Military /Warnings of Uncontrollable Escalation /Accidental Nuclear War
"What would you do if you suddenly were facing a gigantic Pearl Harbor? This thing isn't academic... I am talking about things you would have to do in 2 minutes, that is all."
Dwight Eisenhower [President of the United States]_Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Dwight D. Eisenhower 1954_(1954) at 324, 57.
"I do not see how one could deny this - that it would be unreasonable to constantly brandish the threat of nuclear retaliation and at the same time to assume it would never be necessary to carry it out. The war for which one prepares so as not to have to fight it, though sometimes called 'impossible', is possible just the same. If it were indeed physically or morally impossible, deterrence would cease to operate." Raymond Aron_The Great Debate_1965, at 52-53. [emphasis supplied]"Moreover, in the end nuclear weapons probably will be used.
That is a terrible thought for everyone. It is also a novel thought for many who argued, as I did, during the 1970's and 1980's for an up-to-date deterrent as a means of keeping the peace. During the Cold War's 'balance of terror' it was always possible to argue that because both sides had powerful nuclear arsenels this provided an important stabilizing factor, preventing not just nuclear but conventional was, at least in Europe.
In truth, there was never any cast-iron guarantee against a nuclear exchange. We knew that we would never initiate a war of any kind against the Warsaw Pact. And we had good reason to believe the Soviets would be too cautious to launch a nuclear war against the West. But we could never altogether rule out the possibility of a miscalculation or technical error precipitating an exchange."
Margaret Thatcher [former Prime Minister, England]_Statecraft_2002, at 50, 51 [italics included] [emphasis supplied].
Jpg: Pacific Nuclear Detonation, France
"...mutual deterrence is as impractical as massive retaliation. Neither concept is workable because each pretends to draw lines where no lines can be drawn--between war and peace, between aggression and defense, between significant and insignificant acts....
In the long run, mutual deterrence will fail..."
Edward Teller [theoretical physicist, Father of the Hydrogen Bomb - Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore] (with A. Brown)_The Legacy of Hiroshima_1962, at 233, 243.
"[Q] 'What do you think is the prospect, then, of nuclear war?'
'I think we will probably destroy ourselves.'"
Rear Admiral Hyman G. Rickover [Father of United States' atomic-powered ballistic-missile submarines, the most powerful nuclear forces on the Earth] Economics of Defense Policy: Hearing before the Joint Economic Committee, Congress of the United States, 97th Cong., 2nd sess., Pt. 1 (1982), at 61.
"The nuclear deterrence system familiar to us today, with very dominant offensive capabilities, is just fine all the time that it either functions as we intend or, as generally is the case, all the time that it is not severely tested. The problem, indeed the enduring problem, is that we are resting our future upon a nuclear deterrence system concerning which we cannot tolerate even a single serious malfunction."
Colin S. Gray [Chairman, National Institute for Public Policy, Fairfax, VA] Department of Defense Appropriations for fiscal Year 1985: Hearings before the Senate Committee on Armed Services, 98th Cong., 2st sess., Pt. 6 (1984) at 3077 [emphasis supplied].
"In my opinion, a general war will grow through a series of political miscalculations and accidents rather than through any deliberate attack by either side."
General Curtis E. LeMay [Founder and Commander-in-Chief of the United States Strategic Air Command, during the 1950's & 1960's the most powerful nuclear forces on the Earth]_America is in Danger_(1968) at 83.
"If we have another great war, that is probably the way it will come... It will be the result of miscalculating...
The combination of fear and aggressiveness which determines the policies of each nation induces more fear and aggressiveness. Unless that vicious circle can be broken, a third world war becomes not a possibility, but a probability."
John Foster Dulles [Secretary of State] 1946 (in) R. Bowie & R. Immerman_Waging Peace: How Eisenhower Shaped an Enduring Cold War Strategy_1998, at 64.
"Underlying all of this [arms control], of course, is the clear conviction that as of now the world is racing toward catastrophe."
Dwight D. Eisenhower [President of the United States] (in) S. Ambrose_Eisenhower_1984, at 134.
"They [rise of Hitler, Nazi Germany, and World War II] were terrific times, and yet I am more anxious now than I was then. My thoughts are almost entirely thermo-nuclear."
Sir Winston Churchill [Prime Minister, England] (in) Lord Moran_Churchill, Taken From the Diaries of Lord Moran, The Struggle for Survival, 1940-1965_1966, at 598.
"...the hydrogen bomb, which might blow all these pretty plans sky-high...."
Sir Winston Churchill [former Prime Minister, England] The Hydrogen Bomb, Apr. 5, 1954, House of Commons (in) Winston Churchill: His Complete Speeches (R. James, ed. Vol VIII, 1950-1963)_1974, at 8558.
"...it becomes very hard to envisage nuclear war being initiated suddenly with all-out strikes. If it were to come, it is most likely to come in a sequence of escalating steps from a lower-level confrontation.
...stressing the recognition that central war, if it comes, will come via escalation..."
James Schlesinger [future Secretary of Defense, future Director, Central Intelligence Agency, future Chairman, Atomic Energy Commission]_The Changing Environment for Systems Analysis, RAND Paper P-3287, Dec. 1965 (in)_Selected Papers on National Security, James Schlesinger, 1964-1968, RAND Collection, P-5284_Sep't 1974, at 38, 39.
"With such instruments of war available, it would be foolhardy to assume that they will never be used because sane and thoughtful people will prevail."
Donald Latham & T. Martin_Strategy for Survival_1963, at 14.
"Flying over fields of missiles capable of destroying humanity on the basis of a single decision by an individual of normal fallibility, whatever the safeguards, evokes a latent uneasiness about the human condition. Here are weapons in a state of readiness for which there is no precedent in history, yet for whose use and consequence no practical experience is possible.
...all this suggests the inherent fragility of fashionable theories of hair-trigger responses or reliance on general nuclear war.
...the fact that the survival of our civilization must be entrusted to a technology so out of scale with our experience and with our capacity to grasp its implications."
Henry Kissinger [former Secretary of State] _Years of Upheaval_(1982) at 1195.
"In the past it could be argued that weapons were a symptom rather than a cause of tension. Indeed it is difficult to find an historical example of the cliche that arms races cause wars (What caused World War I was mobilization schedules, not the rate of increased armaments.) But today, indeed, the nuclear age combines weapons of unprecedented destructive power, extremely rapid modes of delivery of intercontinental range, and high vulnerability to suprise attack."
Henry Kissinger [former Secretary of State]_For the Record: Selected Statements 1977-1980_1981, at 202.
"The thing you have to look at is the fact that there are huge arsenels of weapons being built up. They are very dangerous.
I watched the beginning of your show, and you said, I think, that these were the only two countries that could start a major conflagration. That is absolutely wrong, and it represents the problem. Lots of countries around the world can start something and draw the superpowers into it, and so there is danger - and danger from these weapons."
George Schultz [Secretary of State] (The Secretary's Interview on "This Week with David Brinkley") Department of State Bulletin, Nov. 1984, at 43.
"Secondly, there is the danger of outbreak of war by accident, miscalculation or failure of communications. The danger grows as modern weapons becomes more complex, command and control difficulties increase, and the premium is on even faster reaction."
Dean Rusk [Secretary of State] Rusk Sees Growing Peril of War Set Off by Mishap: New York Times, June 17, 1962, at 26, col. 1.
"It became probable that if we used small nuclear weapons, the Soviets would, too, and further escalation would almost inevitably occur. As far as I can tell, there would be no way to stop it....Anyone who thinks escalation can be controlled once nuclear weapons are used is living in a dream world.
...the awesome destructive power of modern [nuclear] weapons and the speed with which they could be delivered, the possibility that some mistake or miscalculation could create a spark that could plunge the world into disaster...
The more sophisticated, instantaneous, and complex these weapons systems become, the more difficult it is for frail human beings to control them....
Your generation will discover in the decades ahead whether mankind can organize a durable peace in a world in which thousands of megatons are lying around in the hands of frail human beings. A world in which collective security--what my generation used to try to curb the obscenity of war--is withering away, and we are not even discussing what shall take its place."
Dean Rusk [former Secretary of State]_As I Saw It_1990, at 249, 250, 252, 630.
"...finally, we owe it to ourselves and our allies soberly and frankly to weigh the possibility that in so incendiary a situation a spark at any time could start a blaze; and the blaze might sweep far beyond the control of anyone."
Dean Acheson [former Secretary of State]_Power and Diplomacy_(1958) at 133-134.
"Nevertheless, the danger of nuclear war would remain and would probably dominate any major crisis or conflict."
Dean Acheson [former Secretary of State] The Practice of Partnership: Foreign Affairs, Jan. 1963, at 254.
"First, Spiraling competition in strategic delivery systems with ever shorter reaction times could lead to war by miscalculation. Such miscalculations might, for example, cause an international crisis to develop into a general war without either side really intending that this should happen."
Christian Herter [Secretary of State] National Security with Arms Limitations: Dep't of State Bulletin, Mar. 7, 1960, at 355.
"If we have another great war, that is probably the way it will come... It will be the result of miscalculating...
The combination of fear and aggressiveness which determines the policies of each nation induces more fear and aggressiveness. Unless that vicious circle can be broken, a third world war becomes not a possibility, but a probability."
John Foster Dulles [Secretary of State] 1946 (in) R. Bowie & R. Immerman_Waging Peace: How Eisenhower Shaped an Enduring Cold War Strategy_1998, at 64.
"There should be no illusion about the reality of the danger. It is immense. Future generations will look back with amazement if [atomic] war is averted....
We are engaged in an armament race. The race is very exciting, and it is easy for the followers to be carried away by their excitement....
We belong to a generation that has already subjected countless human beings to incredible horror, and we know that millions were sustained in their agony by the thought that the very intensity of their suffering would make a total of suffering so immense as to compel those who survived find a way to live in peace. We may not yet have found that way...."
John Foster Dulles [Secretary of State]_War or Peace_1957, at 3, 239, 263.
"Somehow that is unwordly. I cannot imagine either side using nuclear weapons with any confidence that it is not going to destroy the world. I mean, once you start down the road of using nuclear weapons, no one knows what is going to happen."
William P. Rogers [former Secretary of State] (testimony) The INF Treaty: Hearings before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, 100 Cong., 2nd sess., Pt. 1, Jan. 25, 26, 27, 28, 1988, at 238.
"First, talking about a carefully calibrated escalation after you have crossed the nuclear threshold is madness. You cannot realistically think of that kind of scenario. Once you cross the nuclear threshold, I don't see how you can control escalation; and anyone who thinks that somehow you can in a very neatly calibrated way is day-dreaming."
Cyrus Vance [former Secretary of State] (testimony) The INF Treaty: Hearings before the Senate Committee on Foreign Relations, 100 Cong., 2nd sess., Pt. 1, Jan. 25, 26, 27, 28, 1988, at 239.
"...perhaps uncontrollable conflicts that could draw the nuclear powers into potentially disasterous military action.
...the knowledge that the burgeoning of [nuclear] military forces would make conflict more likely....
...the irrationality of piling up thousands upon thousands of unimaginably destructive nuclear weapons in both sides arsenals....the terrible danger of nuclear weapons."
Cyrus Vance [former Secretary of State]_Hard Choices_1983, at 28, 417, 51.
"Six nations now have nuclear weapons. With mathematical certainty, the spread of nuclear arms compounds the risks that these weapons will turn up in the hands of people who are willing to use them.
"A second reality is that the risk of collision has grown. We are in a period of extraordinary upheaval in the world--where internal conditions may give rise to struggles that attract the great powers....the unimaginable power of nuclear arms....their [US - USSR] frail, human hands hold the power to transform even the world's richest civilization into rubble.... In sum, we are engaged in a rivalry that is inexorable, worsening, central, and potentially fatal.
If 'confusion to thine enemies' may be a fine thought in sporting events, I hope we can all agree that in superpower relations, it can be a deadly serious matter. It can cause dangerous miscalculations...."
Warren Christopher [future Secretary of State]_Diplomacy: the Neglected Imperative_1981, at 56, 64, 66.
"Proliferation complicates the task of arms control: It increases the risk of preemptive and accidental war...."
Alexander Haig [Secretary of State, former Supreme Allied Commander, Europe] Arms Control for the 1980s: An American Policy: Dep't of State Bulletin, Aug. 1981, at 33.
"After the American [nuclear] monopoly was broken, both sides were deeply conscious that a miscalculation might lead the extinction of civilized life on our planet."
Alexander M. Haig [former Secretary of State, former Supreme Allied Commander, Europe]_Inner Circles_1992, at 554.
"Without the united effort and unremitting cooperation of all the nations of the world, there will be no enduring and effective protection against the atomic bomb."
James F. Byrnes [Secretary of State] Address broadcast on "Home-Coming Day," November 16, 1945. Pamphlet No. 4, PILLARS OF PEACE. Documents Pertaining To American Interest In Establishing A Lasting World Peace: January 1941-February 1946 Published by the Book Department, Army Information School, Carlisle Barracks, Pa., May 1946. http://www.ibiblio.org/pha/policy/post-war/451116a.html
"The greater threat to American interests at the time lay in the increasingly dicey situation in Moscow, and we preferred to maintain our focus on that challenge, which had global ramifications for us, particularily with regard to nuclear weapons."
James A. Baker [former Secretary of State]_The Politics of Diplomacy_1995, at 636.
"A nuclear war would probably get started only by miscalculation."
James Schlesinger [former Secretary of Defense, former Director, Central Intelligence Agency, former Chairman, Atomic Energy Commission] (in) Living With Mega-Death: Time, Mar. 29, 1982, at 25.
"Well, of course, we are now vulnerable in a way that we have never been vulnerable before in our nation's history. That is simply the consequence of the development of nuclear weapons, and the delivery capabilities to bring those weapons to the United States. It means that our cities are subject to immediate destruction, and that is an immense change, the consequence of the nuclear age."
James Schlesinger [former Secretary of Defense, former Director, Central Intelligence Agency, former Chairman, Atomic Energy Commission] The Essentials of National Security (interview) 1984 http://sun3.lib.uci.edu/racyberlib/Peace/interview-james_r_schlesinger.html
"Strategic War is so obviously catastrophic to all engaged in to that it is only under enormous political stress, provocation and escalation - probably from lower levels of conflict -that it has any chance of happening."
Harold Brown [former Secretary of Defense] (in) Living With Mega-Death: Time, Mar. 29, 1982, at 25.
"I am not at all persuaded that what started as a demonstration, or even a tightly controlled use of the strategic forces for larger purposes, could be kept from escalating to a full-scale thermonuclear exchange."
Harold Brown [former Secretary of Defense] (quoted in) F. Kaplan_Wizards of Armageddon_1983, at 386.
"the expanding arsenels of nuclear weapons on both sides of the Iron Curtain have created an extremely dangerous situation not only for their possessors but also for the entire world. As the arms race continues and the weapons multiply and become more swift and deadly, the possibility of a global catastrophe, either by miscalculation or design, becomes ever more real."
Robert S. McNamara [Secretary of Defense] Hearings on Military Posture and H.R. 2440, to Authorize Appropriations During Fiscal Year 1964, for procurement, Research, Development, Test, and Evaluation of Aircraft, missiles, and Naval Vessels for the Armed Forces, and for Other Purposes: House Committee on Armed Services, 88th Cong., 1st sess., (1963) at 306-307.
"But it is a fact that in the face of the opponent's nuclear forces, neither side has found it possible to develop plans for the use of its nuclear weapons in ways that would avoid the very high risk of escalating to all-out nuclear war."
Robert S. McNamara [former Secretary of Defense]_Out of the Cold_1989, at 98.
"The point I wish to emphasize is this: human beings are fallible. We know we all make mistakes. In our daily lives, mistakes are costly, but we try to learn from them. In conventional war, they cost lives, sometime thousands of lives. But if mistakes were to affect decisions relating to the use of nuclear forces, there would be no learning period. They would result in the destruction of nations. I believe, therefore, it can be predicted with confidence that the indefinite combination of human fallibility and nuclear weapons carries a very high risk of a potential nuclear catastrophe."
Robert S. McNamara [former Secretary of Defense] (speech) Reflections on War in the 21st Century http://www.asiawide.or.jp/ecaar/English/e98mcnamara.htm
"Or let's say he miscalculates. He may think we are not alert."
Neil McElroy [Secretary of Defense] Department of Defense Appropriations for 1960: Hearings before the Subcommittee of the House Committee on Appropriations, 86th Cong., 1st sess., Pt. 1, (1959) at 41.
'The riven atom, uncontrolled, can only be a growing menace to us all..."
Henry L. Stimson [former Secretary of War] (in) Foreign Affairs, 1947, at...
"Deterrence, however, may fail on less than a massive scale. The importance of this fact was noted by Secretary Weinberger when he discussed what would happen if deterrence failed: 'If that were to occur we cannot predict the nature of a Soviet nuclear strike, nor assure with any certainty that what may have started as a limited Soviet attack would remain confined at that level.'"
Frank Carlucci [Secretary of Defense] (in)_Report of the SecDef to Congress_17 Jan. 1989, at 34, 37.
"[Some]...have contended that nuclear war, once begun, could not be controlled and would quickly become an all-out exchange. Asked whether a prolonged, calibrated nuclear war was possible, Mr. Weinberger said, 'I just don't have any idea; I don't know that anybody has any idea.'"
Caspar Weinberger [Secretary of Defense] (in) Weinberger Defends His Plan on a Protracted Nuclear War_New York Times_Aug. 10, 1982, at A8.
'There is that fear, and the president has expressed it very well. It is a deadly situation when two nations with nuclear weapons sit facing each other, especially with the risk of others intervening to cause accidental war or any one of a number of situations that can occur."
Caspar Weinberger [Secretary of Defense] MX Missile Basing System and Related Issues: Hearings before the Senate Committee on Armed Services, 98th Cong., 1st. sess., (1983) at 115.
"Any use of those weapons--whether by careful decision, miscalculation, or accident--would have caused enormous damage to both sides and probably destroyed life as we know it on much of the planet for a number of years...."
Les Aspin [former Secretary of Defense] Special Challenges to the New NATO http://www.csdr.org/94Book/Aspin.htm
"...my belief that the greatest danger poised by nuclear weapons is the risk of a nuclear war by accident or miscalculation.
...my concern about the possibility of a nuclear war caused by accident or by miscalaulation. I believe these represent the only real risk of a nuclear war in the forseeable future. I believe that our most important task is to develop ways of reducing the risk that these weapons would be used by accident or miscalculation. That is, I believe, the central political problem of our generation."
William J. Perry [former Undersecretary of Defense for Research & Engineering, future Secretary of Defense] Measures to Reduce the Risk of Nuclear War: Orbis, Wint, 1984, at 1030, 1031, 1035.
"...accidental launches..."
William S. Cohen [Secretary of Defense] DOD News Briefing, Feb. 6, 1997 (in)_Public Statements of William S. Cohen Secretary of Defense_1997, Vol. I, at 119.
"...relatively small numbers of ballistic missiles, with weapons of mass destruction, regardless of where they come from, and regardless of whether it was accidental, or unintentional, or intentional..."
Donald Rumsfeld [Secretary of Defense] Secretary of Defense Donald Rumsfeld Interview on Fox News Sunday, Feb. 11, 2001. http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Feb2001/t02122001_t0211fox.html
"It is important to recognize clearly the major dangers which could lead to nuclear war. In descending order of likelihood they are:
1) War by accident, where one side launches a nuclear attack because a mechanical malfunction creates the mistaken impression that the other side has launched an attack."
Richard Nixon [former President of the United States] Superpower Summitry: Foreign Affairs, Fall, 1985, at 2-3.
"A direct clash between the superpowers would almost certainly escalate to nuclear weapons. Over 400 million people in the United States and the Soviet Union alone would be killed in an all-out exchange."
Richard Nixon [former President of the United States]_1999: Victory Without War_1988, at 66.
"...the mere fact that you agree with some particular obvious truth of this kind of the futility of committing mutual suicide or something of that kind, the fact is that there is still room for a lot of misunderstanding, a lot of miscalculation which could be very serious."
Dwight Eisenhower [President of the United States]_Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Dwight D. Eisenhower 1959_(1960) at 667.
"All of us know that, whether started deliberately or accidentally, global war would leave civilization in a shambles."
Dwight Eisenhower [President of the United States]_Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Dwight D. Eisenhower 1960-61_(1961) at 442.
"Finally, there is the overriding problem of armament. This is at once a result and a cause of existing tension and distrust....I pointed out that with the super weapons of today we could easily and unwittingly destroy the entire Northern Hemisphere."
Dwight Eisenhower [former President of the United States]_Mandate for Change: The White House Years, 1953-1956_1963, at 516, 518.
"This is not a way of life at all, in any true sense. Under the cloud of threatening war, it is humanity hanging from a cross of iron."
Dwight Eisenhower [President of the United States] [Speech]_The Chance for Peace_April 16, 1953. http://www.tamu.edu/scom/pres/speeches/ikechance.html
"Should such an atomic attack be launched against the United States, our reaction would be swift and resolute. But for me to say that the defense capabilities of the United States are such that they could inflict terrible losses upon an aggressor - for me to say that the retaliation capabilities of the United States are so great that such an aggressor's land would be laid waste - all this, while fact, is not the true expression of the purpose and the hope of the United States.
To pause there would be to confirm the hopeless finality of a belief that two atomic colossi are doomed malevolently to eye each other indefinitely across a trembling world. To stop there would be to accept helplessly the probability of civilization destroyed - the annihilation of the irreplaceable heritage of mankind handed down to us generation from generation - and the condemnation of mankind to begin all over again the age old struggle upward from savagery toward decency and right and justice."
Dwight Eisenhower [President of the United States] [Speech]_Atoms for Peace_United Nations General Assembly, December 8, 1953. http://www.tamu.edu/scom/pres/speeches/ikeatoms.html
"...this new [atomic] force spelled terrible danger for all mankind unless it were brought under international control."
...the threat of world war is still very real."
Harry S. Truman [President of the United States]_Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States : Harry S. Truman (1952-1953)_1966, at 1125, 12.
"...the danger of total destruction....
Atomic force in ignorant or evil hands could inflict untold disaster upon the nation and the world....
We will have permanent peace in the world. It is necessary that we have permanent peace...We must grasp that opportunity, else the other road is complete destruction."
Harry S. Truman [President of the United States]_Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States : Harry S. Truman (1945)_1961, at 213, 363.
"Now we are faced with total destruction."
Harry S. Truman [President of the United States] (in) Atom War a Truman Concern: New York Times, Aug 2, 1982, col. 1, at 9.
"It just doesn't make sense for the world to be sitting here with these weapons aimed at each other - the possibility of human error and the thing that can happen."
Ronald Reagan [President of the United States]_Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Ronald Reagan 1982_Vol 1 (1983) at 309.
"There is a danger that any conflict could escalate to a nuclear war."
Ronald Reagan [President of the United States]_Address Before the Bundestag in Bonn, Federal Republic of Germany, June 9, 1982 http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/resource/speeches/1982/60982b.htm
"...this threat of doomsday which hangs over the world."
Ronald Reagan [President of the United States] Radio Address to the Nation on Nuclear Weapons, April 17, 1982 http://www.reagan.utexas.edu/reagan/resource/speeches/1982/41782a.htm
"To look down on an endless future with both of us sitting here with these horrible missiles aimed at each other and the only thing preventing a holocaust is just so long as no one pulls the trigger--this is unthinkable."
Ronald Reagan [President of the United States] Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Ronald Reagan, 1983, at 465.
"The decision to launch the weapons was mine alone to make.
We had many contingency plans for responding to a nuclear attack. But everything would happen so fast that I wondered how much planning or reason could be applied in such a crisis. The Russians sometimes kept submarines off our East Coast with nuclear missiles that could turn the White House into a pile of radioactive rubble within six or eight minutes.
Six minutes to decide how to respond to a blip on a radar scope and decide whether to unleash Armageddon! How could anyone apply reason at a time like that?
...Yet as long as nuclear weapons were in existance, there would always be risks they would be used, and once the first nuclear weapon was unleashed, who knew where it would end?
...a miscalculation or misjudgement could lead to World War III....this hair-trigger existance....this threat of annihilation....the fatalistic acceptance of annihilation...We couldn't continue this nervous standoff forever...."
Ronald Reagan [former President of the United States]_An American Life_1990, at 257, 258, 418, 550.
"...every man, woman and child lives under a nuclear sword of Damocles, hanging by the slenderest of threads, capable of being cut at any moment by accident or miscalculation or by madness."
John Kennedy [President of the United States]_Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: John F. Kennedy 1961_ (1962) at 620.
"...one mistake can make this whole thing blow up...."
John Kennedy [President of the United States]_Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States: John F. Kennedy 1962_(1963) at 898.
"...a request that both sides begin anew the quest for peace, before the dark powers of destruction, unleashed by science, engulf all humanity in planned or accidental self-destruction."
John Kennedy [President of the United States] Inagural Address, Jan. 20, 1961
"...uneasy is the peace that wears a nuclear crown. And we cannot be satisfied with a situation in which the world is capable of extinction in a moment of error, or madness, or anger.
I can personally never escape, for very long at a time, the certain knowledge that such a moment might occur in a world where reason is so often a martyr to pride and to ambition."
Lyndon Johnson [President of the United States]_Public Papers of the Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Lyndon B. Johnson 1966_Vol II (1967) at ...
"...the dangers of future confrontations and wars."
Gerald Ford [President of the United States]_Public Papers of the Papers of the Presidents of the United States: Gerald Ford 1976-77_Vol II_1979 at 1821.
"The danger is becoming greater. As the arsenels of the superpowers grow in size and sophistication and as other governments -perhaps even in the future dozens of governments - acquire these weapons, it may only be a matter of time before madness, desperation, greed, or miscalculation let loose this terrible force."
Jimmy Carter [President of the United States] President Carter's Farewell Address to the Nation: Dep't of State Bulletin, Feb, 1981, at 22.
"All the glib talk about ICBM's, MIRV's, SLCM's....tended to lull some people into indifference or resignation about the unbelieveable destruction they represented. That horror was constantly on my mind... Why could we not control this most ominous of all threats?...
A miscalculation or a misunderstand could be catastrophic, and the excessive desire for secrecy by either nation can be counterproductive because this contributes to suspicion and leads to the taking of countermeasures.
....this twilight peace carries the ever-present danger of a catastrophic nuclear war, a war that in horror and destruction and massive death would dwarf all the combined wars of man's long and bloody history."
Jimmy Carter [former President of the United States]_Keeping Faith_1982, at 212, 249.
"...the dangers of miscalculation in a crisis."
George Bush [President of the United States, former Director, Central Intelligence Agency]_Public Papers of the Papers of the Presidents of the United States: George Bush 1991_Vol. II (1992) at 1224.
"...the threat that has hung over our heads since the dawn of the nuclear age..."
William Clinton [President of the United States] (speech) The Vital Tradition of American Leadership in the World: U.S. Dep't of State Dispatch, Mar. 1, 1995. http://dosfan.lib.uic.edu/ERC/briefing/dispatch/1995/html/Dispatchv6no10.html
"The proliferation of weapons of mass destruction continues to pose an unusual and extraordinary threat to the national security, foreign policy, and economy of the United States....I issued Executive Order 12938 and declared a national emergency under the International Emergency Economic Powers Act..."
William Clinton [President of the United States] Message to the Congress on Continuation of the National Emergency With Respect to the Proliferation of Weapons of Mass Destruction_Public Papers of the Presidents of the United States:William J. Clinton 1997_Vol. II (1999) at 1542.
"Our first order of business is the national security of our nation....we also face an emerging threat from rogue nations, nuclear theft, and accidental launch."
George W. Bush [future President of the United States] Nov. 19, 1999. http://www.pbs.org/newshour/shields&gigot/november99/sg_11-19_bush.html
"In my opinion, a general war will grow through a series of political miscalculations and accidents rather than through any deliberate attack by either side. Let me stress the point I said political accidents, not military accidents."
General Curtis E. LeMay [Founder, and during the 1950's & 1960's, Commander in Chief of the United States' Strategic Air Command, the most powerful nuclear forces on earth]_America is in Danger_(1968) at 83.
"...the possibility that deterrence may fail for any number of reasons, no matter how potent our deterrent may be.
...most of the experts seem to agree that even the most ingenious and powerful deterrent may fail.
...there is always the possibility that, despite the most effective Deterrent System, we may get involved in a nuclear war. This could occur, for instance, as a result of inept diplomacy or a miscalculation, which may cause the inadvertent escalation of some local incident."
General Thomas S. Power [former Commander in Chief, during the 1960's, of the United States Strategic Air Command, the most powerful nuclear forces on earth]_Design for Survival_1965, at 129, 205 [italics in original].
"Because of the extraordinary size of the arsenals that were amassed by both East and West, there was a very great danger that a crisis would spin out of control and invoke the use of nuclear weapons. If that were the case, I learned ultimately that what was at stake was not just the survival of one or both of the antagonists but virtually the entire world."
General George Lee Butler [Former Commander in Chief, Strategic Air Command, Commander in Chief, United States Strategic Command (Responsible for all U.S. Air Force and U.S. Navy strategic nuclear forces) at Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska, Director for Strategic Plans and Policy, Joint Chiefs of Staff, then with the Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States] (interview) Sojourners Online, Jan/Feb 1999. http://www.sojourners.com/soj9901/990110.html
"I was for many years of my life the Nation's foremost practitioner of deterrence. As the commander of the nuclear forces it was my stock in trade, and I have spent many years during and since that time reflecting on deterrence as the basis of our national security. And what I concluded was this. It is an extraordinarily risky and uncertain construct.
... the fact that ultimately deterrence is in the eye of the beholder. We apply deterrence in the belief that we have great insight and understanding into the intentions and motivations of the Nation with whom we have this security dialogue and yet in every case that relationship is one that is characterized by almost total alienation and isolation and therefore is fraught with the prospect of misperception and misunderstanding."
General George Lee Butler [Former Commander in Chief, Strategic Air Command] (testimony in) Findings and Conclusions of the Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threats to the United States, House of Representatives, Committee on National Security, July 16, 1998. http://commdocs.house.gov/committees/security/has197000.000/has197000_1.HTM
"Appropriated from the lexicon of conventional warfare, this simple prescription [deterrence] for adequate military preparedness became in the nuclear age a formula for unmitigated catastrophe....It suspended rational thinking about the ultimate aim of national security: to ensure the survival of the nation."
General George Lee Butler [Former Commander in Chief, Strategic Air Command] (speech) The Risks of Nuclear Deterrence: From Superpowers to Rogue Leaders, National Press Club, Feb. 2, 1998. http://newworldforum.percepticon.com/initiatives/general_butler_NPC_speech.html
"Surely nuclear weapons summoned great caution in superpower relationships. But as their numbers swelled, so mounted the stakes of miscalculation, of a crisis spun out of control....
Deterrence is a slippery conceptual slope. It is not stable, nor is it static, its wiles cannot be contained... It gives easy semantic cover to nuclear weapons, masking the horrors of employment with siren veils of infallibility. At best it is a gamble no mortal should pretend to make. At worst it invokes death on a scale rivaling the power of the creator....Our present policies, plans and postures governing nuclear weapons make us prisoner still to an age of intolerable danger."
General George Lee Butler [Former Commander in Chief, Strategic Air Command] (speech) The Risks of Nuclear Deterrence: From Superpowers to Rogue Leaders, National Press Club, Feb. 2, 1998. http://www.worldforum98.org/initiatives/general_butler_NPC_speech.html
"[Q.] 'What do you think is the prospect, then, of nuclear war?'
'I think we will probably destroy ourselves.'"
Rear Admiral Hyman G. Rickover [Father of the United States atomic-powered ballistic-missile submarines, the most powerful thermonuclear forces on earth] Economics of Defense Policy: Hearing before the Joint Economic Committee, Congress of the United States, 97th Cong., 2nd sess., Pt. 1 (1982) at 61.
"I think the human race is going to wreck itself, and its important that we get control of this horrible force and try to eliminate it...
I do not believe that nuclear power is worth the present benefits since it creates radiation.on. Then you might ask me, why do you have nuclear powered ships? That's a necessary evil.. I would sink them all... I am proud of the part I've played in it. I did it because it was necessary for the safety of this country. That's why I am such a great exponent of stopping this whole nonsense of war. Unfortunately, attempt to limit war have always failed. The lesson of history is, when a war starts every nation will use whatever weapon has been available."
Rear Admiral Hyman G. Rickover [Father of the United States atomic-powered ballistic-missile submarines, the most powerful nuclear force on earth] Economics of Defense Policy: Hearing before the Joint Economic Committee, Congress of the United States, 97th Cong., 2nd sess., Pt. 1 (1982) at 61.
"At the same time, the possibility of general war by mistake or miscalculation is constantly growing."
General Maxwell Taylor [future Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, former U.S. Army Chief of Staff]_The Uncertain Trumpet_(1959) at 135.
"They could miscalculate, make a mistake, do something wrong over there and get hotheaded."
General Nathan F. Twining [Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff] (in) Department of Defense Appropriations for 1960: Hearings before the Subcommittee of the House Committee on Appropriations, 86th Cong., 1st sess., Pt. 1 (1959) at 21.
"Although we did not believe Russia was ready for global war, it was possible it could occur, either by design or accident."
General Omar Bradley [former Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, Five Star General, U.S. Army]_A General's Life_1983, at 557.
"We are now speeding inexorably toward a day when even the ingenuity of our scientists may be unable to save us from the consequences of a single rash act or a lone reckless hand upon the switch of an uninterceptable missile."
General Omar Bradley [former Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff, Five Star General, U.S. Army] Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Feb. (1958) at 66.
"I did not believe that the threat of atomic blitz would be an effective deterrent to a war, or that it would win a war. I did not believe that the atomic blitz theory was accepted by military men.
...there is no shortcut, no cheap, no easy way to win a war. We must realize that the threat of instant atomic retaliation would not prevent it, might even invite it."
Admiral Arthur W. Radford [former Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff]_From Pearl Harbor toVietnam: The Memoirs of Admiral Arthur W. Radford_1980, at 180, 181.
"As long as they [ballistic missiles] are with us, neither side can can escape the possibility of a sudden suprise attack in which unrecallable warheads arrive thirty minutes after launching. In spite of careful technology and the sanity and sobriety of those in control of such forces, this possibility will exist as long as the weapons exist..."
William Crowe [former Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff] et. al._Reducing Nuclear Danger_1993, at 43.
"The main focus of concern in past years has been the nuclear weapons both sides possess in such abundance. But it is increasingly apparent to Soviet and American leaders that the hazards may be rather more complex in character, such as regional crises causing alliance dissaray or posing escalation risks.
...risks of accident, inadvertence, and miscalculation inherent in the very existance of nuclear weapons."
General David Jones [former Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff] et. al._Defending Peace and Freedom: Toward Strategic Stability in the Year 2000_1988, at 1, 3.
" a third function of arms control is to create a stable planning environment and to avoid misperceptions about intentions that might trigger an avoidable counter-response."
General John Shalikashvili [former Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff] http://www.ceip.org/programs/npp/shalikashvili2000.htm
"I do not agree with those people who say you can control the size of this fire... neatly, cold-bloodedly... once it starts. I think that it is the most dangerous and disasterous thing in the world... because once it starts in a critical area, such as the NATO area, it is more likely than not, in my opinion, to explode into the whole thing, whether we like it or the Russians like it or anybody likes it."
General Lauris Norstad [Supreme Allied Commander, Europe] (in) R. Lapp_Kill and Overkill_1962, at 135.
"The aggressor knows that to start a war would invite his own destruction. However, there remains the risk of war by accident, by miscalculation. A probing operation to achieve political advantage--a border incident, negligible in itself--might flare out of control."
General Lauris Norstad [Supreme Allied Commander, Europe] Education, the Citizen, and NATO: Dep't of State BulletinDec. 16, 1957, at 954.
"Perhaps the greatest danger might spring from a weakness inviting exploitation from a probing operation that might well get out of hand as a result of a miscalculation. In short, from a mistake."
General Lauris Norstad [Supreme Allied Commander, Europe] (in) C.N. Barclay [editor, Army Quarterly] Can World War III Start by Mistake?: New York Times Magazine, Aug. 23, 1959, Section 6, at 11.
"Yet, under today's conditions, when men have control of machines capable of laying a world to waste, there must be a close interweaving of political and military goals, lest some misstep set us suddenly beyond the hope of salvaging more than a few scraps of our civilization."
General Matthew B. Ridgway [Four Star General, US Army, took over command of the 8th army in Korea after General Walker was accidentally killed, then Supreme Allied Commander, Europe]_The Korean War_1967, at 232.
"...the grave risk of rapid escalation to a general nuclear exchange which could result from the first use of theatre nuclear weapons...."
General Bernard W. Rogers [Supreme Allied Commander, Europe] The Atlantic Alliance: Prescriptions for a Difficult Decade: Foreign Affairs, Summ 1982, at 1151.
"The continuing risks. These include accidents and unauthorized launches...."
Andrew J. Goodpaster [former Supreme Allied Commander, Europe] Dec. 18, 1996. http://www.csmonitor.com/cgi-bin/getasciiarchive?script/96/12/18/121896.opin.opin.2
"...the continuing existence of nuclear weapons in the armories of nuclear powers, and the ever present threat of acquisition of these weapons by others, constitutes a peril to global peace and security and to the safety and survival of the people we are dedicated to protect."
General John R. Galvin [former Supreme Allied Commander, Europe, (1987-92)], General Charles Horner [former Commander in Chief, North American Aerospace Defense Command (NORAD)] General William E. Odom [Director, National Security Studies, Hudson Institute, former Director, National Security Agency] et. al. , PBS, The American Experience: The Race for the Superbomb, Dec. 5, 1996. http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/bomb/filmmore/reference/primary/leebutler.html
"For either side, war with the other would mean nothing but disaster. Both equally dread it. But the constant accleration of preparation may well, without specific intent, ultimately produce a spontaneous combustion."
General Douglas MacArthur [Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, Southwest Pacific, Five Star General] (in) MacArthur Makes Three Adresses...Sees War as 'Double Suicide,' Says Peoples Can Prevent It: U.S. News & World Report, Feb. 4, 1955, at 87.
"Men since the beginning of time have sought peace. Various methods through the ages have been attempted to devise an international process to prevent or settle disputes between nations. From the very start workable methods were found in so far as individual citizens were concerned, but the mechanics of an instrumentality of larger international scope have never been successful."
General Douglas MacArthur, speech before the joint session of Congress, Apr. 19, 1951. http://www.unclesam.net/warriors/farewell.htm
"Military alliances, balances of powers, leagues of nations, all in turn failed, leaving the only path to be by way of the crucible of war. The utter destructiveness of war now blocks out this alternative. We have had our last chance. If we will not devise some greater and more equitable system, our Armageddon will be at our door."
General Douglas MacArthur [Supreme Commander of the Allied Forces, Southwest Pacific, Five Star General] Old Soldiers Never Die (in)_The World's Great Speeches_(L. Copeland et. al. eds., 1973) at 596.
"Incidents at Sea can be described with a fair amount of accuracy as an extremely dangerous, but exhilarating, running game of 'chicken' that American and Soviet ships had been playing with each other for many years. Official Navy statements always have blamed the Russians for starting this game, but as any teen-aged boy knows, it takes two to make a drag race. [here Admiral Zumwalt describes his 'most memorable' event]... Foolish episodes of this kind occurred all the time... Of course, in addition to being juvenile, these incidents were terribly dangerous. Beyond the immediate damage to property and the loss of life any one of them might cause, any one could lead people to shoot at each other with results that might be by that time impossible to control."
Admiral Elmo Zumwalt [former Chief of Naval Operations, U.S. Navy]_On Watch_1976, at 391, 393.
"Only one thing can give us some sense of security that the Russians will not make atomic war during Phase II - that is if we build an overwhelmingly defended, overwhelmingly powerful U.S. atomic-air power plainly capable of destroying the Russian state in the counterattack. As long as we have a force like that only a gross miscalculation will lead the Russians into atomic war...."
Thomas Finletter [former Secretary of the Air Force] The Intolerable Atomic Absolute (in)_The Impact of Air Power_(E. Emme, ed) 1959, at 648.
"During the 1950s, Air Force leaders, almost to the man, did not believe in the stability of mutual deterrence, describing the concept as 'a dangerous fallacy'...."
Col. Alan J Parrington, USAF, Mutually Assured Destruction Revisited http://www.airpower.maxwell.af.mil/airchronicles/apj/apj97/win97/parrin.html
"...the risk of miscalculation, of each side misreading the other..."
Robert M. Gates [former Director, Central Intelligence Agency]_From the Shadows_1996, at 258.
"...the problem is that the deterrence is getting increasingly fragile, because of the nature of the technology and the kinds of weapons that are being developed.
The problem is not just a waste; the problem is more complicated than that. The new weapons are more dangerous to the possessors; much more dangerous....
The weapons are unusable, unilateral restraint won't solve anything, and the world we're headed toward is unlivable, resting on a fragile suspicion base which must be responded to in matters of moments if we see the wrong signals."
William E. Colby [former Director, Central Intelligence Agency] http://sun3.lib.uci.edu/racyberlib/Peace/interview-william_e_colby.html
"Nuclear destruction remains the greatest threat in terms of potential harm.... History is replete with conflicts that spread from incidents in unlikely places."
William Webster [former Director, Central Intelligence Agency] Threats to the U.S. National Security, Feb, 13, 1997 http://www.loyola.edu/dept/politics/intel/19970213webster.html
"We should not assume we can deter indefinitely all uses of nuclear weapons....Over the last fifty years we have come too close to mistakes and accidents as a result of being on hair-trigger alert."
Admiral Stansfield Turner [former Director, Central Intelligence Agency, former Commander of the U.S. atomic-powered ballistic-missile submarines]_Caging the Nuclear Genie_1997, at 52, 56.
"..the fact that in 1997 there are some 37,000 nuclear warheads somewhere out there in the world, largely between Russia and the United States, and those in themselves pose a danger to all mankind, because there may be accidents, there may be miscalculations..."
Admiral Stansfield Turner [former Director, Central Intelligence Agency, former Commander of the U.S. atomic-powered ballistic-missile submarines] http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/coldwar/interviews/episode-21/turner2.html
" If India were to conduct large scale offensive operations into Pakistani Kashmir, Pakistan might retaliate with strikes of its own in the belief that its nuclear deterrent would limit the scope of an Indian counterattack.
Both India and Pakistan are publicly downplaying the risks of nuclear conflict in the current crisis. We are deeply concerned, however, that a conventional war-once begun-could escalate into a nuclear confrontation."
George J. Tenet [Director, Central Intelligence Agency] Worldwide Threat - Converging Dangers in a Post 9/11 World, Testimony Before The Senate Select Committee on Intelligence (as prepared for delivery), Mar. 19, 2002. http://www.cia.gov/cia/public_affairs/speeches/senate_select_hearing_03192002.html
"We are here to make a choice between the quick and the dead....
Science has torn from nature a secret so vast in its potentalities that our minds cower from the terror it creates. Yet terror is not enough to inhibit the use of the atomic bomb. The terror created by weapons has never stopped man from employing them."
Bernard Baruch (speech at the opening session of the Atomic Energy Commission) (quoted in)_The World's Great Speeches_(L. Copeland et. al. eds. 1973) at 587.
"In fact, when it comes to the only way in which I think a nuclear war is likely to come about--that is an accident..."
Richard Perle [Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy] (testimony) National Security Policy: Hearings before the Defense Policy Panel of the house Armed Services Committee, 100th cong., 1st sess., Mar. 11, 13, 17, 18, 23, 1987, at 161.
[Q.]"'I do not know what the odds are on relative scenarios, but I have always felt, and still do, that the odds against an accidental launch are not nearly as high as I would like.'
'Given the gravity of the consequences.'"
Richard Perle [Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy]: NATO Defense and the INF Treaty: Hearings before the Senate Committee on Armed Services, 100th Cong., 2nd sess., Pt. 3, (1988) at 171.
"Even the major war scenarios entailed the use of nuclear weapons on a scale that was wholly incredible.
...the possibility of an accidental or unintended use of nuclear weapons."
Richard Perle [former Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy] (testimony) The Future of Nuclear Deterrence, Hearing before the Subcommittee on International Security, Proliferation, and Federal Services: Senate Committee on Governmental Affairs, 105th Cong., 1st sess., Feb. 12, 1997. http://frwebgate.access.gpo.gov/cgi-bin/getdoc.cgi?dbname=105_senate_hearings&docid=f:38379.wais
"One is deterrence may fail, despite our best efforts, and secondly if deterrence fails and we then execute the retaliatory attack, we are destroying potentially a large number of people who had no hand in the attack, who are innocent of any wrong-doing themselves and who would die as a result of our having relied on a policy that makes them hostages to a nuclear attack."
Perle, Richard N. [former Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy, in some circles also known as The Prince of Darkness](interview) Aug, 6, 2001 http://abc.net.au/4corners/roguestate/interviews/perle.htm
"The preliminaries of war are to some extent a mutually self-excitatory process, where the actions of either side stimulate the actions of the other side. These then react back on the first side and cause him to go further than he did 'one round earlier,' etc... each one must systematically interpret the other's reactions to his aggression, and this, after several rounds of amplification, finally leads to 'total conflict... I think, in particular, that the USA-USSR conflict will probably lead to an armed 'total' collision, and that a maximum rate of armament is therefore imperative."
John von Neumann [mathematician, Los Alamos Manhatten Project, IAS (Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton), former member, Atomic Energy Commission, member, ICBM Committee] (letter) von Neumann to Strauss [Chairman, Atomic Energy Commission] Nov. 21, 1951 (in) S. Heims_John von Neumann and Norbert Weiner_(1980) at 287.
"Today there is every reason to fear that even minor inventions and feints in the field of nuclear weapons can be decisive in less time that would be required to devise specific countermeasures. Soon existing nations will be as unstable in war as a nation the size of Manhatten Island would have been in a contest fought with the weapons of 1900."
John von Neumann [mathematician, Los Alamos Manhatten Project, IAS (Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton), former menber, Atomic Energy Commission, member, ICBM Committee] (in)_John von Neumann Collected Works_(A. Taub, ed., Vol. VI, 1963) at 506.
"I am sure there is no doubt in anybody's mind, that the purpose of al this preparedness is just one thing--to avoid a war. I believe that preparedness is absolutely necessary to avoid a war. In the long run, I believe preparedness is not sufficient to avoid a war."
Edward Teller [Los Alamos, and the so-called Father of the Hydrogen Bomb - however Hans Bethe, Director of the Theoretical Division at Los Alamos for the making of the first successful atomic bomb, says the mathematician Stanislaw Ulam was the real Father, Teller the mother because he carried it so long] The Nature of Nuclear Warfare (in)_The Impact of Air Power_(E. Emme ed., 1959) at 469.
"The more decisive a weapon is, the more surely it will be used in any real conflict and no agreements will help. Our only hope is getting the facts of our results before the people. This might help convince everybody that the next war would be fatal."
Edward Teller [Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore] Letter to Leo Szilard, Jul. 2, 1945 (in)_The Life and Times of Edward Teller_S.A. Blumberg & G. Owens, 1976, at 156.
"Unless the possibility of a future war can be eliminated, we are going to live in a world in which safety no longer exists."
Edward Teller [Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore] (statement) Atomic Energy Act of 1946: Hearings before the Senate Special Committee on Atomic Energy, 79th Cong., 2nd sess., on S. 1717, A Bill for the Development and Control of Atomic Energy, Pt. 2, Jan. 25, 28, 29, 30, 31 & Feb. 1, 1946, at 275.
"Atomic bombs in our possession had seemed absolute weapons. Atomic weapons on both sides seemed to herald absolute uncertainty....
In an important respect, mutual deterrence is as impractical as massive retaliation. Neither concept is workable because each pretends to draw lines where no lines can be drawn--between war and peace, between aggression and defense, between significant and insignificant acts....
In the long run, mutual deterrence will fail..."
Edward Teller [Los Alamos, Lawrence Livermore]_The Legacy of Hiroshima_1962, at 232, 233, 243.
Senator Brien McMahon [Chairman, Senate Special Committee on Atomic Energy] "'...as far as I am concerned personally, the political scientists have made such a mess that I think we would do well to hear such advice. After all, you people have been thinking about this thing for 4 or 5 years, and I, for one, am very glad to hear your advice... Have you thought about the alternative of unlimited atomic armament races between six or seven countries of the world and the possible outcome of that, considering history, if you are to look at history?'
'Yes, of course. That is a problem which I can easily answer. I believe that if there is atomic armament there will be atomic war.'"
Dr. J. Robert Oppenheimer [former Director, Los Alamos Manhatten Project] (testimony) Atomic Energy Act of 1946: Hearings before the Senate Special Committee on Atomic Energy, 79th Cong., 2nd sess., on S. 1717, A Resolution Creating a Special Committee to Investigate Problems Relating to the Development, Use, and Control of Atomic Energy, Pt. 2, Dec. 5, 6, 10, 12, 1945 (1946), at 212.
"...the greatest menace to civilization, the hydrogen bomb."
Hans Bethe [former Director of the Theoretical Division for the making of the first atomic bomb at Los Alamos, then at Cornell], The American Hydrogen Bomb (in)_The Atomic Age_M. Grodzins & E. Rabinowitch, eds. 1963, at 155.
[Q.] "'There's been no use of nuclear weapons for a long time. Do you think that will continue forever, or do you think that they will be used sooner or later?'
[A.] 'But in spite of the fact that I learned I was wrong before, I still have this idea that it will be used eventually. I don't see how human beings will avoid it with the present way they behave.'"
Richard Feynman [theoretical physicist, Los Alamos, Cal Tech] (in)_No Ordinary Genius: The Ilustrated Richard Feynman_C. Sykes, ed. 1994, at 60.
"The fact that no limits exist to the destructiveness of this weapon makes its very existence and the knowledge of its construction a danger to humanity as a whole."
Enrico Fermi [theoretical physicist, presided over the first successful sustained atomic chain reaction] et. al., Oct. 30, 1949 [italics supplied]. wysiwyg://42/http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/amex/bomb/filmmore/ reference/primary/ extractsofgeneral.html
"Two: the course of a probable armament race and the subsequent war... In the first stage of this development we shall have bombs but no one else will have them. This is the present situation. We feel safe and secure, but the people of other countries do not. We know that we have no intention of attacking other countries, but they probably cannot be expected to take us at our own evaluation. If the situation were reversed we would be very much alarmed and with good reasons. Others undoubtedly are alarmed now and believe they are alarmed with good reason, too... Atomic bombs must not be made by any country and they must not be stored any place in the world if we are to have any feeling of security on this all-too-small planet.
...the armament race. If continued it will lead to dire disaster."
Harold C. Urey [Chemist (nobel prize), University of Chicago, former Director, SAM laborarory, "the laboratory doing the research...on the materials used" in the production of the first successful atomic bomb] (testimony) Atomic Energy: Hearings before the Senate Special Committee on Atomic Energy, 79th Cong., 1st. sess., pursuant to S. Res. 179, A Resolution Creating a Special Committee to Investigate Problems Relating to the Development, Use, and Control of Atomic Energy, Pt. 1, Nov. 27, 28, 29, 30, 1945 & Dec. 3, 1945 (1945), at 82, 83.
"We have to keep in mind that atomic energy, having been discovered, cannot remain the property of one nation, because any country which does not possess this secret can very quickly independently discover it. And what is next? Either reason will win, or a devastating war, resembling the end of mankind."
Niels Bohr [theoretical physicist, the Copenhagen Group] Nov. 1945. http://cwihp.si.edu/cwihplib.nsf/16c6b2fc83775317852564a400054b28/2c77 18e849eaa5048525691c006dddc4?OpenDocument
"Humanity will be confronted with dangers of unprecedented character unless, in due time, measures can be taken to forestall a disastrous competition in such formidable armaments..."
Niels Bohr [theoretical physicist, the Copenhagen Group] http://www-groups.dcs.st-and.ac.uk/~history/Mathematicians/Bohr_Niels.html
"There are many of us who have given much thought and study to the terrible situation that would arise in the event that no arrangement could be reached for the successful control of atomic energy.
On that day, the destiny of civilization will hang in the balance."
Senator Brien McMahon [Chairman, Senate Special Committee on Atomic Energy, was such a strong promoter of atomic weapons he was also known as "the atomic senator"] (speech to the United States Senate, May, 21, 1947) (reprinted in) Bull. Atom. Sci., Jul. 1947, at 191.
"If I have said once, I have said a thousand times over the past half decade that, in history, arms races always lead to war. No sudden surge forward in the grim art of weaponeering can alter this historic lesson."
Senator Brien McMahon [Chairman, Senate Special Committee on Atomic Energy, was such a strong promoter of atomic weapons he was also known as "the atomic senator"] Survival--The Real Issue of Our Times: Bull. Atom. Sci., Aug. 1952, at 174.
"...the state of unstable equilibrium if both Russia and the United States succeed in developing hydrogen bombs..."
Lewis Strauss [former Chairman, Atomic Energy Commission]_Men and Decisions_1962, at 228.
"If the nuclear arms race were to proceed virtually unchecked, such results as the following seem inevitable...
Gradual replacement of human control by computer control, increasing the danger of launch by accident, error, or miscalculation."
Glenn Seaborg [former Chairman, Atomic Energy Commission]_Stemming the Tide_(1987) at 448.
"...the risk of nuclear destruction hangs over their heads, over everyone's head."
David Lilienthal [former Chairman, Atomic Energy Commission]_Change, Hope, and The Bomb_1963, at 167.
"I think if a nuclear war were to come between the Soviet Union and the United States, it is most likely to arise out of either a conventional conflict, or a crisis somewhere in the world in which there is involved a basic misperception by one side or the other as to the stakes involved. It is in that kind of context that I think the greatest danger of a nuclear war resides."
Lt. Gen. Brent Scowcroft [former Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, former National Security Advisor to President Gerald R. Ford and chairman of President Ronald Reagan's Commission on Strategic Forces] http://sun3.lib.uci.edu/racyberlib/Peace/interview-brent_scowcroft.html
"In the absence of a war, there is no certain way of knowing whether deterrence is working...
...the chances of an unintended [nuclear] conflict...
...the possibility that a crisis will eventually bring [nuclear] war as a result of the very character of the weapons systems involved.
...the chances that nuclear forces on each side by their own character will tend to turn one side or the other, in a crisis, toward using nuclear weapons."
Lt. Gen. Brent Scowcroft [former Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs, former National Security Advisor to President Gerald R. Ford and chairman of President Ronald Reagan's Commission on Strategic Forces]_Current Problems in Nuclear Strategy and Arms Control_...., at 6, 8, 9.
"...physical power ... now can destroy all of humanity directly...."
Zbigniew Brzezinski [former National Security Advisor to President Carter]_Out of Control_1993, at 228.
"...I think there is great reality in the danger of diffusion of nuclear weapons and the hazard that some of them might go off accidentally, or in a crisis that was relatively trivial. These are indeed very grave dangers..."
McGeorge Bundy [Special Assistant to the President for National Security Affairs] The Scientist and National Policy: Science, Mar. 1, 1963, at 808.
"...the risks and potential costs posed by a possible breakdown in the present deterrence regime based solely upon the ultimate threat of massive nuclear retaliation."
Paul Nitze [arms control negotiator] (testimony) Comitments, Consesus and U.S. Foreign Policy: Hearings before the Senate Committee on foreign Relations, 99th Cong., 1st sess., Jan. 31, Feb. 4, 5, 6, 7, 20, 25, 26, Oct. 31, Nov. 7, 12, 1985 (1986), at 369.
"SEC. 1108. (a) The [United States] Congress makes the following findings:
(1) An increasing number of scenarios (including misjudgement, miscalculation, misunderstanding, possession of nuclear arms by a terrorist group or a state sponsored threat) could precipitate a sudden increase in tension and the risk of a nuclear confrontation that neither side anticipates, intends, or desires."
United States Congress _PL 98-525_(Oct. 19, 1984) at 98, Stat. 2583.
"World affairs are so particularily unstable and explosive that no one can predict with any degree of confidence that there will not be a thermonuclear war in the future....
With such instruments of war available, it would be foolhardy to assume that they will never be used because sane and thoughtful people will prevail."
T. Martin & Donald C. Latham [later Deputy Undersecretary of Defense for Command, Control, Communications & Intelligence (C3I), Department of Defense]_Strategy for Survival (1963) at 6, 14.
"the war by miscalculation....may come at any time."
General Bernard Mongomery [Deputy Supreme Commander, Allied forces, World War II] A Look Through A Window at World War II: Royal United Service Institutional Journal, Nov. 1954, at 510.
"...the hydrogen bomb, which might blow all these pretty plans sky-high...."
Sir Winston Churchill [former Prime Minister, England] The Hydrogen Bomb, Apr. 5, 1954, House of Commons (in) Winston Churchill: His Complete Speeches (R. James, ed. Vol VIII, 1950-1963)_1974, at 8558.
"there is no doubt that trying to put oneself in the position of the other party to see how things look to him is one way, and perhaps the best way, of being able to feel and peer dimly into the unknowable future. It is, at any rate, the only guide - and it does not include accident, error, passion, folly or madness, madness which may arise from some error, some blunder, or from the result of some internal convulsion."
Sir Winston Churchill [former Prime Minister, England] (in)_Winston Churchill: His Complete Speeches (R. James, ed.) Vol VIII, 1950-1963)_1974, at 8132.
" if deterrence fails; or if there is a limited and unauthorised use of nuclear missiles."
Margaret Thatcher [former Prime Minister, England] (speech) New Threats for Old, A Lecture on the Fiftieth Anniversary of "The Sinews of Peace" Delivered at Westminster College, Fulton, MO, March 9, 1996. http://www.winstonchurchill.org/ffhthatch.htm
"...if deterrence fails..."
Margaret Thatcher [Prime Minister, England] (speech) reprinted at Center for Security Policy, March 11, 1996. http://www.security-policy.org/papers/1996/96-D24.html
"...the anxious, fragile peace imposed by nuclear deterrence. Such threats are intolerable..."
James Callaghan [former Prime Minister, England] et. al. http://www.ucsusa.org/security/civil.leaders.html
"Some countries will develop powerful systems, probably the Chinese and eventually the Germans - and, of course, the French. Nothing can stop them if the Great Powers go on....
And if all this capacity for destruction is spread about the world in the hands of all kinds of different characters - disctators, reactionaries, revolutionaries, madmen - then sooner or later, and certainly I think by the end of this century, either by error or folly or insanity, the great crime will be committed."
Harold MacMillan [Prime Minister, England]_At the End of the Day_1973, at 156.
"We believe that civilization today is in grave danger....It is contended that the existance of this weapon [atomic bomb] will itself prevent war. I recall the Prime Minister pointing out often in the years since the ending of the war that the existance of the atomic bomb in the hands of the United States was a deterrent preventing the U.S.S.R.,with its great superiority in numbers and conventional weapons, from sweeping right over Europe in a major act of aggresion. I thought he was right then. But as soon as the U.S.S.R. got their atom bomb the force of that deterrent was lessened. There was the certainty of retaliation, and, what is more, the possibility of anticipitation. The whole position has changed.
We see the same sequence in the production of the hydrogen bomb. There are those who contend that the possession of the hydrogen bomb can be an instrument for preserving peace. It is suggested that the threat of instant retaliation by the use of this weapon can be employed to prevent a resort to armed action anywhere. This idea can be detected in the speeches of some statesmen in the United States of America.
This is a profound delusion. The more absolute the sanction the greater the reluctance to use it.... Therefore, although we may have this sanction, I do not think it will by itself prevent wars....
Another suggestion is that hydrogen warfare is so devastating that neither side will ever resort to it. Well, I should like to believe it. The fact is that once there is war, absolute war, in the modern age, and if the existance of a nation is at stake, any weapon will be used in the last resort. We have seen it."
Clement Atlee [former Prime Minister, England] Parlimentary Debates (Hansard) House of Commons, Session 1953-1954, Apr. 5-30, 1954 , at 36, 38, 39.
"...unless there is some change I believe that the danger of world destruction is very real."
Clement Atlee [former Prime Minister, England] The Political Problem: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Oct. 1954, at 328.
"...colossal powers of destruction, which moreover, they continue to reinforce. So long as this this double threat of sudden death hangs over the world....these monstrous instruments of their power...
...how could she [America] remain detached in the event of world conflict, when at any moment from any point of the compass she could be dealt a death-blow?
"...when two rival powers, heavily over-armed, give each other the impression that they may reach for their guns at any moment?...How can we be sure that all the machines of every sort now flitting across the skies may not suddenly rain down terrible projectiles on any country in the world?"
General Charles de Gaulle [former President, France]_Memoirs of Hope: Renewal and Endeavor_1971 at 231, 244, 251.
"The destructiveness of nuclear weapons is immense....Nuclear weapons pose an intolerable threat to all humanity and its habitat, yet tens of thousands remain in arsenals built up at an extraordinary time of deep antagonism....The proposition that nuclear weapons can be retained in perpetuity and never used - accidentally or by decision - defies credibility."
Michel Rocard [former President, France] et. al. http://www.dfat.gov.au/cc/cc_report_intro.html & http://www.dfat.gov.au/cc/cc_report_exec.html
"The mathematical probability of nuclear war grows inexorably with the number of countries able to equip themselves with nuclear weapons -whether war comes through accident, technical failure, faulty interpretation of enemy actions and intentions, the arbitrary and provocative action of a third power, or the desperate 'going -it-alone' of a single fanatical aircrew...
"The emergence of new nuclear powers would destabilize the present world situation in two ways. For one thing, the danger of irrational decisions to initiate war would mount in accordance with statistical probability and the total number of possible combinations; and, for another, the existance of the newly introduced 'soft' systems would yet further increase the danger of the launching of aggressive or pre-emptive blows."
Helmut Schmidt [former Chancellor, Germany]_Defense or Retaliation_1962 at 40, 41.
"All indications suggest that both sides would be extremely cautious, in order to avoid precisely the dreaded, possibly uncontrollable escalation which some studies rightfully present as a danger...."
General Franz-Josef Schulze [ former Comander in Chief, Allied Forces, Central Europe] et. al., Nuclear Weapons and the Preservation of Peace: Foreign Affairs, Summ. 1982, at 1161.
"To contemplate the alternative, nuclear annihilation, or the gross euphemisms, 'nuclear accident,' or 'limited nuclear war,' is to contemplate the ultimate tragedy...."
Brian Mulroney [Prime Minister, Canada] (in)_Mulroney_(L. McDonald, 1985) at 44-45.
"conflicts of a nature that might, by their location, escalate into nuclear war...."
Pierre Trudeau [former Prime Minister, Canada]_Conversations with Canadians_1972, at 157.
"The first threat to survival is nuclear war... Such a war is not unthinkable though we like to think so. Today we can measure the universe and split the atom. In the world of science and technology we show the most amazing courage and imagination. But in the world of social and political behaviour, in controlling the human instincts and emotions that make for conflict and war, we are as primitive as our tribal ancestors ten thousand years ago....
The first and vital lesson [of history] is that deep and unresolved political differences between armed sovereign states, ultimately lead to military conflict...
If we have escaped the total catastrophe of nuclear war up to the present, it is primarily because of the awareness of two super-states that each, by the full use of the power it now possesses, can destroy the other but that, in doing so, it will destroy itself. Therefore it dare not use that power. Suicide is not at least a calculated objective of national policy, though it may be a result of such policy. This is the ultimate irony, the final absurdity; power reaching the stage where it immobilizes itself..."
Lester B. Pearson [former Prime Minister, Canada] (Speech) St. Martin-in-the-Fields, London, June 13, 1972. http://www.unac.org/canada/pearson/FAOandUN-Speech_Gollancz.html
"Mr. Green noted three such areas which were particularily deserving of ready consideration:....
2) measures to reduce the risk of war by accident, miscalculation, or suprise attack...."
John Diefenbaker [former Prime Minister, Canada]_One Canada_ 1977, at 75-76.
"What can we say then, in sum, on the balance of terror theory of automatic deterrence? It is a contribution to the rhetoric rather than the logic of war in the thermonuclear age. In suggesting that a carefully planned surprise attack can be checkmated almost effortlessly, that in short we may resume our deep pre-Sputnik sleep, it is wrong and its nearly universal acceptance is terribly dangerous....
In a clear sense the great multiplication and spread of nuclear arms throughout the world, the drastic increase in the degree of readiness of these weapons, and the decrease in the time available for the decision on their use must inevitably raise the risk of accident....
There are many sorts of accidents that could happen. [Listed]"
Albert Wohlstetter [RAND (United States Air Force Intelligence) considered perhaps the godfather of nuclear military analysis] The Delicate Balance of Terror: Foreign Affairs, Jan. 1959, at 231.
"In spite of deterrence a thermonuclear war could be tripped by accident or miscalculation... Indeed if there were no real danger of a rational attack, then accidents and the 'n-th' country problem seem the only problems."
Albert Wohlstetter [RAND (United States Air Force Intelligence)] The Delicate Balance of Terror, P-1472, Nov. 6, 1958, Revised Dec. 1958 http://www.rand.org/publications/classics/wohlstetter/P1472/P1472.html
"...in the event that the war starts by accident (and this, in turn, if we have a good high confidence deterrent, is more likely to be the way a war starts if it starts at all)."
Albert Wohlstetter [RAND (US Air Force Intelligence)]_On the Value of Overseas Bases: RAND, Jan. 5, 1960. http://www.rand.org/publications/classics/wohlstetter/P1877/P1877.html
"There are many ways in which all-out war could be triggered by accident or misunderstanding. [Listed]"
C. Hitch [RAND] & R. McKean [RAND] _The Economics of Defense in the Nuclear Age_1975, at 12.
"There are many ways in which a war might start today...
1. Inadvertent War. At the top of the list I have put the unpremeditated war, the fearful possibility that war might occur almost unintentionally as a result of mechanical or human error, false alarm, self-fulfilling prophecy, or unauthorized bahavior...
2. War by Miscalculation."
Herman Kahn [RAND, then cofounder, Hudson Institute]_Thinking About the Unthinkable_1962, at 39, 40, 44 [italics in original].
"...if one asks American analysts today for the most likely ways in which war might start, most of them would give a list quite close to the following:
1. Very tense crisis--Inadvertent War."
Herman Kahn [RAND, then cofounder, Hudson Institute]_Thinking About the Unthinkable_1962, at 143.
"Second to the Armageddon problem, but included in it, is the....possibility that a war will be touched off by accident or misunderstanding....
We must....take seriously the hypothetical danger of war by accident or we will find someone saying:
Who really believed that one could have thousands of weapons on alert and not have a button pressed? How could people have lived so dangerously and not have been worried to death? How could they have slept with the knowledge that the other side had a missile aimed at their city and ready to go?....
There is an uncomfortable similarity between Damocles, who had everything but security, and the West today. The main difference is that Damocles could see the sword that threatened him and the thin thread that restrained it, while today both sword and thread seem unreal to all to many."
Herman Kahn [RAND, then cofounder, Hudson Institute]_On Thermonuclear War_1960, at 525, 349.
"...we were so much more afraid of accidental war than deliberate war..."
Herman Kahn [RAND, Hudson Institute] (in) Shh! Let's Tell the Russians: Newsweek, May 5, 1969, at 47.
"...it is really better to consider accidental war as the deterrence problem."
Thomas C. Schelling [Yale, then RAND, then John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard, then U. Maryland] Meteors, Mischief, and War: Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Sep't 1960, at 293.
"This does not mean that a major nuclear war cannor occur. It only means that if it occurs it will result from a process that is not entirely forseen, from reactions that are not fully predictable, from decisions that are not wholly deliberate, from events that are not fully under control. War has always invoved uncertainty, especially as to its outcome: but with the technology and the geography and the politics of today, it is hard to see how a major war could get started except in the presence of uncertainty. Some kind of error or inadvertence, some miscalculations of enemy intent, some steps taken without knowledge of steps taken by the other side, some random event or false alarm, or some decisive action to hedge against the unforseeable would have to be involved in the process on one side or both."
Thomas C. Schelling [Yale, then RAND, then John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard, then U. Maryland]_Arms and Influence_(first printed 1966)_1976, at 94, 95.
"The nuclear deterrence system familiar to us today, with very dominant offensive capabilities, is just fine all the time that it either functions as we intend or, as generally is the case, all the time that it is not severely tested. The problem, indeed the enduring problem, is that we are resting our future upon a nuclear deterrence system concerning which we cannot tolerate even a single serious malfunction."
Colin S. Gray [Chairman, National Institute for Public Policy, Fairfax, VA] Department of Defense Appropriations for fiscal Year 1985: Hearings before the Senate Committee on Armed Services, 98th Cong., 2st sess., Pt. 6 (1984) at 3077.
"It is always possible and to some degree inevitable that mobilization for war renders the outbreak of war more likely... A president who wishes to engage in some fine-tuned political crisis managment could discover that the mechanical dynamics of military mobilization, as the forces' alert status was raised, would produce a great deal of 'noise' that could obscure his intended signals...
Forces in a high-alert status may be likened to a runner on his starting blocks--a false start is always possible when the adrenelin is flowing."
Colin S. Gray_Nuclear Strategy and Strategic Planning_1981, at 22, 33.
"The requirements of deterrence are indeterminate or, at best, very uncertain....
Even if our deterrent policy is nominally effective, we may trip accidentally or inadvertently into war, perhaps courtesy of the catalytic action of a third party. Further, individual leaders and leadership groups can be subject to mood swings---optimism/ pessimism--and also are liable to redefine policy objectives (the 'stakes') quite abruptly. In short, an adequate deterrent at 0900 hours may not be adequate by 1600 hours."
Colin S. Gray [Chairman, National Institute for Public Policy, Fairfax, VA] Deterrence Resurrected: Revisiting Some Fundamentals: Parameters, Summer, 1991. http://carlisle-www.army.mil/usawc/Parameters/1991/gray1.htm
"The point is that there could be crises wherein an opponent is beyond deterrence; deterrence simply cannot operate. Admittedly, in the nuclear age, such occurrences should be rare. However, the problem is critical even if the problem of deterrence failing is low because the consequences are so grave.
....the fact that deterrence, regardless of how effective it should be in principle, may fail."
Keith Payne [Hudson Institute, president, National Institute for Public Policy]_Nuclear Deterrence in U.S.-Soviet Relations_1982, at 217, 223 [italics in original].
"...escalation could be suicidal."
Keith Payne [Hudson Institute, president, National Institute for Public Policy] (in) Threat Assessment, Military Strategy, and Defense Planning: Hearings before the Senate Comittee on Armed Services, 102nd. Cong., 2nd sess., 1992, at 117.
"In what circumstances could it break out just the same, in spite of all their precautions?
The first possibility is war by accident."
Raymond Aron_The Great Debate_1965, at 56 [italics in original].
"...the fear of escalation has become stronger with the passage of time..."
Martin van Creveld, Through A Glass, Darkly: Some Reflections on the Future of War http://www.nwc.navy.mil/press/Review/2000/autumn/art2-a00.htm
"The biggest danger is from unauthorized or accidental launch.....
But the whole idea of nuclear retaliatory forces, or a deterrent, is really quite questionable...."
Richard Garwin [IBM, military advisor] (interview) The Idea of a Nuclear Deterrent Is Questionable: Frontline, July 3-16, 1999, reposted by CFR (Council on Foreign Relations) http://www.foreignrelations.org/public/pubs/GarwinInterview.html
"In the technical sense of the term we may indeed be far away from a pushbutton war, as we are so often reminded, but we are living right now in a situation in which the flashing of certain signals, possible ambiguous signals, would in effect push buttons starting the quick unwinding of a military force which has been tensed and coiled for total nuclear war."
Bernard Brodie, Nuclear Weapons: Strategic or Tactical?: Foreign Affairs, Jan. 1954, at 229.
"It is curious how slow people have been in awakening to the new and tremendously increased risks of our situation... Slow to grow, too, has been a realization of the fast-growing risk that a great disaster may arise accidentally--from the intense efforts which are being made to attain instant readiness for nuclear retaliation...
For the primary danger today is of an accidental rather than of a deliberately planned nuclear war. This danger lies in the possibility that some small aggressive move, unless quickly curbed and quenched, might develop unintentionally into nuclear war."
B. H. Liddell-Hart_Deterrent or Defense_1960, at 68, 139.
[Q] "'You've indicated that a [nuclear] crisis will escalate most likely based on misperceptions. What are the likely misperceptions?
[A] 'I believe that the most likely way that nuclear war is likely is where you already have conflicts where forces are engaged against each other.
...it seems to me that one of the most likely causes of a nuclear war is going to be a breakdown in relations during a crisis, whether that's caused by the miscalculations that we've talked about or...
The basic problem with the control of the forces on each side is that in the very situation where you want those controls to be as tight as possible, that is either in a crisis or in a situation where a conventional conflict is already underway, in those situations military commanders are going to be demanding the greatest autonomy possible for their own forces, and you're going to get a conflict there with the military who are going to be basically concerned with military effectiveness. So that submarine commanders are going to be trailing the submarines of the other sides, naval vessels are going to be already aiming their radars and locking their fire control systems on the ships of the other side. Just simply for straight military reasons. But those actions themselves are the ones which are going to do the most to frighten the other side and indeed, could even start escalating things actually in the fields in ways that the decision-makers in Moscow and Washington might not even know about, let alone be able to exercise any control over."
Desmond Ball [Head, Strategic and Defense Study Center, Research School of Pacific Studies, Australian National University] http://www.ucf.ics.uci.edu/~zencin/peace2/interviews/ball.html [brackets supplied]
"Mankind has been spared nuclear devastation since the annihiliation of two Japanese cities by the only two nuclear weapons then existing. But the destructiveness of nuclear arsenels, now increased many thousandfold, has sunk into human consciousness like man's knowledge of his mortality.
We all turn away, however, from the thought that nuclear war may be as inescapable as death, and may end our lives and our society within this generation or the next.We plan and work every day for the twenty-first century--as parents educating our children, as young workers saving for retirement, as a nation that seeks to preserve its physical environment, its political traditions, its cultural heritage. For this larger horizon--encompassing for the younger generation simply the common expectation of a healthy life--we do in fact assume 'nuclear immortality.' We believe, or we act as if we believe, that thanks to a certain international order, the existing arsenels of nuclear weapons with their almost incomprehensible destructiveness will never be used.
Yet this order is so constructed that it cannot move toward abolition of nuclear weapons. It demands, as the necessary condition for avoiding nuclear war, the very preservation of these arms, always ready to destroy entire nations...
But nobody can predict that the fatal accident or unauthorized act will never happen. The hazard is too elusive. It is inherent not only in the ineradicable possibility of technical defects, but also in the inevitable vulnerability to human error of all command and operational procedures--during periods of high alert as well as during the many years of quiet waiting....
Given the huge and far-flung missile forces, ready to be launched from land and sea on both sides, the scope for disaster by accident is immense....
In a matter of seconds--through technical accident or human failure--mutual deterrence might thus collapse."
Fred Ikle [RAND] Can Nuclear Deterrence Last out the Century?: Foreign Affairs, Jan. 1973, at 267, 272, 274, 275.
"In broadest terms, the danger facing the world is that the superpowers have instituted a major nuclear showdown. They have built the most complex technical apparatus ever conceived, without thinking through its purpose or how to control it."
Paul Bracken [Yale]_The Command and Control of Nuclear Forces_1983, at 239.
"Very few people think that....anyone would launch a nuclear war out of the clear blue sky, or even as a result of some absolutely sudden confrontation that would occur, they would have delivered ultimatum or something like that. That has not occurred, and in the judgment of practically all experts, will not occur. The great danger is the danger of something like the Cuban Missile Crisis in 1962, perhaps this time located in the Middle East or the Persian Gulf, or possibly in the Balkans where there is a gradually intensifying trading back and forth of first political and diplomatic, and then local military moves that cumulatively escalates into a very severe confrontation. And each side could gradually find itself sucked into a situation which would be very difficult to get out of. That is what I worry about. That is what I think most people who look at the actual scenarios for how nuclear war might begin worry about the most...
I'm reminded of the people who believed around the turn of the century, and early in this century, that the Triple Entente and the Triple Alliance were keeping Europe out of war and had done so decade after decade, or year after year. The actual alliance was only formed a couple of decades before the war. And then in July 1914 we discovered otherwise. There's always peace until the war actually occurs. The fact that we have not had a war until now is no guarantee that there will not be one tomorrow or next year."
Richard Smoke [director, Center for Foreign Policy Development, Brown University] http://sun3.lib.uci.edu/racyberlib/Peace/interview-richard_smoke.html
"The hydrogen bomb is a fatal boomerang....
... the risk of an unintentional slide into an all-out war of mutual suicide....The consequences of unlimited war with nuclear weapons would be so fatal to everyone involved that the prospect causes hesitation, delay and the feebleness in reacting to any aggression which is not obviously and immediately a vital threat. The general effect is weakening the will to make a stand against aggression, particularly any that occurs outside the vital area of Europe, while increasing the risk that an all-out war may be precipitated through an emotional spur of the moment decision....
Indeed, its [the Hydrogen Bomb] basic drawback is that if it fails as a deterrent, and is put into action, it automatically entails suicide for Western civilization."
B.H. Liddell Hart, Western Defense Planning: Military Review, June 1956. http://www-cgsc.army.mil/milrev/english/janfeb97/hart.htm
"The second idea is that thermonuclear war, though not desired by either one of the present duelists, may break out just the same. Few theoreticians regard this contingency as probable within the next twenty years...but all of them maintain - and I do not see how one could deny this - that it would be unreasonable to constantly brandish the threat of nuclear retaliation and at the same time to assume it would never be necessary to carry it out. The war for which one prepares so as not to have to fight it, though sometimes called 'impossible', is possible just the same. If it were indeed physically or morally impossible, deterrence would cease to operate."
Raymond Aron_The Great Debate_1965, at 52-53.
"...the reprisal forces must also function virtually automatically. To the potential aggressor, reprisal must appear ineluctable...
This virtual inevitably of reaction, however disturbing it appears, is indispensible. If the adversary did not believe it, he could gamble on the hesitations of his future victim...
But for the nation basing its security on dissuasion ["deterrence"], the choice is simple: either this policy of dissuasion fails and the strongest power wins, or else a risk is run in order to give some validity to a concept on which everything depends. It will be objected that weakening the virtues of the policy of dissuasion may be less serious than launching a thermonuclear cataclysm by mistake: particularily since at the rate the threat can now be manifested and materialized, it is easy to make errors in estimation."
Pierre Gallois [General, French Air Force (Ret)]_The Balance of Terror_1961, at 122, 123 [brackets supplied].
"...the preservation of a strong deterrent effect and the actual prevention of war are not the same thing. Indeed the most serious threat of war under current circumstances probably lies in the possibility that organizationally and technically complex military operations might override coherent policy decisions and produce a war that was not intended."
John Steinbruner [Director, Foreign Policy Studies, Brookings] National Security and the Concept of Strategic Stability: Journal of Conflict Resolution, Sep't, 1978, at 424 [italics in original].
"The risk of an unintended engagement that is inherent in high alert operations is a residual danger of such massive potential..."
John D. Steinbruner [Director, Foreign Policy Studies, Brookings] United States Security Interests in the Post-Cold War World, Statement before the House Committee on National Security, June 6, 1996. http://www.brook.edu/views/testimony/steinbruner/19960606.HTM
"The point is not to frighten, but to stimulate the best minds in both the United States and the Soviet Union to think soberly about the future potential for destruction facing the world. There are an increasing number of scenarios that could precipitate the outbreak of nuclear war that neither side anticipated or intended."
Senator Sam Nunn [Chairman, Senate Armed Services Committee] Cong. Record S3964 (daily ed., Apr. 26, 1982).
"If deterrence should fail, and nuclear war should come through miscalculation or design...."
R. Sprague, W. Foster. J. Baxter, R. Calkins, J. Corson, J. Perkins, R. Prim, H. Skifter, W. Webster, J. Weisner [Steering Committee, Security Rresources Panel] Deterrence and Survival in the Nuclear Age ("Gaither Report" of 1957): Joint Committee on Defense Production, Congress of the United States, Jan. 1984, at 49.
"We believe that so long as nations or their subjects engage in competition in the fields of atomic energy the hazards of atomic warfare are very great indeed....
The art of atomic weapons is in its infancy and we are quite ignorant of the possibilities in this field. Such ignorance, such uncertainty of such catastrophic weapons, is itself a source of danger....
If nations or their citizens carry on intrinsically dangerous activities it seems to us that the chances for safeguarding the future are hopeless."
Acheson-Lilienthal Report on the International Control of Atomic Energy, Mar. 16, 1946, at 21, 23, 30.
"...whoever does not understand that the danger lies, not in the possibility that someone else might have more missiles and warheads than we do, but in the very existance of these unconscionable quantities of highly poisonous explosives, and their existance, above all, in hands as weak and shaky and undependable as those of ourselves or our adversaries or any other mere human beings: whoever does not understand these things is never going to guide us out of this increasingly dark and menacing forest of bewilderments into which we have all wandered."
George F. Kennan [Director, Policy Planning Staff, U.S. State Department. Widely assumed to be the author of the famous article (signed "X") in Foreign Affairs suggesting the U.S. policy toward the Soviet Union as one of "containment"] (in) Freeman Dyson [physicist, (IAS) Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton]_Weapons and Hope_1984, at 179.
"...the risk of accidental [nuclear] war."
Eugene V. Rostow [Professor of law at Yale University, former Dean of the Yale Law School, former Chairman of the Committee on the Present Danger, former Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, former Director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency] (interview) A World of Clear and Present Danger, Quest for Peace Video Series, 1985. http://sun3.lib.uci.edu/racyberlib/Peace/interview-eugene_v_rostow.html
"No one can prevent the escalation of conventional war to nuclear war."
Eugene V. Rostow [Professor of law at Yale University, former Dean of the Yale Law School, former Chairman of the Committee on the Present Danger, former Undersecretary of State for Political Affairs, former Director of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency] From the Finland Station: Vital Speeches, Apr. 1, 1983, at 362.
"If there is ever a nuclear war, it will be like August 1914--a gradual losing of control. There would be rival alerts, no one backing down, no one wanting to fight, but a mounting confrontation that could lead to fighting."
William Hyland [strategic specialist for the Nixon, Ford & Carter Administrations, future editor, Foreign Affairs] (in) Living With Mega-Death: Time, Mar. 29, 1982, at 25.
"As these weapons, the delivery vehicles, the whole system, become more and more complicated, the chance that there will be a technological or psychological accident that initiates the catastrophic interchange of these terribly destructive weapons becomes greater and greater, so that we get in more and more danger that a nuclear war will break out. When the world is destroyed, it'll be by accident, not by design, not by the direct decision of Reagan or Andropov, but by accident."
Linus Pauling [debatably the world's greatest structural chemist, discovered the structure of the alpha helix of protein (setting the stage for the stunning discovery of the structure of DNA by FHC Crick/JD Watson), Caltech] (interview, U.C. Berkeley) Jan, 18, 1983. http://globetrotter.berkeley.edu/conversations/Pauling/pauling5.html
"...the chances of [nuclear] war by error or miscaculation in crisis..."
Paul Nitze [head, U.S. Delegation to the INF Negotiations] (in) Soviets Suspend INF Negotiations: Dep't of State Bulletin, Jan. 1984, at 49.
"Even if America and Russia were to act in concert with each other in trying to prevent armed clashes between nations which they are committed to defend, there would still be no assurance that some disturbance of this sort would not in fact occur.
In the absence of an adequate philosophy of what America and Russia might be permitted to threaten to do to each other, or to some other nation, in any of the hypothetical contingencies that might conceiveably arise, the bombs stockpiled in America and Russia might well create an instable situation in which even a minor disturbance might trigger all-out atomic destruction."
Leo Szilard [theoretical physicist, credited by some as the father of atomic weapons] How to Live With the Bomb-And Survive (in)_The Atomic Age_(M. Grodzins & E. Rabinowitch, eds. 1963) at 222.
"If super [thermonuclear] bombs will work at all, there is no inherent limit in the destructive power that may be attained in them....The existance of such a weapon in our armory would have far-reaching effects on world opinion: reasonable people the world over would realize that the existance of a weapon of this type whose power of destruction is essentially unlimited represents a threat to the future of the human race which is intolerable..."
James Bryant Conant [President, Harvard University, member of the General Advisory Committee to the United States Atomic Energy Commission] Oct. 30, 1949 (quoted in) Freeman Dyson [physicist, (IAS) Institute for Advanced Studies, Princeton]_Weapons and Hope_1984, at 31.
"The situation in which we are now looks to me like it is getting ever less stable because of the supershort timelines, if nothing else. Ignore the hard-target killers. Just consider their submarines off our coasts and our Pershings in Germany. Things can happen very quickly."
L. Wood [Lawrence Livermore Laboratory] (in) G. Seaborg [former Chairman, Atomic Energy Commission]_Stemming the Tide_(1987) at 448.
"...the possibility of an accidental attack cannot be excluded a priori. The confident rejection of the possibility of error is therefore unwarranted."
Edward Luttwak_Strategy and History_1985, Vol. 2, at 12.
"A balance of terror is now threatened by a balance of error."
L. Wieseltier_Nuclear War, Nuclear Peace_1983, at 39.
"I would like to believe that nuclear weapons as such will never be used again, but I am not that naive. I think they will be, just because we have them."
Gen. Paul Tibbets [Commander of the 509th Airborne Division that air-dropped the first atomic bombs on Japan] (in) R. Tredici_At Work in the Fields of the Bombs_1987, at photograph #50.
"If after the war [World War II] a situation is allowed to develop in the world which permits rival powers to be in uncontrolled possession of these new means of destruction, the cities of the United States as well as the cities of other nations will be continuous danger of sudden annihilation."
The Franck Report - 1945 http://www.atomicarchive.com/Docs/Franck.html
"Whether or not credit has been given correctly to the role of nuclear weapons in having prevent large-scale war after World War II, it is true that this record may be broken at any time by a nuclear accident, by escalation or a war initiated between third powers, or by unauthorized attacks."
W. Panofsky [Director, Stanford Linear Accelerator Center] The Mutual-Hostage Relationship between America and Russia: Foreign Affairs, Oct. 1973, at 116.
"....there are lots of other ways in which a nuclear war might occur other than by the deliberate choice of the President or the Soviet leader."
Graham T. Allison [Dean, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard, future Director, Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, John F. Kennedy School of Government] Avoiding nuclear war: Hearing before the Defense Policy Panel of the House Committee on Armed Services, 99th cong., 1st sess. 1985, at 2.
"We make clear that we feel deterrence is rather robust, and we see no reason to believe it will fail sometime soon. But when we ask ourselves whether we think it will last forever, our answer is 'no'. Probably not. We reach this view not because we believe that a rational leader is going to wake up one day and decide its a good day for a nuclear war. We reach it when we think of the system that supports deterrence, the sheer numbers of the weapons, the number of the people, the imperfection of the institutions, the technologies, the organizations, and the individuals. It is likely that eventually one of those elements would fail. We don't have a solution...."
Dr. Albert Carnesale [Academic Dean, John F. Kennedy School of Government, Harvard] Avoiding Nuclear War: Hearing before the Defense Policy Panel of the House Committee on Armed Services, 99th cong., 1st sess., 1985, at 36.
"Little wonder that some of our nuclear scientists are consternated by their own handicraft! Their attempt, nevertheless, to prove that the atomic bomb, just because of its destructive force, has made war 'impossible' is hardly persuasive, any more than was the assurance of the bus-driver to his nervous passengers that he couldn't drive over the precipice that their road ran beside, 'because', said he, 'if we drove over that we'd all be killed!' The atomic may have effectively prevented all future wars except the next one, but that is just the war that today has mankind so deeply, so justifiably troubled."
Edward Corwin_Total War and the Constitution_1947, at 9, 10.
"The Russian ballistic missile early warning system and nuclear command and control system have also been affected by aging and delays in planned modernization. In the context of a crisis growing out of civil strife, present early warning and command and control (C2) weaknesses could pose a risk of unauthorized or inadvertent launch of missiles against the United States....
...the risk of an accident or of a loss of control over Russian ballistic missile forces--a risk which now appears small--could increase sharply and with little warning if the political situation in Russia were to deteriorate."
The Honorable Donald H. Rumsfeld, Chairman, Dr. Barry M. Blechman, General Lee Butler, USAF (Ret.) Dr. Richard L. Garwin, Dr. William R. Graham, Dr. William Schneider, Jr., General Larry D. Welch, USAF (Ret.), Dr. Paul D. Wolfowitz, The Honorable R. James Woolsey_Executive Summary of the Report of the Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile Threat to the United States_July 15, 1998. http://www.claremont.org/bmd_threat_summary.htm
"There are more than 35,000 nuclear warheads in the world today. That statistic alone should impel us into urgent action. Unfortunately, there is nothing resembling urgency on this topic today. Any of three dangerous possibilities could overtake us:
1.A small number of nuclear weapons could be launched from Russia by accident or mistake because of deterioration of the maintenance and control mechanisms in Russia's nuclear weapons facilities....
3. A large nuclear exchange between Russia and the United States could take place much as we feared during the Cold War, should relations between Russia and the United States deteriorate and a miscalculation flash out of control."
Stansfield Turner [former Commander of the U.S. Navy Nuclear Submarine Fleet, former Director, Central Intelligence Agency] A New NuclearTriad (1998 article drawn from his book, Caging the Nuclear Genie, 1997). http://www.unc.edu/depts/diplomat/amdipl_8/turner.html
"... Of course there's a risk today of major nuclear exchange. It's not as high as it was during the period of the Cold War, when we were in a state of tension with the Soviet Union. When you've got 20-some thousand nuclear warheads on one side, and 15-some thousand warheads on our side, you cannot ignore this. The amount of destructive capacity is so great that you cannot overlook the potential that it might be used. If the probability is .001, the catastrophe at the end is so great that you can't ignore even that very low probability. It isn't that low today, because you have this risk that there'll be mistakes made, you have the risk that there'll be accidents and something will get started, and if one goes off, two go off. I mean, you just don't know what will ever happen."
Admiral Stansfield Turner [former Commander of the U.S. Navy Nuclear Submarine Fleet, former Director, Central Intelligence Agency] (interview, Dec. 18, 1997). http://www.gwu.edu/~nsarchiv/coldwar/interviews/episode-21/turner4.html
The Second Coming of the Nuclear Age
"Whether by accident, because of a terrorist act, or as part of a military campaign, a nuclear bomb might explode some day, unleashing forces that would transform the international system far more profoundly than did the collapse of the Soviet empire. The end of the present era, in which nuclear weapons are plentiful but never used would be sudden, and the major nuclear powers are ill prepared for the revolution in strategic thinking this event would compel.
Fifty years ago the atomic devastation of Hiroshima and Nagasaki had an immense emotional impact. The long period of nonuse that followed has shrivelled public awareness of the bomb's power to merely a faint apprehension. Just one or two destructive nuclear detonations would revive that anxiety everywhere, and Americans would find it much harder to cope with these reawakened passions than in August 1945 After their great victory in World War II, Americans rode a wave of optimism and were comforted by the knowledge that, at least for a while, no other state possessed atomic technology...
For example, the budgets for offensive nuclear forces and those for all defensive measures indicate that the major nuclear powers now allocate about a hundred times as much to deterrence as to the prevention or mitigation of a catastrophic accident or human error. Though hidden from public scrutiny, the same imbalance exists-and is far more dangerous-in the trade-offs military planners make between enhancing deterrence and reducing the risk of accidental nuclear war. While they have switched off wartime targeting and taken some missile forces off alert, Russian strategists continue to keep part of their forces on a hair-trigger posture to enhance deterrence against an implausible U.S. surprise attack. U.S. military leaders likewise keep some of their forces on continuous alert, feeding the arguments of Russian planners that their missiles must be ready for launch at a moment's notice. Unless addressed, this skewed cosmic gamble will persist for years, placing nearly all bets on deterrence, with little insurance against human folly."
Fred Iklé http://www.mfa.gov.tr/news/SELTI/04-96/06.htm
"I've never been a big enthusiast for our whole approach of being able to launch on warning or launch in a very short amount of time. Firing off 1,000 or 500 or 2,000 nuclear warheads on a few minutes' consideration has always struck me as an absurd way to go to war. I don't know how one chooses political war aims to support that approach. Now, because of deterrence theory and arms control notions of stability, etc., we've talked ourselves into this kind of Rube Goldberg world where we've surrendered political choice to these nutty para-mechanistic ideas and technology."
General William Odom (interview, PBS, 1999). http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/russia/ interviews/odom.html
"Growing reliance on intentional quick use in a crisis and growing susceptibility to unintentional use means that the nuclear situation is more unstable and perilous today than it was during the Cold War....
Presidents Clinton and Yeltsin have created the widespread impression that U.S. and Russian strategic missiles no longer pose an immediate nuclear threat to each country's population because of an agreement signed in early 1994 to stop aiming those missiles at one another after May 1994. In reality, the steps they took to implement their pledge were entirely cosmetic and symbolic. Neither removed the wartime aim points from their missiles portfolios of preprogrammed targets. Neither lengthened the amount of time needed to initiate a deliberate missile strike. And the risk and consequences of an accidental or unauthorized launch were not significantly affected by their pledge."
Bruce G. Blair [Brookings Institute] Statement before the House National Security Subcommittee, Mar. 13, 1997. http://www.nukefix.org/97-3-13Blair.html
"It is obvious that the rushed nature of this process, from warning to decision to action, risks causing a catastrophic mistake."
Bruce G. Blair [Brookings Institute] Taking Nuclear Weapons off Hair-Trigger Alert: Scientific American, Nov. 1997.
"This system is an accident waiting to happen."
Bruce G. Blair [Brookings Institute] (interview, PBS, 1999). http://www.pbs.org/wgbh/pages/frontline/shows/russia/interviews/blair.html
Page created 1998. Updated Dec 2002
