The Madman Nuclear Alert Themadmannuclear Scott D

The Madman Nuclear Alert TheMadmanNuclear Scott D. Sagan and Alert Jeremi Suri Secrecy,Signaling,and Safetyin October 1969 Onthe evening of October10, 1969, Gen. EarleWheeler ,the chairmanof the JointChiefs ofStaff (JCS), senta topsecret message to majorU.S. militarycommanders around the worldinforming themthat the JCS hadbeen directed“ by higher authority”to increaseU.S. militaryreadiness “ torespond to possible confrontationby the Soviet Union.”The StrategicAir Command(SAC) wasordered to stand down allaircraft combat training missions and to increase the number of nuclear- armedB-52 bombers on ground alert.These readinessmeasures were implemented onOctober 13. Even moredramatic, on October 27 SAC launched a seriesof B-52bombers, armed with thermonuclear weapons, on a “showof force”airborne alert, code-named Giant Lance. During thisalert operation, eighteen B-52stook off frombases in Californiaand W ashingtonState. The bomberscrossed Alaska, were refueled in midairby KC-135tanker aircraft, andthen ew in ovalpatterns toward the Soviet Union andback, on eighteen- hour“ vigils”over the northernpolar ice cap. 1 Why did the U.S. militarygo on a nuclear alertin October1969? The alert wasa loudbut secretmilitary signal ordered by President RichardNixon. Nixonsought to convinceSoviet andNorth Vietnamese leadersthat he might doanything toend the warin Vietnam,in accordancewith his “ madmanthe- ory”of coercive diplomacy .The nuclearalert measures were therefore spe- cically chosen to be loudenough tobe picked up quickly by the Soviet Union´sintelligence agencies.The militaryoperation was also, however ,delib- eratelydesigned toremain secret from the Americanpublic andU.S. allies.In- ScottD. Saganis Professor of PoliticalScience and Co-director of theCenter for International Securityand Cooperation at StanfordUniversity. Jeremi Suriis Assistant Professor of History at theUniversity of Wis- consin,Madison. Drafts of this article were presented atseminarshosted byStanford ´sCenter forInternational Se- curity andCooperation, International Security Studies atY ale University,andthe 2002annual meeting of the Society for Historiansof American ForeignRelations. Theauthors thank the follow- ingindividuals for their helpful comments: Alison Alter, Bruce Blair,William Burr,Lynn Eden, M. TaylorFravel, John Lewis Gaddis,Jeffrey Kimball, StanleyKutler ,JohnWilson Lewis, Xue Litai, Vojtech Mastny,ToddSechser, and Kathryn Weathersby . 1.LynnPeake, “ Notes onIncreased Readiness Posture of October 1969,”SAC History Study 136, January1970, Headquarters of U.S.Strategic Command,Freedom of InformationAct Release (henceforth FOIA),p. 1; andHistory of the Strategic Air Command,FY 1970,Headquarters of U.S. Strategic Command,FOIA, p. 155. International Security, Vol.27, No. 4 (Spring2003), pp. 150– 183 ©2003by the President and Fellows of HarvardCollege and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. 150 TheMadman Nuclear Alert 151 deed, the nuclearalert operation was so secretive that even the seniorU.S. militaryof cers implementing the orders—including the SAC commander himself—were notinformed of itspurpose. nuclearsignals in theoryand history Cloaksof secrecy stillshroud this mysterious event, but asufcient number of governmentdocuments have now been declassied topermit aseriousexami- nationof the October1969 nuclear alert.This article both explains why Presi- dent Nixonordered this secret nuclear operationand uses the historyof the event tohelp illuminate the dynamicsof nuclear weaponsdecisionmaking and diplomacy.The emerging informationprovides new insightsboth about the nuclear historyof the ColdW arand about broader political science theories concerning the roleof nuclear weaponsin internationalpolitics. Fourcommon assumptions exist in the historicaland political science litera- ture aboutnuclear weaponsdiplomacy .First,scholars generally agree that rough Soviet-U.S. strategicparity in the 1960s,and a sharedsense of nuclear danger afterthe Cuban missilecrisis, led toahigh degree ofrestraintin the use of nuclear threats.Under conditionsof mutuallyassured destruction, leaders in Moscowand W ashingtonavoided explicit threats,exerted tightcentral con- trolover their nuclear forces,and used directcommunications to defuse ten- sionsthat could escalate into a militaryconfrontation neither side desired. McGeorge Bundy,forexample, argued thatafter 1962 there was“ greatcaution onthe partof allstates possessing nuclear weapons, caution not only withre- spectto their use, but alsowith respect to anystep thatmight lead to a conict in which someoneelse mightbe tempted touse them.”2 Thisconventional wis- domis challenged by evidence that,well intothe period of strategicparity , U.S. leaderscontinued tomakenuclear threatsmore often andfor less purely “defensive”motives (i.e., todeter enemy attacks)than previously acknowl- edged. The well-known historyof the U.S. nuclear alertduring the October 1973Arab-Israeli W ar,for example, shouldnow be seen asconsistent with a 2.McGeorge Bundy , Danger andSurvival: Choices about theBomb inthe First Fifty Y ears (New York: RandomHouse, 1988), p. 542. See alsoBarry M. Blechman and Stephen S.Kaplan, Forcewithout War: U.S. Armed Forces as aPoliticalInstrument (Washington,D.C.: Brookings, 1978), pp. 47–49; MarcT rachtenberg, AConstructedPeace: The Making of theEuropean Settlement, 1945– 1963 (Prince- ton,N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1999),p. 398;Robert Jervis, TheMeaning of theNuclear Revolu- tion:Statecraft andthe Prospect of Armageddon (Ithaca,N.Y .:Cornell University Press, 1989),p. 36; andJohn Lewis Gaddis, TheLongPeace: Inquiries into the History of theCold War (New York:Oxford University Press, 1987),p. 231. International Security 27:4152 pattern,rather than an aberration,in the diplomacyof Nixonand his national securityadviser, Henry Kissinger. 3 The secondcommon assumption is that the United Statesbehaves asauni- taryactor in the arenaof nuclear weaponssignaling. Many scholarshave ex- plained whatpresidents already know: A chief executive ´sfreedom toact is seriouslyconstrained by bureaucraticpolitics and competing domesticactors, even onforeign policy issues. 4 Nuclearweapons operations, however ,haveof- ten been treatedas an exception. “Bureaucraticpolitics ourished,”Jonathan Bendorand Thomas Hammond argue, “ largely when the president andaides paidlittle attention to an issue or lacked clear policy preferences aboutit.” 5 Given apresident ´sstrongpreferences andattention to nuclear weapons, if there isone areawhere the U.S. commanderin chief really shouldcommand, nuclear alertoperations would be it. The historyof the 1969alert supports this assumption in one importantway . Nixonordered an increasein the alertlevel ofU.S. strategicforces— to support hismadman theory— and he wasable toget hisbasic order implemented, de- spite the ambiguity of purpose tomany within the bureaucracyand the unacceptabilityof the purpose forothers in the know.The historicalrecord alsodemonstrates, however ,thatdomestic politics and bureaucratic con- straintssigni cantly in uenced bothNixon ´sdecisionand the outcomeof his orders.Indeed, they helped tocause the nuclear alert.Domestic and bureau- craticopposition to further escalationof the VietnamW arled Nixonto con- clude thathe couldnot implement his rststrategic preference, which wasto launcha massivebombing campaignagainst North Vietnam. He therefore re- sortedto a secretnuclear signalin anattempt to convince the Sovietsthat he woulddo what he had,in fact,decided notto do— launch a majorbombing attack,perhaps even anuclear attack,against North Vietnam— in the fall of1969. 3.On the October 1973U.S. nuclear alert, see HenryKissinger , Years of Upheaval (Boston:Little, Brown,1982), pp. 575–599; Anatoly Dobrynin, InCon dence: Moscow ´sAmbassador to America ´s Six ColdWar Presidents (New York:Random House, 1995), p. 297; Scott D. Sagan, TheLimits of Safety: Organizations, Accidents,and Nuclear Weapons (Princeton, N.J.:Princeton University Press, 1993), pp. 215–224; and Richard Ned Lebow andJanice GrossStein, We AllLost theCold War (Princeton, N.J.:Princeton University Press, 1994),pp. 226–288. 4.Graham T. Allison andPhilip Zelikow, Essenceof Decision:Explaining the Cuban Missile Crisis, 2d ed.(New York:Longman, 1999 ); MortonH. Halperin, BureaucraticPolitics and Foreign Policy (Wash- ington,D.C.: Brookings, 1974); and Richard E. Neustadt, PresidentialPower andthe Modern Presi- dents:The Politics of Leadershipfrom Roosevelt to Reagan, 5thed. (New York:Free Press, 1990). 5.Jonathan Bendor and Thomas H. Hammond,“ RethinkingAllison ´s Models,” American Political ScienceReview, Vol. 86,No. 2 (June 1992),p. 316. See alsoStephen D.Krasner,“ Are Bureaucracies Important? (orAllison Wonderland),” ForeignPolicy, No.7 (Summer1972), pp. 168–179. TheMadman Nuclear Alert 153 Nixonhoped thathis nuclear bluff wouldcompensate for his domestic and bureaucraticconstraints, convincing Moscow to put pressure onthe Hanoi governmentto sue forpeace onterms acceptable to the United States. In addition,the historyof the October1969 alert demonstrates that even in thishigh-politics arenaof nuclear diplomacy,presidential orderswere actively fought against,sometimes manipulated or ignored,and often honoredonly in part.Other orders were interpreted andimplemented in amorevigorous man- ner thatbest suited the organizationalinterests of the militarycommanders doing the interpretation.The resultwas that many important details of the mil- itaryactivities undertaken in October1969 re ected the operationalinterests of

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