by Peter Byrne
WSEG also foresaw a danger that,
authoritarian governments [e.g. South Korea, Turkey] now militarily allied to the U.S. will be replaced … by regimes more responsive to public opinion…. It is doubtful if the United States will be able to count on receiving as much support in these countries as it does today…. All the forces that make for antagonism against the West, against the present or former colonial powers, against ‘economic imperialism,’ against the white man–particularly if he is known to discriminate against colored people–militate against alignment with the West.13
Given the inability to wage a credible second strike, the logical strategic policy was to maintain credible first strike capabilities. Report 50 swung the technological foundation of the basic war plan toward a preemptive focus.
Nothing short of a first-strike or counterforce capability could serve as a reliable deterrent to such overseas aggression as would leave the U.S. strategic force intact and with the option to intervene. A strategic force capable only of a strike at urban targets in the Soviet Union–possibly the only strategy that a second-strike force could employ–would fail to provide a credible deterrent against Sino-Soviet aggression overseas, because its very employment would invite the destruction of substantial areas of the United States.14
In the final days of the Eisenhower administration, the secretary of defense authorized the new Single Integrated Operating Plan (SIOP) “to replace the independent and often competing war plans of the military services.”15 Creating the SIOP was an invitation to the Soviets to mirror the core U.S. strategy of maintaining a massive first strike threat capable of surviving an enemy attack and retaliating. This was the doctrine of deterring war though assured destruction, and if its logic seemed circular: it was.
Feedback loops
Assured destruction was Prisoner’s Dilemma played with a nuclear button that, if pushed by one player, was tantamount to the commission of national suicide—if the other player’s retaliation option worked. After WSEG determined that the second strike option was a mirage, it proposed to beef up a first strike option that could also function as an effective second strike. Fear of the second strike might cause each player to refrain from “defecting” and pushing the first strike button, or so the logic of assured destruction went. But fear of a first strike could also cause a player to defect first, hoping to be able to defang the other player’s second strike capability, which was really a first strike capability. And around and around the atomic mulberry bush went the circular reasoning. The phrase “assured destruction” was quickly morphed into “mutual assured destruction” by its critics, as the “MAD” acronym was irresistible.
Unfortunately, the major sociological lesson to be learned from Prisoner’s Dilemma—that altruism and cooperation pay off better in the long run than defecting—was completely lost on WSEG, which was not tasked to promote cooperation. In fact, Report 50 identified the populace’s yearning for peace as an obstacle to strategic planning:
One such factor of mounting importance is a growing public awareness of the devastation likely to be inflicted on any participant in a general nuclear war. This has increased popular fears of military conflict in any form and created particular aversion to the use of nuclear weapons…. There are indications that sectors of the population might be willing to pay an extremely high price to avoid involvement in war…. The existence of nuclear weapons with their hitherto inconceivable destructive power has introduced an emotional element into the debate which has sometimes clouded the more rational considerations, particularly in nonofficial circles.16
WSEG quoted the finding by a 1958 Gallup poll that, by a two to one margin, the population of Great Britain preferred coming to terms with the Soviets at any price over fighting a nuclear war.17 WSEG worried that disarmament proposals supported by prominent Britons, including the mathematician, Lord Bertrand Russell, were undermining the moral foundation of operations research as expressed by the slogan, “We shall prevent war by preparing for war.”18
On the other hand, preparing for war could hasten it.
The threat to the U.S. should not be measured solely by the strength available to actual or potential enemies. The seriousness of this threat is also affected by the intention and resolution of enemy nations to employ their strength against us. It is therefore appropriate to take into account the factor of the willingness of the enemy to accept the risks of modern war.19
Report 50 assumed that if the enemy was willing to accept risks, then we must. But in the case of deterrence through assured destruction, a risk-bearing enemy would be mirroring our own risk-taking agenda, so the real question was are we willing to accept the risks of modern warfare? And, if not, would it not be logical to disarm? But WSEG did not question its core assumption that the socialist bloc should be destroyed one way or another. That a death-defying high-wire arms race should exist was a forgone conclusion: WSEG’s job was to run it cost-effectively.
Report 50 noted that the Soviet Union’s annual economic growth rate of 6 percent outstripped the United State’s growth rate of 3.5–4.5 percent and that, “economic growth will enable the U.S.S.R. to carry the burden of competitive armaments … and increase Soviet leverage in world affairs.”20 The report identified Iran, Iraq, and the Pakistan-Afghan tribal areas as probable sources of superpower competition and conflict, along with Latin America, Northern Africa and Southeast Asia. Contrary to the rhetoric streaming out of the White House and the Pentagon, the researchers did not find that the Soviets were willing to risk general war to protect these interests, quite the opposite. However, “Soviets may consider U.S. strategic posture indicative of offensive intent.”21
There is apparent consensus among the Soviet leadership that strongly favors policies that stop short of general war, and that discourage lesser wars also, partly at least, from fear that they might get out of hand. Russian leadership appears to have nearly come full circle, and almost to have resumed the previously condemned views of Malenkov concerning the disastrous probable consequences of thermonuclear warfare. There is also a doctrinal legacy that deplores adventurism…. We do not know, of course, what views and plans Soviet officials may have for the use of their strategic offensive weapons…. What may be inferred from their actions, and from the repeatedly expressed views on the destructiveness of nuclear warfare suggest a rather amorphous view that the most profitable role of Soviet strategic power is to serve as a counter-deterrent.22
WSEG’s analysis of Soviet intentions implicitly recognized that there was an opportunity to back-down from the arms race and that the Soviets might very well have responded to genuine disarmament proposals. But neither the Joint Chiefs nor WSEG were interested in ending a global nuclear arms race, rather, they hoped it would spread. Contemplating a war with China, the authors stated that a major objective for the next decade should be:
to foster conservative attitudes on the part of China and Russia toward a general nuclear war with the United States, but also to foster the divisive factors in the Sino-Russian alliance…. It could produce a situation in which a war between the U.S. and China, with the U.S.S.R. remaining neutral, is imaginable…. It is conceivable that, just as the Chinese Communists might upon occasion feel it desirable to involve the U.S. and the U.S.S.R. in a war, sane Russian leadership might come to feel that a war between the U.S. and Communist China, if not desirable, might be turned into an opportunity to get rid of the unwelcome elements of Chinese communism and weaken the U.S. as well.23
That statement is psychologically instructive: Reflecting the zenophobic mentality of the typical Cold Warrior, WSEG suggested that the Soviets or the Chinese were inclined to launch a world war on the basis of “feeling” and “desire” or dubious “sanity,” unlike the Americans who were prepared to ignite the planet on the basis of pure reason.
The mandate of Report 50 was to calculate the benefits and costs of implementing the policy of deterrence through assured destruction, but the authors recognized that,
> There are limits to what may be achieved by policies of deterrence, and when these limits are exceeded, deterrence is likely to fail. It is likely to fail because it becomes incredible, or because it appears to the enemy intolerably oppressive or threatening. It may appear to be incredible because it does not appear that the potential gains to ourselves are equivalent to the risks involved in invoking the deterrent force…. It may appear threatening … because the technical or strategic characteristics of our deterrent suggest that general nuclear war is inevitable or highly probable. This could serve to justify assumption of the risks of preventive or pre-emptive attack upon us as the lesser of two evils…. Improvements in strategic offensive posture cannot forcibly prevent the Soviets from destroying from half to nine-tenths of our people and wealth in a general war. This suggests that the problem cannot be solved solely by improvement of the military posture.24
One of the most important conclusions of Report 50 was that achieving strategic stalemate through deterrence (in which neither side feels that it can attack the other first), “will curtail drastically, and perhaps eliminate, our ability to project U.S. strategic power … into foreign areas.”25 In other words, the success of assured destruction will (and did) encourage the use of limited, conventional, proxy warfare by superpowers fighting over market turf because the consequence of waging a general war was too destructive. Yet, limited wars are fuzes for nuclear conflagration, said WSEG.
Recognizing that the U.S. military was becoming increasingly embroiled in fighting wars in third world countries, WSEG analyzed that tactical nuclear weapons were useless against mobile guerilla armies of rice farmers (as in Vietnam).26 There was another danger with using tactical nukes, whether in third world countries, or in Europe:
It would be difficult, if not impossible, for contestants to know at once whether nuclear strikes were occasioned by tactical bombs or strategic bombs, whether missiles were tactical, intermediate range, or even intercontinental; or whether to expect the next salvo to be the strongest blow of all—an allout intercontinental strike. In a situation so grave, the stakes would be so high that either side might, with plausible reason, launch its intercontinental attack in desperation.27
Trapped inside the feedback loop of Cold War Reason, the authors were clear that the threat of general nuclear war encouraged both sides to engage in limited wars, including limited nuclear exchanges. However, WSEG noted, limited war increases the “probability of general war by accident or miscalculation and thus erode[s] the deterrent effect of the strategic posture.” In other words: Deterrence erodes deterrence. And, due to lack of adequate defense against a first strike, “a favorable outcome of a general war does not appear attainable” for either side. But this did not matter to WSEG’s calculus because even if one power has no intention of launching a first strike, it might be attacked, therefore it must build a hugely redundant second strike capability, “which is bound to include a fearful first strike capability.”28 But a first strike by either superpower would not bring victory, even if it destroyed 90 percent of the enemy’s nuclear force, as there was no way to destroy enough enemy missiles and bombers to prevent a debilitating retaliatory strike by the remnants of a force designed to strike first, said WSEG.
After having identified the considerable political and technological weaknesses of assured destruction, the Report 50 authors recommended what appears to have been a forgone conclusion: despite the risk of inviting a first strike, the U.S. should continue to manufacture an expensive first-strike capability so horrifying that it will continue to “deter” the enemy into “deterring” us. They also recommended developing a new generation of conventional weapons with which to fight limited wars, supplemented by tactical nuclear bombs, despite having exposed the danger of limited warfare.
The cost-benefit of Armageddon
Parts of Report 50 are classic Everett (at Lambda he authored several similar reports). Using his multiplier method, the report measured “single shot kill probabilities” for integer numbers of bomb payloads delivered to specified types of sites (military bases, factories, population centers) as a function of how many bombs could be spared from inventory to achieve a maximum kill ratio.29 Thousands of constraints had to be considered in setting up the kill formulae, including the probabilities of missiles and B-52s reaching the target, the ability to retarget in mid-flight, the probability of dud bombs, the variable damage caused by shock waves, overpressure, fire, and radiation. Under Everett’s guidance, WSEG’s new computer sifted through vast quantities of data to construct alternative world futures containing ranges of cost-benefit solutions.
For example, the future was affected by WSEG’s determination that nuclear bombs were relatively cheap to make. It was the cost of the delivery system that mattered.
The unit cost of bombs and warheads, after deducting the salvage value of nuclear materials [oralloy, plutonium, tritium], is relatively low as compared with the unit cost of the weapon system. In most cases the net cost of the warhead and/or bombs is less than 10 percent of the cost of its carrier.30
The authors suggested scrapping development programs for the Atlas and Titan missiles, which were cumbersome and extremely expensive. They recommended relying on Minuteman batteries and the Polaris submarine fleet, in conjunction with air-borne B-52 bombers on “flying alert,” as the preferred strategic weapons system for waging deterrence. In other words, they called for maintaining an around-the-clock first strike capability. Using the Everett-Pugh fallout model, WSEG suggested basing the Minuteman forces in “lightly populated areas in the northern mountain states” to minimize fallout on more heavily populated areas when the Minuteman launch sites were bombed.31
Members of the joint chiefs of staff were not happy with Report 50. It exposed fatal weaknesses in military planning; it debunked the politically useful missile gap; it spelled the end of certain boondoggles. They succeeded in keeping the report out of the hands of the Eisenhower White House, but when Robert McNamara, Kennedy’s new secretary of defense arrived on the job, he demanded a briefing.
Everett briefs a top dog
On January 26, 1961, Everett, Larry Dean, and the Report 50 coordinator, George Contos, scheduled a 90-minute briefing for Secretary McNamara. He was so fascinated by the nitty-gritty that the session lasted all day. Everett was consulted repeatedly by high-ranking administration officials over the next two months as Kennedy and McNamara sought to find a way out of the doctrine of Wargasm.32
One result of the briefing was that previous estimates of the force levels necessary to prevail in a hot war were scrapped. McNamara agreed with WSEG’s arguments for relying on Polaris and Minuteman (bombers were essentially obsolete, but kept for show and to keep SAC quiet). In fact, missile-laden submarines were the most effective weapon wielded in the Cold War. They hid beneath oceans and functioned as both a first strike and second strike weapon—assuring destruction.
McNamara was momentarily drawn toward the concept of “no cities/counterforce,” which targeted only military installations in initial salvos. But WSEG favored deterring the enemy from provoking or attacking America by threatening the destruction of enemy cities and vital infrastructure. In January 1963, influenced by WSEG, McNamara officially endorsed assured destruction. RAND’s Albert Wohlstetter, a proponent of limited nuclear warfare, criticized the doctrine as a “balance of terror.”33
It certainly did not balance budgets. With the costs of the U.S. war on Vietnam increasing, McNamara told Congress, “Every hour of every day the Secretary is confronted by a conflict between the national interest and the parochial interests of particular industries [and] individual services.”34 By 1964, the corporate supply-siders were winning. McNamara started investing in hugely expensive civil defense and anti-ballistic missile defense projects,35 even though he and his experts, including Everett, knew that neither system could work as advertised.
Historian Desmond Ball assessed that despite the sober view of Soviet intentions and capabilities presen
ted in Report 50, the Kennedy administration grossly inflated the danger of the Soviet nuclear threat for domestic political reasons.36 The by-word of the administration became “flexible response,” to replace the Wargasm, but Ball points out:
Beneath the ‘shifting sands’ which characterized the McNamara strategy throughout his years as secretary of defense was a constant, although not always explicit, acceptance of a particular version of deterrence as a national strategic policy. This was the necessity for the United States to have the capability, at all times and under all circumstances, ‘of destroying the aggressor to the point that his society is simply no longer viable in any meaningful 20th century sense.’37
Ball also notes that McNamara seriously considered the option of launching a preemptive first strike on the Soviet Union and China.38
In the aftermath of Report 50, Everett’s brilliance was legendary in black budget operation research circles.39 In support of his path-creating work, his bosses authorized the purchase of a “super-computer,” the new Control Data Corporation 1604, which was adept at running complex war simulations, including anti-ballistic missile defense models. WSEG was regularly asked to evaluate contractor-proposed ABM system designs, but they all had to be rejected, “because the cost of any effective defense was … 1000 to 1 higher than what a determined opponent would have to spend for a larger or more capable offensive force that could simply overwhelm the defense.”40 Nonetheless, the wraith of ABM continued to haunt defense budgets,41 materializing primarily as private profits for contractors, which soon included Everett.