Explore the vast range of titles available.

\"Edward Kaplan's To Kill Nations is a fascinating work that packs a thermonuclear punch of ideas and arguments... The work is suitable for anyone from advanced undergraduates to experts in the field.\" ― Strategy Bridge In To Kill Nations , Edward Kaplan traces the evolution of American strategic airpower and preparation for nuclear war from this early air-atomic era to a later period (1950-1965) in which the Soviet Union's atomic capability, accelerated by thermonuclear weapons and ballistic missiles, made American strategic assets vulnerable and gradually undermined air-atomic strategy. Kaplan throws into question both the inevitability and preferability of the strategic doctrine of MAD. He looks at the process by which cultural, institutional, and strategic ideas about MAD took shape and makes insightful use of the comparison between generals who thought they could win a nuclear war and the cold institutional logic of the suicide pact that was MAD. Kaplan also offers a reappraisal of Eisenhower's nuclear strategy and diplomacy to make a case for the marginal viability of air-atomic military power even in an era of ballistic missiles.

Under President Lyndon B. Johnson, Paul Nitze rose to the highest-ranking position he would ever achieve in government: deputy secretary of defense. However, as with President John F. Kennedy, Nitze never penetrated Johnson’s inner circle. He spent the first three and a half years of LBJ’s presidency in the lesser position of secretary of the navy. During that time, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara made crucial decisions about the future of US nuclear forces. McNamara and Nitze interpreted the legacy of the Cuban Missile Crisis in different ways. For McNamara, Soviet leaders realized the stupidity of placing missiles in Cuba;

This introductory chapter provides an overview of the Net Evaluation Subcommittee (NESC), whose task was to determine what damage the USSR could inflict in a surprise attack. The NESC was fundamental to the creation of US nuclear strategy, and its work is virtually unknown. For twelve years, the subcommittee quantified the cost of failure. During critical moments—such as the crises in Berlin, Quemoy and Matsu, Laos, and Cuba, among others—and during day-today containment of the USSR, the NESC's reports were the best estimates of the butcher's bill of conflict and of how to reduce the cost in American lives. The reports show what presidents Dwight Eisenhower and John F. Kennedy believed were plausible outcomes of nuclear war and delineated what the presidents thought was achievable in fighting a nuclear war, as opposed to peacetime deterrence. This assessment of the cost of failure came at a pivotal time in the history of US national security, between 1950 and 1965 as the Cold War's most direct confrontations between the superpowers occurred, and the NESC is a key to understanding that moment.

This concluding chapter reviews how system analysis had eclipsed net evaluation, looking at the establishment of the Defense Department's Office of Net Assessment (ONA). Both ONA and the Net Evaluation Subcommittee (NESC) used qualitative and quantitative methods for their work in a way that was more balanced than the quantitative-heavy systems analysis approach. The differences between the two are also important. Where the NESC measured the worst failure of an existing strategy, ONA considered peacetime competition dynamics. A last parallel, though, is perhaps the strongest: both organizations provided analysis to the key strategic decision-makers of their day. ONA continues its work today, and systems analysis lives on as cost assessment and program evaluation, but the NESC has been largely forgotten. The chapter argues that the NESC deserves restoration to the historical record because it is a vital missing piece of the narrative of US nuclear strategy in the middle of the twentieth century.

Although SALT I, which was ratified in 1972, should have been a signature achievement for the Nixon administration, its honeymoon phase was brief. During the period from 1973 to 1976, diplomats, politicians, and policy makers gradually accommodated themselves to the fact that SALT I had been the easy part. Now grueling, dizzyingly complicated negotiations were to become a part of everyday life in Washington, but without the novelty and relatively clear objectives that had characterized SALT I. In addition, the strategic outlook did not hold still while policy makers grappled with the implications of the recent accords. Instead, SALT I

As China invests in its nuclear forces and U.S.-China relations become increasingly strained, questions of U.S. nuclear doctrine require greater attention. The key strategic nuclear question facing the United States is whether to attempt to maintain and enhance its damage-limitation capability against China. The answer is less straightforward than it was during the Cold War, because China's nuclear force is orders of magnitude smaller than the Soviet force was. Part of the answer depends on the military-technical feasibility of the United States achieving a significant damage-limitation capability: What would be the outcome of military competition over the survivability of China's intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and command and control, and over the effectiveness of U.S. ballistic missile defenses? The answer also depends on the benefits that a damage-limitation capability would provide; these could include contributions to homeland deterrence, extended deterrence, and reassurance of U.S. regional allies. The final piece of the analysis concerns the potential costs of a damage-limitation capability, which could include increased escalatory pressures during crises and growing political tension between the United States and China. A thorough analysis demonstrates that the United States should forgo such a capability because the prospects for preserving a significant damage-limitation capability are poor; the deterrent benefits would be small; and the escalatory and political costs would be relatively large.

Assessing its coercive diplomacy in retrospect, the United States should deal with the North Korean nuclear issue with a more sophisticated combination of coercive measures and positive inducements to overcome past failures. Simultaneously, based on an analysis of current challenges and opportunities, the United States should consider this nuclear agenda within its Indo-Pacific Strategy (IPS) with a long-term regional vision. The active engagement of the United States in the North Korean nuclear issue can create opportunities for cooperation with China or provide the United States with the strategic means to influence China. In addition, the US–ROK alliance and US–ROK–Japan trilateral cooperation could be a driving force in resolving the nuclear agenda of the Democratic People's Republic of Korea (DPRK) and support the IPS of the United States. Ultimately, the linkage between the US' coercive approach to the DPRK and its IPS could help prevent regional tension and the possible demise of the international nuclear non-proliferation and disarmament regime, which is threatened by North Korea's nuclear ambitions.

Why do states provide sensitive nuclear assistance to nonnuclear weapon states, contributing to the international spread of nuclear weapons? Using a new data set on sensitive nuclear transfers, this article analyzes the determinants of sensitive nuclear assistance. I first describe a simple logic of the differential effects of nuclear proliferation, which I use to generate hypotheses about the conditions under which states provide sensitive nuclear assistance. I then show that the strategic characteristics of the potential nuclear suppliers are the most important determinants of sensitive nuclear assistance. Explanations that emphasize the importance of economic motivations do not find support in the data. This article presents a new approach to the study of the spread of nuclear weapons, focusing on the supply side of nuclear proliferation.

The last two decades have seen a slow but steady increase in nuclear armed states, and in the seemingly less constrained policy goals of some of the newer \"rogue\" states in the international system. The authors ofOn Limited Nuclear War in the 21st Century argue that a time may come when one of these states makes the conscious decision that using a nuclear weapon against the United States, its allies, or forward deployed forces in the context of a crisis or a regional conventional conflict may be in its interests. They assert that we are unprepared for these types of limited nuclear wars and that it is urgent we rethink the theory, policy, and implementation of force related to our approaches to this type of engagement. Together they critique Cold War doctrine on limited nuclear war and consider a number of the key concepts that should govern our approach to limited nuclear conflict in the future. These include identifying the factors likely to lead to limited nuclear war, examining the geopolitics of future conflict scenarios that might lead to small-scale nuclear use, and assessing strategies for crisis management and escalation control. Finally, they consider a range of strategies and operational concepts for countering, controlling, or containing limited nuclear war.

This paper argues that between 1969 and 1976 US policy-makers actively sought to transcend nuclear parity. The Nixon and Ford administrations demonstrated increasing uneasiness toward nuclear parity and yet, proved unwilling to match the Soviet Union quantitatively. In the search for an answer to the question of what strategic superiority was in the age of parity, they came to understand it in distinctly qualitative terms, adopting a number of decisions related to nuclear planning, intelligence analysis of the nuclear balance, and nuclear weapons innovation and modernization, aimed at securing a qualitative edge over the USSR.