One Minute To Midnight by Michael Dobbs

Author:Michael Dobbs [Michael Dobbs]
Language: eng
Format: epub
ISBN: 9781407008332
Publisher: Random House Publishing Group
Published: 2011-02-21T14:46:08.379000+00:00

These were hardly abstract questions. The president and his aides had explored the pros and cons of a nuclear first strike against the Soviet Union, often in the context of a Soviet attack on Berlin. Some military leaders, such as LeMay and Power, were enthusiastic proponents of the first-strike option. The idea repelled and frightened Kennedy—he agreed with McNamara that it was impossible to guarantee the destruction of all Soviet nuclear weapons—but the plans were drawn up anyway. The nuclear debate was shifting from an abstract faith in deterrence through "mutual assured destruction" to practical considerations on how to fight and win a limited nuclear war.

The American nuclear war plan was known as the Single Integrated Operational Plan, SIOP for short. Kennedy had been horrified by the first such plan, SIOP-62, which called for the dispatch of 2,258 missiles and bombers carrying 3,423 nuclear weapons against 1,077 "military and urban-industrial targets" scattered throughout the "Sino-Soviet bloc." One adviser characterized the plan as "orgiastic, Wagnerian." Another described it as "a massive, total, comprehensive, obliterating strategic attack . . . on everything Red." Among other points, it envisaged the virtual annihilation of the tiny Balkan country of Albania. Even though China (and Albania) had rejected Moscow's tutelage, no distinction was made between different Communist states. All were targeted for destruction.

"And we call ourselves the human race,"was Kennedy's sardonic comment, when briefed about the plan.

Appalled by the all-or-nothing choices in SIOP-62, the Kennedy administration drew up a new plan, known as SIOP-63. Despite its title, this one came into effect in the summer of 1962. It allowed the president several "withhold" options, including China and Eastern Europe, and made some attempt to distinguish between cities and military targets. Never- theless, the plan was still built around the notion of a single devastating strike that would totally destroy the Soviet Union's ability to make war.

None of these options appealed to Kennedy at the moment of actual decision. He had asked the Pentagon how many people would die if a single Soviet missile got through and landed somewhere near an American city. The answer was six hundred thousand. "That's the total number of casualties in the Civil War," JFK exploded. "And we haven't gotten over that in a hundred years." As he later acknowledged, the twenty-four intermediate-range Soviet missiles in Cuba constituted "a substantial deterrent to me."

He had privately concluded that nuclear weapons were "only good for deterring." He thought it "insane that two men, sitting on opposite sides of the world, should be able to decide to bring an end to civilization."

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