About when did a US/CCCP war become suicidal?

(Peter Stickney) wrote in message ...
In article ,
"George Z. Bush" writes:
Peter Stickney wrote:

BMEWS was the response to the threat of ICBMs coming over the Pole.
But, in some ways, we were still further along than the Soviets wer in
building and deploying useful ICBMs and SLBMs. Kruschev was great at
showing off spactacular feats of missilery, and veiled, and not so
veiled threats to use his missiles, but that wasn't backed up by what
was in the field. Consider, if you will, that if the Soviets had had
a viable ICBM or SLBM force in 1962, they wouldn't have tried putting
the short-range missiles in Cuba. That whole business grew out of the
Soviet's knowledge that they couldn't effectively strike. (Either First
Strike or Second Strike)

That was all very interesting, and certainly did much to refresh flagging
memories. However, it still didn't resolve the starting date for
MAD, because
it ignored the ongoing SAC airborne alerts and the nuclear armed subs roaming
the oceans. I personally have the feeling that the MAD doctrine evolved from
recognition of those SAC policies by the Soviets, which would place
the date at
or before construction of the DEW line.
All guesswork on my part. What do you think?

Well, just my opinion, of course, but I think that the MAD thinking
didn't occur until the mid '60s. It really didn't get set in stone
until it was decided to limit the deployment of the Spartan/Safeguard
ABM system, which occurred before the negotiation of the ABM Treaty
which occurred in 1972. The Soviets, of course, had been trying with
all possible strength to get systems in place to deliver their nukes
all through the 1950s. As I pointed out before, air-breathers -
Bombers and Cruise Missiles, weren't going to cut it, at least in our
mutual perceptions. (Since it never got tried for real) The Soviets
put more efforts into their ICBM projects than we did, but their
progress wasn't as fast as they wished, so they propagandized the hell
out of it, making themselves look much more powerful than they were,
and hoped that we either wouldn't find out, or wouldn't call the
bluff. (All that Missile Gap stuff in the 1960 election, for
example.)
So the Soviets had been trying to present a credible force for quite a
while, but weren't really there.

All through the 1950s, the Soviets didn't have any confidence in their
ability to put bombs on target, The idea of MAD, which is more a
Western conceit, rather than a bilateral policy, didn't come about
until the Soviets had a significant and reliable ICBM force. This
didn't happen until the mid '60s, at best, with their development of
storable-fuel ICBMs, and the Yankee Class Ballistic Missile Subs.
That feeling of inferiority, after all, was what drove Kruschev to try
to put the short and medium range missiles in Cuba in 1962. They knew
that they were going to come off second best against what we had, and
counted on holding the initialtive and being agressive to make the
differnece. It didn't work that way, and that's the main reason why
Khruschev was chucked out - he scared the Supreme Soviet more than he
scared us. (And mind you, he was plenty scarey)

There's no definite indication tha the Soviet Heirarchy ever really
bought into the idea of MAD. The Soviets, don't forget, were perfectly
willing to trade vast numbers of their population for their system's
survival. The communization of the Ukraine, and the scorched-earch
strategies used in WW 2 are ample examples of that.

But then, this is one of those things that is really a matter of
trying to nail Jello to the wall - since it was never a stated,
formal, policy, but more an attitude and set of perceptions.

I will have to dig them out but Herman Kahn did a whole series of
books in the 1950s On Thermonuclear Warfare, Thinking About the
Unthinkable, Will the Survivors Envy the Dead? The whole wonderful
gamut of 'what do we do with this terrible thing we have made?'. The
kernel of MAD was there in the 1950s, part of the massive retaliation
concept that begat the doomsday bomb idea which put a lot of SAC
colonels in analysis or homes.
http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/a...97/parrin.html

"MAD, of course, is an evolutionary defense strategy based on the
concept that neither the United States nor its enemies will ever start
a nuclear war because the other side will retaliate massively and
unacceptably. MAD is a product of the 1950s' US doctrine of massive
retaliation, and despite attempts to redefine it in contemporary terms
like flexible response and nuclear deterrence, it has remained the
central theme of American defense planning for well over three
decades.2 But MAD was developed during a time of unreliable missile
technology and was based on a mortal fear of Communism, aggravated by
ignorance of an unknown enemy that lurked behind an iron curtain.
Times have changed. Missile guidance improvements have eliminated the
need for multiple targeting by redundant weapon systems. More
importantly, our enemies have changed as have our fears about
Communist domination. It is time to rethink our baseline defense
strategy and the doctrine behind it. "