Tethering Hawks: U.S. Restraints in the Cold War A THESIS SUBMITTED TO THE INTERSCHOOL HONORS PROGRAM IN INTERNATIONAL SECURITY STUDIES CENTER FOR INTERNATIONAL SECURITY AND COOPERATION FREEMAN SPOGLI INSTITUTE FOR INTERNATIONAL STUDIES STANFORD UNIVERSITY By Reed Jobs June 2014 Adviser: Scott D. Sagan 1 Abstract The 2003 American invasion of Iraq broke the U.S.’s historic forbearance from pursuing a policy of preventive war. Recently, considerations of preventive war have come to the fore in the rhetoric of U.S. policymakers and academics. This thesis analyzes the U.S. restraints in historic considerations of preventive war. The period examined is the early Cold War. The cases analyzed are the American considerations of preventive war against the first and second Communist nations to develop nuclear weapons. The acquisition of nuclear weapons by each Communist state prompted the U.S. Departments of State and Defense to independently compile a litany of policy options which debated and weighed the political and military costs of preventive war. The primary source documents used in this thesis were recovered from a variety of sources, including the National Archives, where academically under-examined policy documents were recovered. The documents examined reveal normative and theoretical restraints in each United States decision not to pursue a policy of preventive war. While the conventional narrative of the Cold War ascribes the phenomenon of peace to the dominant restraint of deterrence, this thesis proposes that each policy of restraint was instead created by several restraints, acting in concert. While current cases regarding considerations of preventive war are not examined, I hope this thesis elucidates how policies of restraint are formed. This thesis does not seek to replace the conventional narrative of deterrence, it seeks to augment it. 2 Acknowledgments I first need to thank my thesis adviser Scott Sagan for all of his time, counsel, and patience. I feel immense gratitude to have had the opportunity to study under Professor Sagan, and working as his student, teaching assistant, research assistant, and finally thesis advisee has been the defining experience of my undergraduate career. Without his guidance, this thesis would not have occurred. I am very thankful to Professors Martha Crenshaw and Chip Blacker for their leadership in the Honors Seminar, and their availability in providing assistance and advice. I would also like to thank Shiri Krebs for her administration of the class. I owe Professor Gil-li Vardi a debt of gratitude for reintroducing me to my love of history, and for all of our excellent conversations – past and future. I would also like to thank Professor Norman Naimark for his support over the past years, he is an exemplary adviser and scholar. I would like to thank Colonel Joe Felter of CISAC for helping me navigate military documents, and for his continuing friendship. I would like to thank William Burr for his work as a scholar, and for his knowledge of the National Archives. I would like to thank James Goodby of the Hoover Institute for taking the time to be interviewed by me – it was truly an honor to speak to you and I absolutely love your work. I would like to thank my entire CISAC Honors class, I am certain I would not have made it without our small-unit cohesion. I would finally like to thank my family and friends. My roommate Patrick, Matt, Chris, Lucas, Maayan, Dan, Shiv and Taylor. My tenacious and brilliant sisters Erin and Eve for all their love over the years. Megs, Greg, Michelle, Brad, Tracey, Doug, Jenny, Amanda, Garrett, Ava, Kaitlyn, Brittany, Shannon, Scott, Elin, Nik, Sara, Mona, Richie, Gabe and Grace, you all know you’re awesome. Finally, my mom Laurene for her love, friendship, and unyielding belief in me. Thank you all so much. 3 Table of Contents Abstract…………………………………………………………………………………………....2 Acknowledgements…………………………………………………………………………….….3 Table of Contents…………………………………………………………………………….……4 Chapter 1…………………………………………………………………………….…………….5 Chapter 2…….……………………………………………………………………...……………19 Chapter 3…………………………………………………………………………………………30 Chapter 4…………………………………………………………………………………………58 4 Chapter 1 – Restraint to Action On Tuesday night of the first week of the Cuban Missile Crisis, President John F. Kennedy departed from Washington to attend a fundraiser in Chicago. Before his flight, President Kennedy requested the hawkish, former Secretary of State Dean Acheson to rise from his retirement and join the Executive Committee advising the President on Cuban options. Acheson arrived in Washington on Wednesday, while the President was away, and quickly sought to bring discipline, decisiveness and unanimity to the Executive Committee. An epitome of bold, anti-Communist interventionist policy, Dean Acheson’s most famous contribution as President Truman’s Secretary of State was convincing Truman to intervene in the Korean War. In the subsequent decade he had largely retired from politics. Entering the ExComm meetings, though a breathing reminder of the former administration’s policies, Acheson was nevertheless widely respected as one of the foremost living foreign policy experts. Acheson’s hawkishness had not atrophied with age. In the ExComm meetings on Wednesday, firm in his conviction and design, Acheson argued that the United States should strike the Cuban missile bases, “immediately and without warning.”1 Concurring in this recommendation were the Joint Chiefs of Staff, who believed a surprise airstrike, followed by a general invasion, to be the surest way of eliminating the Cuban threat. There appeared an unlikely opponent to Acheson’s bellicosity over the course of the weeklong ExComm meetings: Robert Kennedy. According to a Kennedy biographer, while Robert Kennedy had been one of the most hawkish members of ExComm initially, “Acheson’s 1 Evan Thomas, Robert Kennedy: His Life, (New York: Simon and Schuster, 2002), 215. 5 hawkishness had helped make a dove out of RFK.”2 At some point during a speech of Acheson’s at the Executive Committee, the Attorney General turned to his brother’s speechwriter and counsel, Theodore Sorenson, and passed the note: “I now know how Tojo felt when he was planning Pearl Harbor.”3 In a diametric shift Robert Kennedy began to argue restraint in Cuba. This was not the first use of the Japanese analogy; Robert Kennedy later was seen convincing Acheson “my brother is not going to be the Tojo of the 60s.”4 While Kennedy was not the first to make the parallel between Pearl Harbor and Cuba, his belief in the necessity of a moral restraint was decisive in ExComm’s ultimate decision to advocate a restrained policy of a blockade. The Cuban Missile Crisis is perhaps the most famous instance of the powerful influence of normative restraint in the Cold War. Historians and biographers of the period, however, attribute the influence of moral restraints in the Cuban Missile Crisis to the personal convictions of the Kennedy brothers. True, the fear of instigating a “Pearl Harbor in reverse,” was particularly acute among the Kennedys, and flew in the face of the recommendations of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, as well as those of the conventional experts, like Acheson. This restraint towards aggression has not been thoroughly examined by historians of the period, for historians link the restraint’s overt appearance here in the Cuban Missile Crisis to the personalities of the Kennedy brothers, instead of understanding the restraint in its own right. Throughout the Cold War, American preventive force found itself restrained on several fronts. Evidently, the anti-preventive war norm was influential, as the Cuban Missile Crisis illustrates, however as a restraint, it was hardly alone. An examination of government 2 Thomas, 215. 3 Thomas, 215. 4 Thomas, 215. 6 statements, contingency plans, and intelligence reveals the existence of multiple, independent restraints on American considerations of preventive war in the Early Cold War period. The three restraints this thesis examines are the anti-preventive war norm, the nuclear taboo, and deterrence theory. Conventional wisdom highlights the influence of deterrence theory – a cost-benefit analysis of military capabilities – as the dominant restraint of the Cold War. Recent scholars, however, have identified additional restraints on Cold War policymakers. In addition to the restraint imposed by the enemy’s military capabilities, restraint also originated from concepts of moral norms. Independent of deterrence theory, a moral aversion to the usage of nuclear weapons – what has been identified by scholars as the nuclear taboo – existed as a restraint on policymakers. The final moral restraint, as revealed in the Cuban Missile Crisis, is a norm against instigating preventive war. How deterrence, the anti-preventive war norm, and the nuclear taboo interacted in the minds of Cold War policymakers, and subsequently how these concepts were created into policy, is the focus of this thesis. This thesis proceeds to analyze the relative strength of deterrence, the anti-preventive war norm, and the nuclear taboo in two case studies. First, three leading Cold War scholars will provide definitions of deterrence theory, the anti-preventive war norm, and the nuclear taboo. After presenting conventional definitions, this thesis will address the chosen case studies chronologically. The first case examined is the American decision not to pursue a policy of preventive war against the Soviet Union in the years immediately following the USSR’s acquisition