Massive Retaliation Research Articles

Forward defense – concept, plan, and action for solving russian aggression at Nato's easternd border

Forward defense is not a new concept. It is rather traditional, coming from the Cold War and implying, originally, the nuclear posture and strategy. Following the issuance of the Madrid NATO Strategic Concept and Vilnius statement that not an inch of the Alliance’s territory will fall under the control of the opponents, a new approach to forward defense is needed to cope with the multiple shifts in the security environment: Russian war of aggression, the change of technological generation, dilemmas of resources and apabilities, limits and multiple challenges from the international environment with superposed simultaneous crises. The perspective of possible attacks on NATO territory – in the next 2-3-5-8 years – requires a review of the concept and, consequently, of the political decisions, strategic planning, enforcement of those decisions, and development of forces and capabilities on the ground. Combining nuclear flexible capabilities, a strategy of massive retaliation with conventional forces and deterrence by reinforcement, deterrence by denial, forward presence, rapid projection capabilities, resolution, effective decisionmaking, and forward posture, we could build a new, updated doctrine of forward defense. However, the debate has to consider what is theoretically developed, technically feasible, politically acceptable, financially sustainable, and strategically credible in the „new forward defense” for granting inviolability of allied territory. The basic limitation is to define and refine forward defense without a reconsideration beyond existing means.

The Nasr and India’s nuclear command structure, strategy and doctrine

The deployment of the Tactical Nuclear Weapon (TNW) “Nasr” by Pakistan has led some experts in India to question the credibility of India’s nuclear deterrence. They have called for a change in India’s nuclear doctrine from the stand of “massive retaliation” to a “flexible response” to permit the use of similar weapons. This article examines Indian nuclear thinking to illustrate that the raison d’être of India’s nuclear weapons is deterrence within the strategic domain, not conventional. It further explains how India’s civil-military relations along with its nuclear command and control system have evolved to preclude the use of TNWs.

Realism for nuclear-policy wonks

In the United States, the nuclear-policy community considers the realist school of thought the gold standard of analytical excellence. Sometimes equated with theories of nuclear strategy and massive retaliation, sometimes with the inter-war intellectual debate on how to respond to the rise of fascist militarism in Europe, the distinction between realism and idealism effectively predetermines the positions and analytical arguments available for a new generation of policy professionals. This, in turn, leads to a repetitive and theoretically stale debate between the nation’s foremost experts on technical and ethical matters of national interest. In order to stake out a new conceptual baseline for future policy discussions, this article suggests that it would be useful for nuclear-policy analysts to reacquaint themselves with the content and rhetorical strategies of classical realism in order to, firstly, enable a more humble and sociologically oriented form of nuclear-policy analysis and, secondly, make possible a new substantive debate beyond the narrow confines of neorealism on the one hand and classical nuclear strategy on the other. In making this argument, I am combining insights from my own ethnographic fieldwork among Washington’s nuclear-policy elites, recent contextualist scholarship on classical realism, and critical theoretical analyses of the deeper social forces shaping US nuclear-policy making.

РОЗВИТОК ДОКТРИНАЛЬНИХ І КОНЦЕПТУАЛЬНИХ ОСНОВ ВІЙСЬКОВОЇ СПІВПРАЦІ США З ЄВРОПЕЙСЬКИМИ СОЮЗНИКАМИ КІНЦЯ 1950-Х – ДРУГОЇ ПОЛОВИНИ 1960-Х РОКІВ

The article deals with the problems of the development of the doctrinal and conceptual bases of military cooperation between the United States of America and European allies during the late 1950’s – second half of the 1960’s. Particular attention is paid to the reasons and peculiarities of replacing the strategic concept of "massive retaliation" with the strategy of "flexible response" as a basic principle of the US and its military-political partners' implementation of the" containment "doctrine in Europe in the early 1960's. The technological and military changes in the balance of the global confrontation of the Western powers with the USSR and its satellites on the European continent are analyzed, consequences of this change for international relations at the global and European levels are enlighten. The strategic and conceptual reasons for increasing the controversy of the political course of Gaullist France with the strategic plans of the NATO bloc, as well as the role and place of the plan for the creation of "Multilateral Nuclear Forces" in forming of these contradictions, are discussed. The strategic and doctrinal-conceptual implications of France's withdrawal from NATO military structures in 1966 for the United States military-political partnership with the European powers are described.

Incredibility of India's massive retaliation: An appraisal on capability, cost, and intention

ABSTRACTWilliam W. Kaufmann assessed the efficacy of the United States' strategy of massive retaliation, introduced in January 1954 by then Secretary of State John F. Dulles, on three areas: capability, cost, and intention. Having established parity between New Delhi's current interpretation of massive retaliation and that of Dulles in 1954, this article applies Kaufmann's framework to gauge the credibility of India's strategy of massive retaliation. Taking cognizance of current developments in India–Pakistan relations and of India's evolving strategic priorities, this article argues that conditions neither exist nor could be created for massive retaliation to be a credible strategy of nuclear deterrence for India.

Eyeing the Red Storm: Eisenhower and the First Attempt to Build a Spy Satellite by Robert M. Dienesch

Reviewed by: Eyeing the Red Storm: Eisenhower and the First Attempt to Build a Spy Satellite by Robert M. Dienesch James David (bio) Eyeing the Red Storm: Eisenhower and the First Attempt to Build a Spy Satellite. By Robert M. Dienesch. Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 2016. Pp. 279. $34.95. Robert Dienesch states that this work is the first comprehensive history of America’s initial reconnaissance satellite program, WS-117L, one that fills “a large gap in the literature of the cold war, Eisenhower, and satellite reconnaissance.” While previous works have held that the critical need for intelligence drove the development of these spacecraft, he asserts that President Eisenhower’s concerns about economic health as the foundation of [End Page 879] national security and his desire to restrain defense spending also played important roles. The author devotes most of the first half to the Truman and Eisenhower administrations’ defense policies—the dramatic increase in defense spending under the former after the Soviet Union’s first atomic test and the massive retaliation and New Look policies of the latter, which were intended simultaneously to build a nuclear deterrent and to stabilize defense spending in the face of pressure from the Pentagon and key congressional leaders for continued increases. Dienesch then reviews the influential work of the Technological Capabilities Panel in 1954–55 that led to the establishment of the U-2 and WS-117L projects and the hidden objectives of the subsequent International Geophysical Year and Project Vanguard satellite projects to provide the legal precedent for reconnaissance satellite over-flights. He then examines the role of the RAND Corporation in studying satellite reconnaissance beginning in 1945. Numerous works have covered these topics in considerable depth. The author then reviews the WS-117L program. Established by the air force in 1954, its original goals were to build, launch, and operate photoreconnaissance, signals intelligence, mapping, and weather satellites. However, the program received little funding until after the Sputnik launches in late 1957. WS-117L soon focused solely on reconnaissance as the other missions were transferred to various agencies. Low-resolution film readout systems would perform broad area searches to locate and identify targets and high-resolution film return systems would acquire technical intelligence on them. The few that were flown from 1960 to 1962 did not return any useful imagery and this quickly led to their cancellation. With the slow progress of WS-117L, President Eisenhower had ordered the Central Intelligence Agency and air force in early 1958 to develop an interim film return system codenamed CORONA for broad area search. It first successfully returned film in August 1960 and, with various improvements, soon became a reliable and capable system. GAMBIT high-resolution film return satellites, initially flown in 1963, provided increasing amounts of technical intelligence. The section on WS-117L is a useful overview and contains some new information, on the pre-Sputnik period of the program in particular. Dienesch frequently cites the lengthy program histories written decades ago by National Reconnaissance Office historian Robert Perry, which are on the agency’s website. However, none of the over 1,000 program documents, which are also on the website, are cited. Some of these are themselves extensive histories. Additionally, the author provides very little coverage of the signals intelligence payloads. There is sufficient declassified data on them to merit a more detailed treatment. This volume falls short of the claims made for it. Robert Perry’s works are the comprehensive histories of WS-117L. The histories contained in [End Page 880] the large set of program documents released also contain considerably more detail. The fact is that the critical need for intelligence on the Soviet Union, particularly its strategic nuclear forces, was the driving force behind it. The U-2 partially filled this gap, but from the outset of overflights beginning in 1956 policymakers recognized that it was only an interim measure. The only permanent solution was reconnaissance satellites. The author provides virtually no evidence to support his assertion that all subsequent satellite reconnaissance systems have been built on the foundation of WS-117L. While the three successful film return photoreconnaissance systems flown from 1960–84 (CORONA, GAMBIT, and HEXAGON) incorporated some...

Deterrence and Dissuasion in Cyberspace

Understanding deterrence and dissuasion in cyberspace is often difficult because our minds are captured by Cold War images of massive retaliation to a nuclear attack by nuclear means. The analogy to nuclear deterrence is misleading, however, because many aspects of cyber behavior are more like other behaviors, such as crime, that states try (imperfectly) to deter. Preventing harm in cyberspace involves four complex mechanisms: threats of punishment, denial, entanglement, and norms. Even when punishment is used, deterrent threats need not be limited to cyber responses, and they may address general behavior as well as specific acts. Cyber threats are plentiful, often ambiguous, and difficult to attribute. Problems of attribution are said to limit deterrence and dissuasion in the cyber domain, but three of the major means—denial by defense, entanglement, and normative taboos—are not strongly hindered by the attribution problem. The effectiveness of different mechanisms depends on context, and the question of whether deterrence works in cyberspace depends on “who and what.” Not all cyberattacks are of equal importance; not all can be deterred; and not all rise to the level of significant national security threats. The lesson for policymakers is to focus on the most important attacks and to understand the context in which such attacks may occur and the full range of mechanisms available to prevent them.

Why does Iran need Hizbullah?

The political and military commitment of the Islamic Republic of Iran to Hizbullah in Lebanon has gone through the baptism of fire once again. The Syrian crisis has become a critical theatre of war for the three way alliance between Iran, Hizbullah and Syria, celebrated as the ‘axis of resistance’ in Tehran. The Iranian leadership has used the Syrian crisis to further consolidate its ties with Hizbullah and warn potential enemies of the risks in underestimating Iran’s capacity to take the war to them. Iranian leaders call this a strategy of deterrence, warning Israel and the United States of massive retaliation in case they take any action against Iran. Hizbullah is key to that policy. This paper will explore relations between Iran and Hizbullah in the broader context of Iran’s external relations and geo-strategic calculations. It notes the significance of Iran’s revolutionary ideology and its version of Shia Islam in lubricating this relationship. Hizbullah adheres to the ideological principles advanced in Tehran and shares Iran’s Manichean worldview which divides the world between the oppressors and the oppressed. In this perspective, the United States and Israel are seen as the principal oppressors of the Muslim world. This religious and ideological platform has facilitated a close strategic partnership between Iran and Hizbullah. The Syrian crisis has demonstrated that both parties place significant value in this partnership and are prepared to go to extreme lengths to protect it. This consideration has played a major role in Hizbullah’s military steps to defend the Bashar al-Assad’s regime in Syria.

The Utility of Nuclear Weapons Today: Two Views

No Use: Nuclear Weapons and US National Security. By Thomas M. Nichols Atomic Assistance: How 'Atoms for Peace Programs Cause Nuclear Insecurity. By Matthew Fuhrmann My colleague Steven Metz recently wrote a very thought provoking piece, entitled Thinking About Catastrophe: The Army in a Nuclear Armed World. Metz argues, nothing is more important to American security than weapons. Despite all the fretting over terrorism, hybrid threats, and conventional aggression, only weapons can threaten the existence of the United States and destroy the global economy. (1) Indeed, despite the end of the Cold War and hostilities between the United States and the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics, the topic of weapons is vital today. Not a day goes by without reference to weapons in national and international newspapers. For example, the New York Times, in its February 18, 2016 online edition, reported that Belgium police discovered ten hours of video purportedly showing a Belgian official at the home of the Paris attacker, Thierry Werts. Belgium officials argued the terrorist organization network involved in the coordinated attacks on November 13, 2015, that left 130 dead may also have intended to obtain radioactive material for terrorist purposes. (2) Terrorist organizations attempting to acquire weapons to carry out their nefarious activities, and renegade nation-states also continue to challenge the international system and international law by attempting to acquire weapons. The most recent example occurred on February 7, 2016, when the hermit kingdom of Korea tested a bomb and launched a satellite, provoking sharp condemnations from Russia and China as well as South Korea. Despite the fact weapons could be considered obsolete since an attack by one country could result in massive retaliation by another, the United States maintains a huge arsenal on high alert and ready for war. The two books considered in this review discuss the utility of weapons in the post-Cold War era. No Use: Nuclear Weapons and US National Security, by Thomas M. Nichols, a Professor of National Security Affairs at the US Naval War College in Newport, examines the current state of US doctrine and strategy, the effects of American thinking about weapons on international security, and the various ways the United States might reduce the overall threat of weapons. (12) Why is it so difficult for the major powers, and the United States in particular, to break their addiction? What role should weapons play in America's national security? These are the central questions guiding No Use. (5) While the United States has reduced its stockpiles, it still maintains a considerable number of them. [ILLUSTRATION OMITTED] Are weapons still relevant in the post-Cold War world? Nichols has his doubts. He argues Cold War-era precepts about weapons have continued to dominate security policy and strategies by default. (6) While they may still be considered a good mechanism, other nations may see weapons as aggressive tools in the military arsenal of its opponents. For example, Russian officials, despite their displeasure with Korea for its most recent test and satellite launch, believe the North Korean regime is simply fighting for its own survival, using the logic that when a pack of wolves attacks you, only a fool lowers his gun. (3) Nichols succinctly argues, deterrence will not be strengthened by creating smaller or more accurate bombs or by drawing up military senseless campaigns of desultory strikes. (157) Nichols believes a Armageddon, in the current international system, is unlikely to take place between nation-states. In fact, he contends that without a real threat to the American civilization itself, nuclear weapons are now more an instrument of choice rather than [of] necessity. …

Pakistan’s Tactical Nuclear Weapons: Deconstructing India’s Doctrinal Response

The military and scientific leadership of Pakistan has given clear signals that tactical nuclear weapons have a vital role in Pakistan’s nuclear weapons policy. Developed to lower Pakistan’s nuclear threshold, these weapons may further deter India from launching a conventional strike to punish Pakistan for its sub-conventional war against India. This has led to a debate on the possible doctrinal responses that India could adopt to counter Pakistan’s tactical nuclear weapons. India could either make its current doctrine of massive retaliation more credible by appropriate signalling or it could revise the doctrine and develop its options of proportionate retaliation. Considering the limitations of both these options, the article argues for developing a doctrinal response that prescribes neither proportionate nor massively disproportionate retaliation.

Ядерное сдерживание в период конфронтации

The article focuses on the main aspects of nuclear deterrence concept, including the mechanism of its application during the period of international tension. The author pays attention to the strategic triad configuration which makes nuclear deterrence more effective and reliable. Along with it the credibility of nuclear deterrence is also under consideration as a very important element of the overall problem analysis. The central part of the article is devoted to the problem of nuclear targeting and possible application of nuclear weapons in case the deterrence failed, and the decision to use these weapons were taken. The author argues that there is no rational variant to apply nuclear weapons without unpredictable and deadly reaction from the opposite side. There is no hope to achieve any positive result after the first use of nuclear weapons – whether strategic or tactical. Thus, a massive counterforce strike cannot prevent from a massive retaliation resulting in the complete annihilation of the rivalries. A limited strike against strategic offensive forces of the opponent can be interpreted as a massive strike ending with massive retaliation. A single strike cannot solve any military problem and, moreover, may give strategic initiative to the opponent. Tactical nuclear forces can be used in different, but generally “unproductive” ways – whether against the own territory, or by solving only limited tasks, while producing an unpredictable reaction from the opponent. The author comes to a conclusion that the nuclear weapon is only an instrument of self-destruction which cannot solve any security problem. It can only play a symbolic role in terms of the country's prestige, and nothing else. Finally, the author insists that the strategic stability concept started to play a counter-productive role in the U.S.-Russia strategic relations, and must be substituted by a new approach to security. This approach should reject the central idea of strategic stability which calls for preserving a powerful retaliatory potential. Acknowledgements. The publication is prepared with financial support of the Russian Foundation for Humanities; Project № 15-37-11136 “The Influence of Technological Factors on the Spectrum of Threats to National and International Security, Military Conflicts and Strategic Stability”.

The Defamation Injunction Meets the Prior Restraint Doctrine

In Near v. Minnesota, the Supreme Court added the injunction to executive licensing as a prior restraint. Although the Near court circumscribed the injunction as a prior restraint, it approved criminal sanctions and damages judgments. The prior restraint label resembles a death sentence. This article maintains that such massive retaliation is overkill. A judge’s injunction that forbids the defendant’s tort of defamation tests Near and prior restraint doctrine because defamation isn’t protected by the First Amendment. Arguing that the anti-defamation injunction has outgrown outright bans under the prior restraint rule and the equitable Maxim that “Equity will not enjoin defamation” turns out to be formidable. This article examines the Sullivan v. New York Times privileges in defamation, their tension between truth and falsity, and their limitations on compensatory and punitive damages. It tests the injunction against damages by examining several Equitable doctrines: the inadequacy prerequisite-irreparable injury rule, the injunction as preventive relief, the temporary restraining order, the preliminary injunction, the injunction bond, the juryless injunction trial, the task of drafting an injunction to avoids vagueness and over-breadth, the use of motions to modify-dissolve an injunction, and the declaratory judgment, and contempt, compensatory, coercive, or criminal, including the collateral bar rule. It weighs important prior restraint scholarship, including Professor Emerson’s and Professor Blasi’s. The administration of the prior restraint doctrines has expanded its operation beyond the policy reasons that gave it birth. This article concludes that the differences between damages and an injunction don’t warrant different treatment. In Balboa Island VillageInn v. Lemen, the California Supreme Court approved a targeted injunction that forbids a defendant from repeating proved defamation. Influential scholars beginning with Roscoe Pound and including more recently Professors Redish, Jeffries, Schauer, and Ardia have eroded the prior restraint doctrines’ reasoning and application. The procedure leading to an injunction can be augmented by requiring prior notice, adversary adjudication, and narrow drafting. A properly adjudicated and drafted injunction that specifically forbids defendant’s defamation will prevent harmful torts without threatening free-speech values. The article closes by asking for abolition of the Maxim and suspension or qualification of the prior restraint doctrine for defamation.

University Environmental-Justice Whistleblowers Versus Industry Retaliators: Dow Chemical, Union Carbide, and Edward Calabrese

Abstract Although US law protects environmental-justice (EJ) whistleblowers from retaliation when they are federal-government, private-financial-sector, or private-environment-related-sector employees, university EJ scientists who blow the whistle on polluters have little federal protection if these polluters retaliate by charging them with research misconduct (RM). For instance, the lead industry retaliated against University of Pittsburgh physician Herb Needleman, charging him with RM after his research showed harmful effects of lead on inner-city children. Chemical-industry-funded Ed Calabrese retaliated against University of Notre Dame biologist/philosopher Kristin Shrader-Frechette, after her research showed harms from low-dose-chemical exposures, particularly on people of color. Why does massive polluter retaliation against university EJ researchers continue? This article suggests that one reason is lack of public awareness of the problem. Because few university EJ researchers publicize their accoun...

Cyberweapons: Leveling the International Playing Field

One of the largest security concerns facing the United States today is how to mitigate its vulnerability to cyberweapons. Over the past twenty years, cyberthreats have evolved from solitary hackers motivated by monetary gain and prestige to organized crime and state actors. The sophistication and capabilities of these threats grows in direct proportion to the level of connectivity in society. Despite this steady development of cyberthreats, relatively little attention is given to discerning how these threats will impact warfighting and the international system. Most of the current literature on cyberwarfare considers it, at best, a force multiplier. Many scholars disregard its effects as a standalone attack vector, citing various reasons from US responses to Pearl Harbor and 9/11 to the inability of strategic bombing in World War II to subdue the civilian populations in England and Germany, absent combined military operations. These perspectives are correct in arguing that offensive cyberoperations without traditional, conventional power will be largely futile. This analytical approach, however, presumes that cyberweapons will be used in an offensive, first-strike manner. The long-range strike capabilities of cyberwar have the potential to be extremely effective when employed as an anticoercion weapon. In essence, a strong cyber capability is a deterrent force that will largely mitigate outside interference in domestic and regional affairs. Because there are no confirmed cases of a large-scale, state-sanctioned cyberattack, analysts are currently forced to explore different weapon systems and theories to help both the fighter and the politician understand how cyberweapons can be utilized and what vulnerabilities this new class of weapon creates. Given the unique characteristics of cyberspace and cyberweapons, no existing technology or theory will provide an adequate understanding. Nevertheless, by borrowing tenets from both strategic airpower theory and early debates on nuclear weapons doctrine and deterrence, the approximate capabilities of cyberweapons become far less opaque. The concept of strategic airpower has developed over the past century into one of the main tenets of modern war. (1) Strategists understand its limitations in winning a war of existential proportions but also found it exceedingly useful in short duration conflicts between two unequal parties. The air superiority required for a strategic air campaign costs trillions of dollars and requires an extensive network of overseas bases for airfields and ports that can accommodate carrier battle groups. This level of investment is beyond the capacity of most states. As a result, cyberweapons have the potential to become an equalizing force because they require a fraction of the investment but are able to execute most of the same missions. Additionally, early nuclear theory wrestled with many of the same problems that we now face in attempting to understand cyberweapons. While the United States and Soviet Union eventually came to the same conclusion about the true utility of nuclear weapons in war, it took two decades to do so. While cyberweapons may turn out to be awe inspiring enough to create a new form of mutually assured destruction (MAD) (2), it is far more likely that early thinking regarding demonstration shots and defense on the cheap dovetailing into massive retaliation will be more insightful. Just as the industrial revolution brought about a fundamental change in warfare, the information age is ushering in a new, low-cost option for strategic defense. Cyberwarfare capabilities can now accomplish most of the strategic tasks that once required air supremacy. According to US analysts, everything from health care to the power grid is a viable cyber target. (3) A cursory look at the targets of recent US air campaigns illustrates how much civilian infrastructure is targeted in a strategic bombing campaign. In today's interconnected world, both civilian infrastructure and military installations are increasingly vulnerable to cyber disruption. …

After Hiroshima: the United States, race and nuclear weapons in Asia, 1945-1965

By emphasising the role of nuclear issues, After Hiroshima, published in 2010, provides an original history of American policy in Asia between the dropping of the atomic bombs on Japan and the escalation of the Vietnam War. Drawing on a wide range of documentary evidence, Matthew Jones charts the development of American nuclear strategy and the foreign policy problems it raised, as the United States both confronted China and attempted to win the friendship of an Asia emerging from colonial domination. In underlining American perceptions that Asian peoples saw the possible repeat use of nuclear weapons as a manifestation of Western attitudes of 'white superiority', he offers new insights into the links between racial sensitivities and the conduct of US policy, and a fresh interpretation of the transition in American strategy from massive retaliation to flexible response in the era spanned by the Korean and Vietnam Wars.

Nuclear Weapons and India-Pakistan Relations: A Complementary Comment

Nuclear weapons deter by the possibility of their use, and in no other way. Although US and Soviet arsenals became grotesquely excessive in both numbers and diversity in the late 1960s, by the later 1908s there had been very extensive reductions in both numbers and types. NATO's collective doctrine had accepted that the only sen-sible role for its nuclear weapons was for war-termination. Western governments had increasingly accepted the idea of sufficiency, recognizing that notions of nuclear supe-riority were vacuous. NATO, having abandoned as too precarious a strategy of ‘mas-sive retaliation’, switched to a concept of ‘flexible response’. The total dismissal of the conceptual framework Western nuclear policies of past years runs a genuine risk of over-confidence or even complacency.

An Analysis of the Assassination of the Lebanese Hezbollah Commander Imad Mughniyah: Hypotheses and Consequences

Abstract The assassination of Imad Mughniyah, the legendary Lebanese Hezbollah military commander, was expected to trigger great violence. Initially the Lebanese Hezbollah blamed Israel and promised massive retaliation. Many months after Mughniyah's death, his assassination is still shrouded in mystery. This article discusses and analyzes competing hypotheses about who is responsible for Mughniyah's death and explores the consequences and ramifications that would result from identifying the assassin and solving the mystery.

Targeting China: U.S. Nuclear Planning and “Massive Retaliation” in East Asia, 1953–1955

This article assesses how the U.S. National Security Council, the Joint Chiefs of Staff, and the Strategic Air Command (SAC)—devised highly classified plans for nuclear war against the People's Republic of China (PRC) in the period after the July 1953 Korean armistice. The Eisenhower administration was seeking to rely more heavily on nuclear weapons in East Asia. Important differences of opinion emerged during intra- and interagency debates on the matter. The Air Force's preference for nuclear operations aimed at the total destruction of the PRC's military-industrial potential clashed with the State Department's desire to retain allied support by avoiding mass civilian casualties through selective targeting. The expansive nuclear planning that was eventually undertaken was an Asian counterpart to the “overkill” usually associated with SAC's plans for general war with the Soviet Union during this era.

‘Clean’ bombs: Nuclear technology and nuclear strategy in the 1950s

The idea of ‘clean’ bombs, nuclear weapons with a reduced amount of radioactive fallout resulting from their fission part, has met much ridicule since its public inauguration in 1956. Many scholars have regarded the bombs as a propaganda tool, stopping short of analyzing their role in the transformative phase of US nuclear strategy in the 1950s. This paper reexamines the clean bomb episode through 1958, shedding light upon the dynamic relationship between the development of nuclear weapons technology and the evolution of nuclear strategy from massive retaliation to flexible response. It also discusses the mechanism and momentum of nuclear weapons technology innovation until the US suspended nuclear testing in late 1958.

Defense Transformation and the 2005 Quadrennial Defense Review

At the end of the Cold War, America entered a new and unfamiliar global security environment. As the Department of Defense began to alter strategies and plans, it quickly became apparent that changes might have to be made across the defense establishment. This led in 1993 to the Bottom-Up Review, and, starting in 1997, to the Quadrennial Defense Review (QDR) process. As the Department of Defense enters its third QDR this year, it is important to understand how central the QDR has become to the work of the department--and how different this QDR is, compared to its predecessors. With a yearly budget in excess of $400 billion, the Department of Defense is perhaps the largest single bureaucracy in the world. Sheer size, as well as vested interests and old ways of thinking, tend to give large bureaucracies an inertial resistance to change. One of the tasks in the department this year is to ensure that the QDR can instead be an engine of continued transformation. The need to transform our military has elevated the role of the QDR from a tool of periodic refinement to a fulcrum of transition to a post-9/11 world. This article will explore what the QDR has become, how it is being processed, and what the Defense Department hopes it will achieve. The Modern History of US Defense Transformations It is rare in history for institutions at the height of their success to transform themselves in anticipation of new challenges, but the armed forces of the United States have done it before. Looking back at major defense transformations through our history, we can see that periods of concerted national effort to transform the military have tracked a cyclical pattern: New challenges lead the defense establishment to develop new strategies, which in turn leads to investments in capabilities appropriate to that strategy. In the 1930s, faced with the rise of aggressively expansionist regimes in Japan and Europe, the United States needed to prepare for the possibility of a new kind of conflict, and on a huge scale. We devised a strategy of both mass and speed, one that emphasized destroying the enemy's industrial capacity as much as its forces in the field. Accordingly, the United States invested heavily in amphibious warfare, carrier-based air power, a strategic bombing force, and an industrial base to support mechanized warfare. In the nuclear age, faced with a global threat from the Soviet Union, we had to transform the military to integrate nuclear and conventional forces, dramatically increasing its power and scope to maintain a strategy of containment and the capability for massive retaliation. In the 1980s, America embarked on a series of competitive strategies meant to expose fissures in the military establishment and strategic posture of the Soviet Union, in the hopes--successfully as it turned out--of stressing them beyond their breaking point in their competition with the United States. In each of these cases, a new set of strategic problems led to new strategic thinking and then to sweeping transformation in the structure, posture, weapon systems, and tactical doctrines of our military. Since 9/11, the Defense Department has gained sufficient insight into the new problem-set we face that the time is again ripe for new strategic thinking and for transforming the force. The QDR provides a unique lever with which to translate these insights into action. When the Defense Department began its work under a new Administration nearly five years ago, President Bush charged it with preparing the military for the challenges of the 21st century. This was to be no easy task: if we knew anything about those challenges, it was that we didn't know enough about them. Because we can no longer make confident predictions about the specific threats we will face, we must be able to provide for national defense across a broad spectrum of threats. This has required a change in planning methodology, using new tools for thinking about developing needed capabilities. …