The Logic of Nuclear Terror by Roman Kolkowicz

Author:Roman Kolkowicz [Kolkowicz, Roman]
Language: eng
Format: epub
Tags: Political Science, General
ISBN: 9780044970323
Google: S6ulQgAACAAJ
Goodreads: 10985566
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
Published: 1987-01-15T00:24:57+00:00

In another book of the same period, David Singer refers to “escalation from limited to general war” as a great threat. Deterrence, Arms Control and Disarmament (Columbus: Ohio State University Press, 1962), pp. 95–7.

36 Kahn first used the idea of the “ladder of escalation” in 1962, but it was only really publicized with the publication of Escalation: Metaphors and Scenarios in 1965 (see below, pp. 127–129). Kaufmann, writing in 1964, indicates that the phrase had already become current in the strategic studies community.

37 William Kaufmann, The McNamara Strategy (New York: Harper & Row, 1964), pp. 72, 76, 82, 83, 129. For an example of this, see Secretary McNamara’s recently declassified remarks to the NATO Ministerial Meeting of May 5, 1962, which led to the famous Ann Arbor speech of July 1962. Having posed the issue of “the point at which NATO, not the Soviets, would wish to escalate a non-nuclear conflict” (p. 12), he then pointed out the problems attendant on initiating nuclear war:

As we understand the dynamics of nuclear warfare, we believe that a local nuclear engagement would do grave damage to Europe, be militarily ineffective, and would probably expand very quickly into general nuclear war. (p. 16)

However, the use of the verb “to escalate” is of note as it does recognize a degree of human responsibility for the process.

38 John T. McNaughton, Address before the International Arms Control Symposium, University of Michigan, Ann Arbor, Michigan, December 19, 1962. Cited in Kaufmann, The McNamara Strategy, pp. 138–47.

39 Testimony to US Senate Armed Services Committee, Military Procurement Authorization: Fiscal Year 1964, February 10, 1963. Reprinted in Problems of National Strategy, ed. Henry Kissinger (New York: Praeger, 1965).

40 Alain Enthoven and Wayne Smith, How Much Is Enough? Shaping the Defense Program, 1961–69 (New York: Harper & Row, 1971), pp. 126–7. They consider “the risks of escalation to a general nuclear war during a tactical nuclear conflict.”

41 Theodore Sorenson, Kennedy (London: Hodder & Stoughton, 1965), p. 513.

42 Robert Kennedy, Thirteen Days: The Cuban Missile Crisis of October 1962 (London: Macmillan, 1969), pp. 65–6. At one point, after a U-2 aircraft had been shot down by surface-to-air missiles over Cuba, there was pressure to authorize an immediate strike against the SAM sites. The president pulled everybody back:

It isn’t the first step that concerns me … but both sides escalating to the fourth and fifth step—and we don’t go to the sixth because there is no one around to do so. We must remind ourselves that we are embarking on a very hazardous course, (pp. 96–7)

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