The Development of Nuclear Strategy

Bernard Brodie

That concept was put forward almost at once at the beginning of the nuclear age that is still the dominant concept of nuclear strategy — deterrence. It fell to me — few other civilians at the time were interested in military strategy — to publish the first analytical paper on the military implications of nuclear weapons. Entitled "The Atomic Bomb and American Security," it appeared in the autumn of 1945 as No. 18 of the occasional papers of what was then the Yale Institute for International Studies. In expanded form it was included as two chapters in a book published in the following year under the title The Absolute Weapon, which contained also essays on political implications by four of my Yale colleagues.

I should like to cite one brief paragraph from that 1946 book, partly because it has recently been quoted by a number of other writers, usually with approval but in one conspicuous instance with strong disapproval:

Thus, the first and most vital step in any American security program for the age of atomic bombs is to take measures to guarantee to ourselves in case of attack the possibility of retaliation in kind. The writer in making that statement is not for the moment concerned about who will win the next war in which atomic bombs are used. Thus far the chief purpose of our military establishment has been to win wars. From now on its chief purpose must be to avert them. It can have almost no other useful purpose.

It was obvious then as now that this description of deterrence applied mostly to a war with the only other superpower, the Soviet Union, who did not yet have nuclear weapons but was confidently predicted in the same book to be able "to produce them in quantity within a period of five to ten years."

Let me mention a few more points in that 1946 essay in order to indicate what any reflective observer of the time would have found more or less self-evident. It stated that among the requirements for deterrence were extraordinary measures of protection for the retaliatory force so that it might survive a surprise attack, that margins of superiority in nuclear weapons or the means of delivering them might count for little or nothing in a crisis so long as each side had reason to fear the huge devastation of its peoples and territories by the other, that while it was possible that the world might see another major war in which the nuclear bomb is not used, the shadow of that bomb would nevertheless "so govern the strategic and tactical dispositions of either side as to create a wholly novel form of war," and that this latter fact had particular implications for the uses of sea power, the classic functions of which depended on an intact home base and the passage of considerable time. It was also observed that while the idea of deterrence per se was certainly nothing new, being as old as the use of physical force, what was distinctively new was the degree to which it was intolerable that it should fail. On the other hand, one could add that "in no case is the fear of the consequences of atomic bomb attack likely to be low," which made it radically different from a past in which governments could, often correctly, anticipate wars that would bring them considerable political benefits while exacting very little in the way of costs.

Since 1946 there has been much useful rumination and writing on nuclear strategy and especially on the nature of deterrence, but the national debates on the subject have revolved mostly around three questions, all relating directly to the issue of expenditures. These three questions are: 1) What are the changing physical requirements for the continuing success of deterrence? 2) Just what kinds of wars does nuclear deterrence really deter? and 3) What is the role, if any, for tactical nuclear weapons? Far down the course in terms of the public attention accorded it is a fourth question: If deterrence fails, how do we fight a nuclear war and for what objectives? The latter question has been almost totally neglected by civilian scholars, though lately some old ideas have been revived having to do with what are called limited nuclear options. Otherwise most questions about the actual use of nuclear weapons in war, whether strategic or tactical, have been largely left to the military, who had to shoulder responsibility for picking specific targets, especially in the strategic category, and who were expected to give guidance about the kinds and numbers of nuclear weapons required.

In that connection, one must stress a point which certain young historians who are new to the field have found it difficult to grasp. Virtually all the basic ideas and philosophies about nuclear weapons and their use have been generated by civilians working quite independently of the military, even though some resided in institutions like Rand which were largely supported by one or another of the services. In these matters the military have been, with no significant exceptions, strictly consumers, naturally showing preference for some ideas over others but hardly otherwise affecting the flow of those ideas. Whatever the reasons, they must include prominently the fact that to the military man deterrence comes as the by-product, not the central theme, of his strategic structure. Any philosophy which puts it at the heart of the matter must be uncongenial to him. One military writer significantly speaks of the deterrence-oriented "modernist" as dwelling "in the realm of achieving non-events in a condition where the flow of events is guided, not by his initiatives, but by other minds." And further: "The obvious difficulty with deterrent theory ... is the yielding of the initiative to the adversary." In the preceding sentence initiative has already been called the sine qua non of success.

The Requirements for Deterrence

How does one preserve against surprise attack enough of one's retaliatory force so that the opponent, in anticipation thereof, is deterred? Obviously there is a political dimension to this question, because the need for precautionary measures does vary according to whether or not we think the opponent is straining at the leash to destroy us. There used to be current a notion that if the opponent saw his way...