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

5. “The position we have reached is one where stability depends
on something that is more the antithesis of strategy than
its apotheosis on threats that things will get out of h<strong>and</strong>, that we
might act irrationally, that possibly through an inadvertence we
could set in motion a process which in its development <strong>and</strong> conclusion
would be beyond human control <strong>and</strong> comprehension.”
Ibid., p. 458.
6. Gordon S. Barras, The Great Cold War: A Journey through a
Wilderness of Mirrors, Stanford, CA: Stanford University Press,
2009, pp. 63-64. Barras was an intelligence insider throughout
much of the Cold War. His account is often based on personal
knowledge of events <strong>and</strong> detailed interviews with participants.
7. Michael O. Wheeler, “<strong>NATO</strong> <strong>Nuclear</strong> Strategy, 1949-90,”
Gustave Schmidt, ed., A History of <strong>NATO</strong> the First 50 Years, Vol. 3,
Basingstoke, UK, <strong>and</strong> New York: Palgrave, 2001, p. 122.
8. But the estimates of Russian military power were almost
certainly very seriously exaggerated. See the impressive list of references
compiled by Vojtech Mastny, “Imagining War in Europe,”
in Vojtech Mastny, Sven G. Holtsmark, <strong>and</strong> Andreas Wenger,
eds., War Plans <strong>and</strong> Alliances in the Cold War: Threat Perceptions in
the East <strong>and</strong> West, London, UK, <strong>and</strong> New York: Routledge, 2006,
p. 16, n. 1.
9. Stephen E. Miller, “The Utility of <strong>Nuclear</strong> <strong>Weapons</strong> <strong>and</strong> the
Strategy of No First Use,” Pugwash Conferences on Science <strong>and</strong>
World Affairs, 2002.
10. “It is essential to our policy that we shall have to use nukes
in the end; all else fails to save Berlin <strong>and</strong> it is fundamental that
the Russians underst<strong>and</strong> this fact.” J. F. Kennedy to General Lucius
Clay, October 8, 1961, quoted in Robert J. McMahon, “US
National Security Policy, Eisenhower to Kennedy,” in Melvin P.
Leffler <strong>and</strong> Odd Arnie Wested, eds., The Cambridge History of the
Cold War, Vol. 1: Origins, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University
Press, 2010, p. 309.
11. Raymond Aron, On War: Atomic <strong>Weapons</strong> <strong>and</strong> Global Diplomacy,
London, UK: Secker <strong>and</strong> Warburg, 1958, p. 36.
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