BOOK REPORT: A STRANGE TIME FOR LOVE

 

 It was with both anticipation and some dread that I began reading Daniel Ellsberg’s The Doomsday Machine; it’s a part-memoir, part-exposé of the years he spent with the Rand Corporation and his work on command and control protocols used in the deployment of nuclear bombs and missiles.   

Daniel Ellsberg is of course widely known for his peace activism and his whistle-blowing exposé of the secret political machinations surrounding the war in Vietnam (and Cambodia and Laos), and how the Johnson administration systematically lied to congress and the American people. These highly-classified papers, photocopied by Ellsberg, were a secret history of American involvement in Vietnam since the 1950s which collectively came to be known as the “Pentagon Papers.” Ellsberg was arrested shortly after they were published, but charges of espionage and theft were dropped during the Nixon administration when it was discovered that illegal acts were committed against him by government operatives (remember Watergate?)

Daniel Ellsberg

But in the late 1950s and early 60s, Ellsberg’s career with the Rand Corporation, (then a leading think-tank working extensively with the Pentagon on a range of projects) saw him undertake high-level systems analyses of the procedures and command structures used for the deployment of nuclear weapons in the event of war. It was interesting to learn how the launch of the Russian satellite, “Sputnik” in 1957 was the impetus for America to launch what was then-called the “space race”, a massive effort to catch up to the Russians, who seemed to have the lead in ballistic missile technology. At that time DARPA (Defence Advanced Research Projects Agency) and NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration) were formed and major effort was undertaken to acquire a comparable missile technology and reliable LCBM (Long-Range Ballistic Missile) systems. Since the end of the Second World War, long range strategic bombers had been the standard for both superpowers to deliver nuclear payloads, but Russia’s secret missile program caught the Americans off-guard. So, there was an explosion in R&D and in the use of civilian contractors like RAND to create an efficient and comprehensive system to match the Russians. In 1960, John Kennedy ran for president with an election plank berating the Republican incumbent for allowing a “missile-gap” to exist with the Russians—that the Russians supposedly had a significant lead in the number of long-range missiles—a premise Ellsberg debunks. His and other's studies concluded there was no “gap”; Russian missile capability in the early 1960s was greatly exaggerated.

1961 "Tsar" Hydrogen Bomb Test: 57 Megatons. World's Largest

I said that I looked forward to reading Daniel Ellsberg’s exposé for the wealth of insider information it would bring, and as a Rand Corporation employee contracted to the Pentagon, his security clearance allowed him to access many secrets within the growing nuclear arms branch of the military, the so-named “Strategic Defence” system.

But at the same time I was dreading what he would bring to the light of day. For example, reading how the authority to launch a nuclear attack against Russia (and China) could be (and was) delegated to lower and lower personnel along the chain-of-command was as eye-opening as it was frightening. During the 1950s, as the Americans, along with the Russians built up their nuclear arsenals and developed bombers capable of reaching targets deep inside each other’s continental borders (as well as creating short-range missile systems like the submarine-launched Polaris missile), the question of how to activate and control their thermo-nuclear bombs and missiles became critically important.

The Nuclear "Football" 

Like most people, I assumed that if the American president decided there was a need to launch bombers or missiles carrying nuclear payloads, then he would simply use the “football” communication apparatus carried by a military officer who is always nearby. (He’s the ‘guy with the suitcase’ sitting outside the Oval Office we’ve all seen in the movies.) As an illustration of how important nuclear weapons had become for America, Ellsberg tells us this ‘football’-carrying person is present on the podium when a new president is sworn into office*. As the final words of the swearing-in are spoken, he turns to face the new president, highlighting, in this ceremonial ritual, that there is no ‘gap’ in authority between the old and new administrations as far as the nuclear arsenal is concerned. I find this horrible on so many levels, but at the same time, the idea of one person controlling the hell-fires of this nuclear age is somewhat comforting. We assumed—and today most of us still do—that one individual, i.e. the President of the United States, is in charge of whether or not to blow up the planet: It’s his call and his alone to make. At least there was that. At least we could sleep a little better knowing that. But Ellsberg's revellations should keep us up at night.

Ellsberg’s research in the late 1950s and early 60s focused around how Air and Naval forces actually understood the rules of engagement about when and how to deploy nuclear weapons in their airplanes, silos and submarines, and to his horror, ambiguity and human nature played important roles in the determination process. The best example of this was during his visit in 1959 to Kunsan, a small South Korean air force base near the DMZ. In his interviews with the commander and pilots of the twelve F-100 thermonuclear-armed fighter-bombers, which he tells us held “six and a half times World War II’s worth of firepower" (56), he suggests various scenarios to them. For example, what if there were communication breakdowns between the base and their headquarters (a not uncommon occurrence in those days)? Or conflict in the region? Remember, this is only a few years after the Korean War, and a short distance from both the North Korean and Chinese borders. Would they fly their planes to pre-determined targets in China and Russia, flying past their rendezvous point (the air space where the jet-bombers hover before flying to their targets) if their base was destroyed but they had not received the final “Go” signal? He offered several such scenarios and the commander responded, “If they didn’t get any Execute message? Oh, I think they’d come back.” Pause. “Most of them.” (55) [Italic mine] This is an extraordinary and horrifying admission, I’m sure you’ll agree. Duck and Cover!

It’s a question of command and control survivability in the event of a nuclear war. How do you ensure your side survives? One way is to disperse your command centers so the enemy can’t destroy all of them. Then strike back. Thus grew this process of delegating authority to launch a nuclear attack—sometimes informal, sometimes formal, like Eisenhower’s secret letter, now revealed, granting the chief of naval operations in the Pacific authority to attack Russia and China, if communication were broken with Washington and a threat seemed imminent.  Of course, during the height of the Cold War, when thousands of missiles and bombers (on both sides) were pointed at most of the cities in the northern hemisphere (and where I live would be toast, with a major military base only 20 miles away) the problem was that missile launchings and bombs had to be timed to the minute, else shockwaves from the explosions would knock incoming missiles and planes off target. In a full-scale nuclear war, the skies over the northern part of our world would blaze red for some minutes, perhaps hours, until going dark forever. It’s a sobering thought.

His insider story of the Cuban missile crisis, arguably the time when the fate of our world was most at risk (and, yes, there have been other close calls) reveals, for example, how Cuban military units prepared missile batteries to defend the island from an impending invasion from the United States. Remember, the Bay of Pigs occurred just the previous year; the Cubans were on high alert. (In fact, invasion of Cuba by US marines and army units was scheduled for the following week! Such were the tensions of the time.) There was just one thing that the Americans didn’t know: those coastal defence installations had SAM missiles armed with nuclear warheads! They did not have the range to reach the US mainland but could have been used against invading US forces, possibly triggering all-out nuclear war.

Another nightmare, this one under the water: It was during those terrible thirteen days in October, 1962, that harassed Russian submarines in the waters around Cuba were made, one by one, to surface from depth-charges dropped by cruising US attack destroyers, with the last submarine, its crew desperate and out of communication with its base of operations, nuclear torpedoes were loaded into their launch tubes in a last-ditch effort to stop the American warships. It was an intense situation, and save for a single “NO” vote from one of the sub’s three top-ranking officers (the decision had to be unanimous) World War III may very well have started, and we would be living, if we were living at all, in a very different world than the one we're in today. 

I think the most compelling part of his memoir is his examination of how decisions to use weapons that could—in all probability—end life on earth, were made. How could people, intelligent, thoughtful people, contemplate such horrific evil? And plan for it. Nuclear winter was something no one knew about then, but some statistical models in the early 1960s predicted initial deaths in the range of half a billion, with hundreds of millions more dying from radiation poisoning and societal collapse. Again these were facts not shared with the general public at the time. These also included numerous senerios for a "first attack" by America on Russian and Chinese cities and military installations. Americans were told, and believed, that the nuclear arsenal their military was amassing was strictlly defensive. And America to this day has not disavowed the use of a "first strike" against an enemy. Theodore Roosevelt said it most openly that when doing diplomacy: "Talk softly and carry a big stick."

Hiroshima

Ellsberg suggests that after World War I the rise of air power and the use of bombs and later missiles to determine the course of battles was a factor. Importantly, the growing acceptance, before the war and during WWII, of targeting civilian populations—i.e. cities—by both axis and allied forces, and the presumed strategic utility in crippling the industrial production of an enemy, as well as terrorizing its citizens into putting pressure on their governments to capitulate had served to pave the way for blueprints to be drawn up for destruction on a scale orders of magnitude greater than anything imagined in the past. There was a disturbing sense of nihilism surrounding many military personnel Ellsberg interviewed, as well as politicians and scientists. And as far as the general population went: Americans, after the bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, overwhelmingly supported the attacks, largely because it was assumed hundreds of thousands of American soldiers would die invading the Japanese islands**. However, this attitude has fortunately changed considerably in the ensuing decades. Ellsberg and a number of his colleagues in the think-tank and R&D communities in the late 1950s and early 60s saw the illogic to many of the plans politicians and the military had with respect to the use of nuclear weapons, and how their political manoeuvering often created unnecessary risks, possibly triggering a nuclear engagement, as well as the command and control issues I’ve already mentioned. He worked to curb the most egregious of these through policy proposals to the government and providing his invaluable research findings. The fact that he has campaigned, as a private citizen, for nuclear disarmament for the past fifty years tells you something of how successful he felt his efforts were.

 

When I sometimes forget how insane and dystopian (and immoral) the nuclear arms race has been, I watch Stanley Kubrick’s classic 1964 movie Dr. Strangelove, and I am once more grounded in the absolute, asinine, horrible folly of it all. It’s a colossal monkey-trap and we’re all stuck holding on to our ‘A-bombs’, afraid we’ve already pulled the pin and can’t let go for dear life. 

Cheers, Jake.

………   

 

Daniel Ellseberg is a passionate anti-nuclear campaigner and has been arrested in protests a number of times for his activism. He’s certainly a hero in a time that is in sore need of one. Or a million.

 

*And I will watch the American inauguration next year with interest to see if such a person is there on the podium as Donald Trump is once more sworn into office. 😟

**There are disputes surrounding this claim, with darker motivations that suggest the Americans wished to force the Japanese to surrender immediately under threat of more bombings in order to preempt the USSR’s (Russia) declaration of war against Japan, presumably to keep the Russians out of any peace negotiations with Japan. Additionally, the use of the two bombs also served as a warning to  the Russians who many in the American establishment saw as their future enemy. With Russia due to throw its massive forces against Japan in a matter of days, and all but sealing the island-nation’s fate, Truman nevertheless went ahead and ordered the destruction of Hiroshima on August 5, 1945 and Nagasaki three days later.

I’ve always wondered if Roosevelt would have sanctioned the attacks. (It must be remebered that the firebombings of Hamburg and Dresden were on his watch and he must have been involved in the planning of the Tokyo raid--a firebombing campaign that destroyed nearly 10,000 acres of central Tokyo and killed an estimated 100,000 people in a single night.) He died April 12 of that year, and it was his Vice-President, Harry Truman, who made what historians may someday say was the greatest error in the history of Western civilization.

 

Daniel Ellsberg, The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner. Bloomsbury Publishing

USA, New York, 2017.