Annihilation from Within Fred Iklé (cool books to read .txt) 📖

itself against a single Soviet missile that would have been detected on its way to destroy an American city. Martin Anderson, who had accompanied Reagan on this visit, recalls that Reagan reflected on the terrible dilemma a president would face if, for whatever reason, nuclear missiles were fired at the United States. “The only options he would have,” Reagan said, “would be to press the button or do nothing. They’re both bad. We should have some way of defending ourselves against nuclear missiles.” Martin Anderson, Revolution (San Diego: Harcourt Brace Jovanovich, 1988), 83.

13. Caspar Weinberger, Fighting for Peace (New York: Warner Books, 1990), 341. On Reagan’s attitude toward, and understanding of, nuclear weapons, Paul Lettow wrote the well-documented book, Ronald Reagan and His Quest to Abolish Nuclear Weapons (New York: Random House, 2004).

14. Bundy, Danger and Survival, 151–52. Churchill dissuaded Eisenhower from speaking publicly about a possible nuclear response to new aggression in Korea (244–45 and 271).

The idea of using nuclear weapons first to respond to an attack with conventional forces—or rather to deter it—lived on as NATO doctrine till the end of the Cold War. But in fact, NATO’s members were so frightened by the enormous risks of this doctrine that they never dared to explore its consequences. Indeed, NATO war games were routinely stopped at the point where the use of nuclear weapons had to be decided. My critique of NATO’s first-use doctrine (Fred C. Iklé, “NATO’s ‘First Nuclear Use’: A Deepening Trap?” Strategic Review [Winter 1980]: 18–23) has been vindicated by published documents from Warsaw Pact archives that indicate the Pact was better prepared for “first use” than NATO.

George H. Quester’s book, Nuclear First Strike: Consequences of a Broken Taboo (Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University Press, 2006) explores the many ramifications and possible long-term impact if the dispensation of nuclear non-use suddenly ended.

15. Holloway, Stalin and the Bomb, 306, 336–37. Additional Soviet statements and sources can be found in John Lewis Gaddis, We Now Know: Rethinking Cold War History (Oxford: Clarendon Press, 1977), 228–30.

16. Peter G. Boyle, ed., The Churchill-Eisenhower Correspondence, 1953–1955 (Chapel Hill: University of North Carolina Press, 1990), 123–24. Churchill’s stroke some nine months before he wrote this passage was far more serious than the public knew. (See David Reynolds, In Command of History: Churchill Fighting and Writing the Second World War [London: Penguin Books, 2005], 440–41.)

Churchill had favored direct negotiations with Stalin since 1950. As the renowned historian David Reynolds reveals (In Command of History, 436–39), Churchill even adjusted some of the passages in his Triumph and Tragedy so as to refer to Stalin and the Soviet Union with words more appropriate for a future negotiating partner. Stalin’s death of course convinced him more strongly that the time was ripe for a U.S.-British-Soviet summit.

17. This effort, which became known as the Nunn-Lugar program, has been highly effective despite “waste and fraud” (that familiar downside of large government programs, including those run by the U.S. Government within the United States). On balance, the program is a splendid—and rare—example of members of Congress taking the lead in initiating an essential policy and seeing it through its implementation. Graham Allison, Director of the Belfer Center at Harvard University, has led a series of projects to alert American and Russian officials to the continuing risk of nuclear theft and smuggled nuclear bombs and to promote more effective countermeasures.

In 2004 Graham Allison offered an update of the Nunn-Lugar program (and related efforts), concluding that nuclear materials, and even finished weapons, have not been adequately protected against theft by terrorist organizations (Nuclear Terrorism: The Ultimate Preventable Catastrophe [New York: Henry Holt, 2004]). I would agree with Allison’s judgment, but note that this serious negligence stretches over many U.S. administrations and that even the U.S. Government found that some of its own plutonium was unaccounted for. The “missing” U.S. plutonium amounts to almost three metric tons, enough to build several hundred atomic weapons of the 1945 design. See Robert L. Rinne, An Alternative Framework for the Control of Nuclear Materials (Stanford University, Calif.: Center for International Security and Cooperation, 1999), 3–5.

18. Henry D. Sokolski, Best of Intentions: America’s Campaign Against Strategic Weapons Proliferation (Westport, Conn.: Praeger, 2001), 30–33 and 36–37. Sokolski is the founder and Executive Director of the Nonproliferation Education Center.

19. Richard L. Garwin and Georges Charpak, Megawatts and Megatons: The Future of Nuclear Power and Nuclear Weapons (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2001), 343 and 318.

Henry Sokolski, has written extensively on the dangers of the planned global MOX economy (see www.npec-web.org).

4. Annihilation from Within

The Nietzsche quotation at the beginning of this chapter is from Beyond Good and Evil, part 4, #146 (Jenseits von Gut und Böse, Viertes Hauptstück, 146). Nietzsche connects two sentences. The one quoted above (“Und wenn du lange in einen Abgrund blickst, blickt der Abgrund auch in dich hinein’’), and preceding it: “He who fights monsters should be on guard lest he becomes a monster himself” (“Wer mit Ungeheuern kämpft mag zusehen, dass er nicht dabei zum Ungeheuer wird”)—a theme to which I shall return in the next chapter.

The Unamuno quotation is from Tragic Sense of Life (Del Sentimiento Tragico De La Vida En Los Hombres Y En Los Pueblos) (New York: Dover, 1954), 107. The full sentence is: “Always it comes about that the beginning of wisdom is a fear” (“Siempre resulta que el principio de la sabiduria es un temor”).

1.   Well before 9/11, Tom Clancy and Russell Seitz published “Five Minutes Past Midnight—and Welcome to the Age of Proliferation,” The National Interest (Winter 1991–92). The post–9/11 anticipations of a terrorist-type attack with mass destruction weapons include Bill Keller, “Nuclear Nightmares,” New York Times Magazine, May 26, 2002; Fred Hiatt, “Ignoring the Unthinkable,” Washington Post, March 17, 2003; George F. Will, “Holocaust in a Suitcase,” Washington Post, August 29, 2004; Nicholas D. Kristof, “The Nuclear Shadow,” New York Times, August 14, 2004; Steve Coll, “What Bin Laden Sees in Hiroshima,” Washington Post, February 6, 2005. Scholars and writers in Europe have also contributed thoughtful anticipations of