Tactical Nuclear Weapons and NATO.pdf - Program on Strategic ...

Why Did <strong>NATO</strong> Keep So Many TNWs For So
Long?
The U.S. stockpile size was maintained within the
7,000 to 8,000 range during most of the 1970s. 79 Critics
like Richard Rhodes see this as simply a failure of
strategic imagination in the long stalemate of the Cold
War because, once the massive U.S. nuclear weapons
production complex had been built, U.S. nuclear
weapons became relatively cheap, eventually dropping
in price to $250,000, “less than a fighter bomber,
less than a missile, less than a patrol boat, less than
a tank.” 80 In September 1967, McNamara, soon after
his Vietnam-induced retirement as Defense Secretary,
also denounced the “mad momentum” of nuclear
weaponry: “If something works . . . there are pressures
from all directions to acquire those weapons out of all
proportion to the prudent level required.” 81
By 1983, studies by the RAND Corporation concluded,
One thing is certain: the present stockpile is primarily
a legacy of the weapon systems <strong>and</strong> warheads
accumulated in the largely haphazard manner in the
1950s <strong>and</strong> 1960s <strong>and</strong> while the result may not be incompatible
with the requirements of flexible response,
it has not been tailored to meet the specific needs of
the strategy. 82
Incremental TNW additions seemed to add to security,
if only by dissuading the other side from expecting
that it could achieve any decisive advantage
through a nuclear buildup. The TNW component of
the correlation of forces remained stable, even if at constantly
higher levels, but this meant that the numbers
grew because <strong>NATO</strong> <strong>and</strong> the Warsaw Pact each had
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