A wasting asset? Nuclear weapons

The Soviet-American rivalry over nuclear weapons was the issue that, above all others, symbolized the bipolarity of the Cold War. In the first half of the 1950s the balance stood clearly in America’s favour for, although it had lost its nuclear monopoly in 1949, the United States seemed to be consistently one step ahead of its rival.

The problem was that massive retaliation could work only as long as the perception of American nuclear superiority, as well as the reality, existed. By late 1957 that was no longer the case. Between August and October of that year the Soviets stunned the world by launching their first inter-continental ballistic missile (ICBM) and by sending Sputnik, the first man-made satellite, into space. Given that the Americans had twice failed in 1957 to launch their Atlas ICBM, it seemed that a sudden shift in rocket technology and intelligence capabilities had taken place. As a result, the Eisenhower administration was placed under siege, as critics began to talk about a ‘missile gap’ in the Soviets’ favour.

In reality, the Soviets had only scored a short-term propaganda victory, for the missile capabilities of the United States far exceeded those of the USSR. But there were two problems. First, no matter that the numerical balance favoured the United States, the sheer existence of Soviet ICBMs turned the long-standing fear that the USSR might one day be able to hit American territory with nuclear weapons into a frightening reality. Hence, threatening to strike the Soviets with nuclear weapons if they launched a conventional military attack on Western Europe became less credible; this, in turn, undermined the whole concept of massive retaliation. Second, although the Eisenhower administration knew of America’s continued superiority, the means by which such intelligence was gathered made it difficult, if not impossible, to publicize it. Eisenhower had gone on record denying that the United States spied on the USSR, but in reality high-tech U-2 spy planes were regularly flying over Soviet airspace gathering intelligence on military installations. As it was unwilling to acknowledge this publicly, the American administration could thus not make a strong case against further missile development; the Soviets, in the meantime, made the new technological advances a centrepiece of their propaganda effort. ‘Socialist science’, Khrushchev would repeatedly argue, was not only equal to but had overtaken ‘capitalist science’.

In such a situation it was no wonder that calls for a new American defence doctrine were heeded.

massive retaliation

A strategy of military counter­attack prevalent in the United States during the Eisenhower administration, whereby the United States threatened to react to any type of military offensive by the Soviets or the Chinese with the use of nuclear weapons. The strategy began to lose its credibility as the Soviets developed a substantial nuclear capability in the late 1950s.

inter-continental ballistic missile (ICBM)

Any supersonic missile that has a range of at least 6,500 kilometres and follows a ballistic trajectory after launching. The Soviet-American SALT I Agreements limited the number of ICBMs that each side could have.

U-2 spy planes

An American high-altitude reconnaissance aircraft used to fly over Soviet and other hostile territories.

decolonization

The process whereby an imperial power gives up its formal authority over its colonies.

Third World

A collective term of French origin for those states that are part of neither the developed capitalist world nor the communist bloc. It includes the states of Latin America, Africa, the Middle East, South Asia and South-East Asia. Also referred to as ‘the South’ in contrast to the developed ‘North’.

There was, however, much more behind the shift in American military doctrines than the sudden launch of Soviet satellites and ICBMs, for the Americans were also responding to a sudden explosion of new potential trouble spots around the world. The Korean War and the decision to aid the French war effort in Indochina had been but the first expressions of the expansive view American leaders were beginning to take of their country’s national interests in the Cold War. In effect, the shifting American military doctrine was part of the American decision to globalize the Cold War in response to the instability created by the rapid decolonization process of the 1940s and 1950s. By the late 1950s the picture was, indeed, disheartening. Between 1946 and I960 thirty-seven former colonies became independent in Africa, Asia and the Middle East; by 1958 twenty-eight guerrilla wars were under way in these areas. Not only that, but the Soviet Union, under Khrushchev’s leadership, presented itself as the champion of the ‘wars of national liberation’ and openly advocated socialism as a solution to economic and political problems that were endemic in the Third World. Nuclear weapons, it was clear, could have little practical use in the struggle over influence in these areas.