able archer

swatantra Sat Jan 05, 2008 at 09:11:15 PM GMT Print-friendly version Facebook

In 1983 the old Gypper Reagan nearly dropped the world into Apocolypse. Reagan had been talking belligerantly about the 'Evil Empire', the USSR, and initiated Star Wars, and Nato had decided to stage a full scale nuclear exercise in Europe without telling the Russians. The Russians picked up their intelligence about missile movements etc from their agents and presumed that any 'exercise' would preceed an actual nuclear attack. Who could blame them? The Americans always said that they'd never be the first to start a nuclear war. But could you believe them? The Russians said they would never be the first to start a nuclear war, and you could believe them; after all they'd lost 20 million in the last war. Thank goodness the Russians were sensible and didn't press the nuclear button otherwise we wouldn't be here. But Apocolypse is only postponed until we scrap all nuclear weapons. And Britain can start the ball rolling by disarming unilaterally, now, and scrapping Trident.





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able archer | 13 comments (13 topical)

Re: able archer (#1)

by Jag Singh on Sun Jan 06, 2008 at 10:28:36 AM GMT

Did I really just hear someone say in 2008 say that we could trust the Russians during the Cold War and not the Americans? Now I'm not saying that America wouldn't have done what was in her interest (and her interests alone) - it'd be stupid to think otherwise, but let's not for a minute start deluding ourselves into thinking the Soviets were right all along. Their nuclear strategy was based on a counter-value capability; their missiles weren't aimed at military installations alone - civilian populations were equally at risk.

I'm not in favour of renewing the Trident program, rather I think we'd do a lot better spending £16 billion over the next decade on our armed forces and building up out intelligence services' capabilities.

Heck, if we really needed to acquire a nuclear deterrent in the year 2037 the Iranians will surely be willing to sell us one for a fraction of a billion dollars.


Re: able archer (#2)

by swatantra on Sun Jan 06, 2008 at 03:03:10 PM GMT

Good point Jag, although I don't think the Iranians would be going down that line; its only the prescence of a nuclear Israel , ably supported by the USA, which is making them think, just think about it. The other point about the wasted money on Trident. Well I think it could be better spent on Education, Health and Housing instead of Defence and Intelligence. Without better Education, Health and Housing, you're never going to solve the problems we have in our communities, the problems that come up repeatedly on other threads and we never seem to do much about apart from pouring a little bit more money in, a few more police, a few more health professionals and a few more teachers that we train up but ever go into the teaching profession.


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Re: able archer (#3)

by rwendland on Sun Jan 06, 2008 at 05:41:23 PM GMT

> [The USSR's] nuclear strategy was based on a counter-value capability

True, but the USA was there first. Because early ICBMs were inaccurate counter-value was the only realistic way to use them in the early days. A quick glance at the nuclear stockpile growth chart:

 

shows that the USA started the rush toward MAD. The USSR was dumb enough to join in and not get out of the race when they had a credible deterrant despite not having the economy to support such a cold war.

China hasn't followed the USSR here, and amazingly only has about 20 ICBMs currently capable of targeting the United States, despite what you might read in some of the right-wing US press about the Chinese military menace.


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Re: able archer (#4)

by laurencemarshall on Sun Jan 06, 2008 at 05:57:04 PM GMT

The US was there first in terms of nuclear weapons, but let's not forget the military balance as a whole. 

The USSR had significant land forces, and, of course, was situated on the land mass that comprised the majority of the US's interests. Building a larger nuclear arsenal intially was a balancing measure that esculated into an arms race.

As for China, conventional forces are where the buildup is, with the expansion of the Navy, and the threat of shipping route disruption. 


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Re: able archer (#6)

by rwendland on Sun Jan 06, 2008 at 09:48:18 PM GMT

> The USSR had significant land forces ... a larger nuclear arsenal intially was a balancing measure

That would have been OK had the US stopped at a few hundred weapons, enough to destroy the logistic resupply of an USSR attack (without needing to bomb Germany). Trouble is the US had 1000 before the USSR built 50, and 3000 before the USSR had 200.

Seems to me this was the military-industrial complex getting well out of reasonable control.

By 1964 the US had so many nuclear weapons they had deployed 700 in South Korea when both North Korea and China had none. The US had 31,000 by this time - it must have been a real struggle deciding where to put them all! The situation was truly ridiculous.


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Re: able archer (#8)

by laurencemarshall on Sun Jan 06, 2008 at 10:57:07 PM GMT

Hence I said initially a balancing measure.

However, your analysis is with the benefit of hindsight, at the time the Soviet nuclear capacity was not known. The American response to the 'fog of war' was to over arm, in order to ensure they had nuclear superiority over the USSR.


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Re: able archer (#10)

by rwendland on Mon Jan 07, 2008 at 02:46:28 AM GMT

Well, after the 1956/7 U-2 spy flights the US had a very good idea, enough to know that the "bomber gap" was false. But JFK then launched the mythical "missile gap" in his '58 senate campaign:

The Oxford English Dictionary lists the first use of the term "missile gap" in 14 August 1958 by John F. Kennedy: "Our Nation could have afforded, and can afford now, the steps necessary to close the missile gap." According to Robert McNamara, Kennedy was leaked the inflated USAF estimates by Senator Stuart Symington, the former Secretary of the Air Force. Unaware that the report was misleading, Kennedy used the numbers in the document and based some of his 1960 election campaign platform on the Republicans being "weak on defense". The missile gap was a common theme.

is how Wikipedia puts it.

Vested interests, military careers and company profits, had I think a lot to do with driving the cold war to such extremes.

A lesson for today - we should critically assess views coming from obvious vested interests. eg the proponents of Trident replacement, which I think may well have a lot to do with keeping the Barrow nuclear submarine yards in work after the current Astute programme finishes.


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Re: able archer (#11)

by laurencemarshall on Mon Jan 07, 2008 at 03:55:40 AM GMT

Certainly the U2 flights did indicate the russian bomber based nuclear arsenal was small, however, as stated in the wikipedia article on the missile gap there was still uncertainty about the amount of Russian ICBMs in production. And the posturing of Khrushchev didn't help.

As i've mentioned earlier, the fog of war is still prevalent, and there can be no exactitudes. The initial build up was a balancing manoeuvre by the US, and the uncertainty about ICBMs caused the build up to get beyond the point of ridiculous.

As for vested interests, it's a bit weak to compare the US to the UK.  The US is a highly militarised society, with a defence industry that dominates Washington (I went there in the summer, slightly sceptical of the usual MIC spiel that I hear in the UK, and I couldn't piss for hitting someone who works for a defence contractor. They bought the beer though). The UK, in comparison, is not. As for the Barrow shipyards, it would appear that you are assuming that the UK would lose submarines if we did not renew trident. This is by no means certain, and perhaps we would even invest in more submarines than we have now, since the standard line by opponents of trident is that should invest in more conventional forces, and tomahawk based submarines are very good at taking out terrorist bases.
 


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Re: able archer (#9)

by Limony on Mon Jan 07, 2008 at 01:38:57 AM GMT

I'm with Jag. 1983 was a good programme but the Russians did know that Able Archer was an exercise; it's just that they had reason to believe that a nuclear strike would occur on a public holiday and under cover of an exercise.

Both parties to the Cold War were paranoid and that is about the only lesson we learnt from the programme, entertaining as it was.

 


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Re: able archer (#5)

by jkitleft on Sun Jan 06, 2008 at 08:50:04 PM GMT

I sense that even if there was complete disarmament, terrorists could aquire the capability of how to make one.


Re: able archer (#7)

by rwendland on Sun Jan 06, 2008 at 10:25:23 PM GMT

Not if there was no Highly Enriched Uranium or seperated Plutonium available that could be bought or stolen. It requires a huge industrial effort to produce either fissile material, quite beyond the capability of terrorists as we currently know them.

The exception might be the underground nuclear weapon test sites. Heroic and dangerous mining of these sites, followed by quite large scale chemical processing, could conceivably provide enough fissile material for a crude weapon. But I don't think this is really at all practical for terrorists. These sites can easily be guarded anyway.


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Re: able archer (#12)

by HOWLERMONKEY on Mon Jan 07, 2008 at 02:39:04 PM GMT

It’s not necessary to use fissile material to build a WMD, their are other isotopes to achieve this.


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Re: able archer (#13)

by rwendland on Mon Jan 07, 2008 at 04:21:18 PM GMT

We're talking about nuclear weapons here. Yes, other kinds of "WMD" can be made without fissile material. Are you saying you can make nuclear weapons without fissile material using todays technology?


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able archer | 13 comments (13 topical)