An Uncertain Future

The readings on Mutually Assured Destruction greatly disturbed me. While it may have been necessary, never have I thought it possible to examine nuclear war on such a grand scale. The document from RAD which discusses the scale of destruction in thermonuclear war, and McNamara’s characterization of the difference between losing thirty percent of America’s population versus sixty percent of America’s population is truly mind boggling. These discussions seem to provide several questions regarding morality. Most importantly, while there is clearly a game to be played in convincing ones enemy that America was not afraid to use nuclear weapons, would it every be moral to actually use nuclear weapons? It may be legitimate to use nuclear weapons for deterrence, but if the Soviet Union had invaded western Berlin would it really have been worth it to respond with nuclear weapons as promised? Perhaps I simply do not have the stomach to set defense policy, but I cannot think of a situation where the use of nuclear weapons would be the right thing to do.

The “no cities” strategy proposed by McNamara clearly outlines the absurdity of the justification of nuclear politics. It is very difficult to envision a war in which nuclear attacks against military targets could be politely exchanged between two enemies, with the rest of the civilization being saved. If nuclear war ever does break out, we can only assume that all rational thought will be missing from at least one of the nations involved. Further, McNamara’s explanation of the philosophy of mutually assured destruction is fascinating. It appeared that McNamara suggested that the United States would never use nuclear weapons, but that it had to convince the Soviet Union that it was willing to use nuclear weapons. What many of American leaders may have failed to see during the Cold War was that by trying to convince the Soviet Union that they were ready to use nuclear weapons, they convinced the American public and probably themselves as well. Robert McNamara is clearly an intelligent man and in these conversations he appears rational, but ultimately he was overtaken by Cold War sensibilities. America’s leaders may have seen their strategies as a way to avoid war, but the continued reexamination of strategies such as the “no cities policy”, planning for tens of million of deaths, and mutually assured destruction created a great deal of momentum at the pentagon and throughout America, that normalized the discussion of nuclear war.

While members of the Kennedy administration may have taken risks in their foreign policy, they at least did so by trying to proceed with caution. It would be difficult to say the same for the Reagan administration. In President Reagan’s discussions of a needed arms build up and “star wars”, Reagan dangerously raises the stakes in the cold war. By suggesting that America was losing the Cold War Reagan pursued enormous defense increases that could have brought about panic in the Soviet Union. Further, Star Wars, with little scientific credibility, had the potential to eliminate the fragile stability there was in the nuclear standoff between the United States and the Soviet Union. Now, with America’s clear victory in the cold war, it is easy to look back and applaud Reagan for his rhetoric that was unnecessarily aggressive and often distant from reality. But simply because Reagan’s escalation of the cold war turned out ok does not mean that it couldn’t have ended disastrously. If the Soviet Union had been lead by someone other than Gorbachev, a desperate Soviet Union may have resorted to violence, and perhaps even nuclear war as a desperate attempt to maintain its superpower status.

I am not sure what I would have done if I were one of the leaders mentioned in this reading. It is easy to criticize their behavior, but it is much harder to say what they should have done and stood for. Kennedy and Khrushchev can at least be admired for their last minute realization of the consequences of nuclear war during the Cuban missile crisis. Over the last fifty years these men have inherited a nuclear world and it seems difficult to tell whether they were simply doing the best they could, or whether they were enabling a future nuclear holocaust (or both). While I understand that the issues regarding mutually assured destruction and nuclear proliferation are complex, I still believe the leaders of the past fundamentally failed their constituents, and that the leaders of today can make a greater effort in eliminating the possibility of nuclear war.