Massive Retaliation

Abstract

For NSC-68, nuclear strategic policy was a continuation of the ideas of strategic bombing.¹ Despite rather confident claims by the Air Force,² however, this continuity caused concern in some observers. In 1949, the Secretary of Defense, James Forrestal, commissioned the Harmon Committee to evaluate US plans for an atomic campaign against the Soviet Union. The Committee estimated that the projected attack on seventy Soviet cities would result in a 30 to 40 per cent reduction in Soviet industrial capacity and perhaps 2.7 million fatalities and 4 million casualties. Even such staggering industrial losses, however, ‘would not be permanent and could be alleviated by Soviet recuperative action depending on the weighted effectiveness of follow-up attacks.’ Furthermore, ‘the capability of Soviet armed forces to advance rapidly into selected areas of Western Europe, the Middle East and the Far East would not be seriously impaired’. The Committee concluded that planned air attacks alone would not ‘destroy the roots of Communism, or critically weaken the power of Soviet leadership to dominate the people’.³ A strategic air offensive against urban industrial targets could not promise ‘victory’ no matter how that crucial word might be defined.

Ruppemi l’ alto sonno nella testa un greve truono, sì ch’ io mi riscossi come persona ch’ é per forza desta;

(A heavy thunder-clap broke the deep sleep in my head so that I started like one who is waked by force)

Canto IV, Inferno