;fashion; eithereither nono nuclearnuclear secret; almost as soon as they arrived in Washington in 1981, Reagan officials began discussing a military Top: B-52G bombers take ﬂ ight. Left: campaign after a potential breakdown The May 30, 1982 article from the New in deterrence. York Times. Surrender was out, said these of- ﬁ cials, as was suicidal all-out retali- ation, so some more-limited, episodic nuclear doctrine was needed. Better to plan for it. 56 AIR FORCE Magazine / March 2008 In this view, such planning was a Department policy-makers, in a new might fail and the US might have to logical extension of the deterrence that five-year defense plan, have accepted wage nuclear war; Bruce G. Blair of had been in place for decades. Why, the premise that nuclear conflict with the Brookings Institution; and Alan they thought, should the US be forced the Soviet Union could be protracted Vick of the RAND Corp. to choose between doing nothing or and have drawn up their first strategy The debate was unlike any other in committing suicide? If the USSR knew for fighting such a war.” universities or government. Iklé, a full- the US had retaliatory options, it would The piece, noting that US officials fledged member of the nuclear priest- only strengthen deterrence. believed that nuclear deterrence could hood, acknowledged in his 2006 book, Others, however, found such talk fail and a long war result, said US Annihilation From Within, that much horrifying. To them, anything that armed forces were ordered to prepare of the discussion “took the form of an made nuclear war seem less than for nuclear counterattacks against abstract and cold-blooded theorizing doomsday made it more likely that the Soviet Union “over a protracted of an eerily academic nature.” somebody might try it. Some even period.” The kicker was that the US The debate consumed forests of mistook the Reagan team’s planning as “must prevail and be able to force the newsprint and hours of television time. preparation to initiate a nuclear war. Soviet Union to seek earliest termina- Perhaps the key dispute was whether tion of hostilities on terms favorable there could be any plausible theory of Backtracking to the United States.” victory in nuclear warfare. A political backlash erupted and With the Administration’s nuclear The traditionalist view was that, soon Reagan himself was backtrack- vision out in the open, a vigorous when it came to nuclear war, a tie game ing. When asked during a March 1982 debate ensued. was the best that could be hoped for, press conference whether nuclear war Or rather, it continued. This was a and even then, the US lost. was winnable, he responded: “I don’t time of deep argument over all things Harold Brown, a renowned nuclear believe there could be any winners” nuclear. Congress and the Adminis- physicist who had served as Secretary and “everybody would be a loser.” In tration were going at each other over of Defense in the Carter Administra- April 1982, Reagan declared force- the MX (later, Peacekeeper) ICBM, tion, put it in the starkest possible fully, “A nuclear war cannot be won especially its basing mode, and over terms. “The destruction of more than and must never be fought.” plans to deploy US Army Pershing II 100 million people in each of the Behind the scenes, however, nuclear theater-range ballistic missiles and US United States, the Soviet Union, and planners churned away. Indeed, an of- Air Force Ground-Launched Cruise the European nations could take place ficial embrace of “protracted nuclear Missiles in Western Europe to counter during the first half-hour of a nuclear war” was an essential element in the the Soviet SS-20 missile force. war,” Brown wrote after he left the classified Fiscal Year 1984-1988 De- It was an era of disputes over the Pentagon in 1981. “Such a war would fense Guidance. The 125-page Defense B-1 bomber, which had been killed be a catastrophe not only indescrib- Guidance was drawn up by Pentagon by President Carter but resurrected able but unimaginable,” he added. officials in 1981-82 and signed by by President Reagan in 1981, and the “It would be unlike anything that has Secretary of Defense Caspar W. Wein- “stealth” bomber, later called the B-2 taken place on this planet since human berger in March 1982. Spirit. It was an era of deliberations life began.” Moreover, Defense Guidance was over the Trident ballistic-missile-fir- blessed by the White House with ing submarine and its planned D-5 Dig a Hole National Security Decision Direc- missile, a bigger, more powerful, and A strong and vocal minority held tive 32, signed by Reagan on May more accurate successor to the C-4 a different view. Thomas K. Jones, 20, 1982. The recently declassified weapon. a senior engineering official in the NSDD stated, “The modernization of It’s hard, after the passage of a Weinberger Pentagon, argued in an our strategic nuclear forces ... shall quarter-century, to characterize the interview with the Los Angeles Times receive first priority.” It continued: debate of those days. It didn’t break that nuclear war would not be the end “The United States will enhance its down along the predictable lines of of days. It would be bad but surviv- strategic nuclear deterrent by develop- Republican vs. Democrat, conservative able. In Jones’ estimate, the United ing a capability to sustain protracted vs. liberal, military vs. civilian. About States could recover from a nuclear nuclear conflict.” the only constant in the brawl was that exchange with the Soviet Union in That was followed by NSDD-75, few professed to have a monopoly on two to four years. He put great store signed on Jan. 17, 1983, which un- truth. Almost everyone knew he was by civil defense. Americans would derscored deterrence. It said Soviet groping in the dark. dig holes in the ground, cover them calculations about war must always A key part of the debate had always with wooden doors, and blanket the see “outcomes so unfavorable to the been out of public view, among a hand- whole thing with three feet of dirt. USSR that there would be no incen- ful of strategic wise men often called “If there are enough shovels to go tive for Soviet leaders to initiate an “nuclear theologians,” who dove deep around,” he said, “everybody’s going attack.” into nuclear arcana. That brotherhood to make it.” Jones’ comment did not The substance of the Pentagon docu- included (but was not limited to) Paul reflect mainline thinking in the Pen- ment was soon leaked to the New York Bracken, a Yale political scientist; tagon, but it did reflect a willingness Times. My 2,500-word piece about it Bernard Brodie, another political sci- to ponder what might happen should appeared in the May 30 edition under entist at Yale and father of the concept deterrence fail. the headline, “Pentagon Draws Up of nuclear deterrence; Herman Kahn, In a third view, Michael Howard, the First Strategy for Fighting a Long the strategic analyst known for “think- Oxford don and later military historian Nuclear War.” It began: “Defense ing the unthinkable” that deterrence at Yale, was optimistic that nuclear war AIR FORCE Magazine / March 2008 57 went to great lengths to make the point that the Reagan Administration was not planning a nuclear assault on the Soviet Union, that neither Reagan nor his top aides thought that nuclear war would DOD photoWard by R.D. be “winnable” in any ordinary sense of the word, and that he was doing his job by planning for the most demanding nuclear contingency. He declared more than once in public, Caspar Weinberger, “You show me a Secretary of Defense Secretary of Defense, at a DOD news conference who is planning not to prevail and I’ll in 1985. show you a Secretary of Defense who ought to be impeached.” Weinberger pressed the point in a speech at the Army War College, Carlisle Barracks, Pa. “We must,” he said, “have a capability for a ‘protracted’ response to demonstrate that our strategic forces could survive Soviet strikes over an extended—that is to say, protracted—period.” He made many such speeches.

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