Conclusions

This concluding chapter returns to the alignment of forces that worked to sideline those scientists who opposed the then-predominant doctrine of strategic bombing. It stresses the confusion and the acrimony of the brief but decisive period in which the Super's potential for U.S. security or global insecurity was contested. With distance, it becomes possible to understand the vigor and passion with which the Super, and the deployment of nuclear weapons for massive retaliation, was resisted, as well as the organizational imperatives of air force leaders to outwit that resistance, the better to protect the deeply embedded air power doctrines that prevailed at that time. The result is that the world was left with the proliferation of nuclear and thermonuclear weaponry. The question remains, however, as to whether that proliferation would bring stability or fragility.

British Thinking about Tactical Nuclear Weapons

Chapter 1 examines how British policy-makers viewed the arrival of tactical nuclear weapons, employing as a vehicle in the 1950s debate on the relative merits of the opposing strategic theories of ‘graduated deterrence’ and ‘massive retaliation’. It shows how the British government rejected any suggestion to draw distinctions in peacetime between strategic and tactical nuclear weapons because of a strong belief that such an announcement would undermine the overall deterrent effect of nuclear weapons. Gripped by a ‘deterrence habit of mind’, civilian leaders viewed tactical nuclear weapons not as meaningful military tools, but as weapons of escalation whose use would trigger a strategic nuclear exchange between the superpowers. The rejection of any kind of graduated deterrence through the use of tactical nuclear weapons set a precedent in how British policy-makers conceived the utility of tactical nuclear weapons, which would have important consequences in the following debates about NATO strategy.

Conventional Forces and Tactical Nuclear Weapons in NATO Strategy

Chapter 2 analyses how the British deterrence habit of mind manifested in a preference for a ‘pure-deterrence’ strategy for NATO. NATO’s forums were a market for strategic ideas, and competing visions of nuclear warfare reflected the often incompatible preferences of its member states. Bargaining and compromise resulted in significant changes to defensive concepts throughout the Cold War and saw the emergence of two distinct strategies, massive retaliation and flexible response, which provided the conceptual framework for the Army’s thinking about nuclear war. The chapter explores the most important assumptions made about the character of nuclear warfare, the political and military utility of tactical nuclear weapons, and the perceived role of ground forces within NATO’s deterrent posture. It argues that the British reluctance to accept that military organizations could perform a useful function during or after a nuclear exchange set an ominous tone for the Army’s own theorizing about future war.

Reformer and Strategist?

In the third chapter I discuss Taylor’s leadership of the army (1955-1959) and his opposition to massive retaliation. Taylor attempted to reform the army by installing new combat divisions for the atomic battlefield, and he argued forcefully for the buildup of conventional as well as tactical nuclear capabilities for limited war. Taylor used congressional hearings and talks at war colleges and the Council on Foreign Relations for pointed critiques of national strategic priorities. Some of his colleagues in the armed forces thought him untrustworthy, but a closer reading of the record shows that they objected to his 1960 memoir more than to his actions in office. President Eisenhower still respected Taylor in 1959 and offered him the position as NATO’s supreme military commander.

U.S. Nuclear Strategy

Because of their awesome destructive capability, nuclear weapons require national security policymakers to carefully evaluate how they fit within a country’s national security posture. No consensus exists as to whether the use of such weapons is in fact an option for decision makers to consider or whether the goal is to ensure that they can never be used. The different strategies that have been developed since 1945 for U.S. nuclear strategy—massive retaliation, flexible response, a fatalistic acceptance of the logic of mutually assured destruction, and the search for the most effective ways of stemming nuclear proliferation in unstable or unpredictable actors—all reflect attempts to provide guidance for policymakers as to the strategic purpose of these weapons.

THE DEVELOPMENT OF DOCTRINAL AND CONCEPTUAL BASES OF US MILITARY COOPERATION WITH EUROPEAN ALLIES IN THE LATE 1950’s – SECOND HALF OF THE 1960’s

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.