8 Years Later - Primacy Reached?

[don]

Foreign Affairs March/April 2006 Issue
The Rise of U.S. Nuclear Primacy
By Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press

For almost half a century, the world's most powerful nuclear states have been locked in a military stalemate known as mutual assured destruction (MAD). By the early 1960s, the nuclear arsenals of the United States and the Soviet Union had grown so large and sophisticated that neither country could entirely destroy the other's retaliatory force by launching first, even with a surprise attack. Starting a nuclear war was therefore tantamount to committing suicide.

During the Cold War, many scholars and policy analysts believed that MAD made the world relatively stable and peaceful because it induced great caution in international politics, discouraged the use of nuclear threats to resolve disputes, and generally restrained the superpowers' behavior. (Revealingly, the last intense nuclear standoff, the 1962 Cuban missile crisis, occurred at the dawn of the era of MAD.) Because of the nuclear stalemate, the optimists argued, the era of intentional great-power wars had ended. Critics of MAD, however, argued that it prevented not great-power war but the rolling back of the power and influence of a dangerously expansionist and totalitarian Soviet Union. From that perspective, MAD prolonged the life of an evil empire.

This debate may now seem like ancient history, but it is actually more relevant than ever -- because the age of MAD is nearing an end. Today, for the first time in almost 50 years, the United States stands on the verge of attaining nuclear primacy. It will probably soon be possible for the United States to destroy the long-range nuclear arsenals of Russia or China with a first strike. This dramatic shift in the nuclear balance of power stems from a series of improvements in the United States' nuclear systems, the precipitous decline of Russia's arsenal, and the glacial pace of modernization of China's nuclear forces. Unless Washington's policies change or Moscow and Beijing take steps to increase the size and readiness of their forces, Russia and China -- and the rest of the world -- will live in the shadow of U.S. nuclear primacy for many years to come.

One's views on the implications of this change will depend on one's theoretical perspective. Hawks, who believe that the United States is a benevolent force in the world, will welcome the new nuclear era because they trust that U.S. dominance in both conventional and nuclear weapons will help deter aggression by other countries. For example, as U.S. nuclear primacy grows, China's leaders may act more cautiously on issues such as Taiwan, realizing that their vulnerable nuclear forces will not deter U.S. intervention -- and that Chinese nuclear threats could invite a U.S. strike on Beijing's arsenal.

But doves, who oppose using nuclear threats to coerce other states and fear an emboldened and unconstrained United States, will worry. Nuclear primacy might lure Washington into more aggressive behavior, they argue, especially when combined with U.S. dominance in so many other dimensions of national power.

Finally, a third group -- owls, who worry about the possibility of inadvertent conflict -- will fret that U.S. nuclear primacy could prompt other nuclear powers to adopt strategic postures, such as by giving control of nuclear weapons to lower-level commanders, that would make an unauthorized nuclear strike more likely -- thereby creating what strategic theorists call "crisis instability"...

Read the entire article here.

Related:
Superiority Complex, Why War With China Is More Likely, The Atlantic, Jul 1 2007
The Nukes We Need, Foreign Affairs, November/December 2009
Second Strike, The Counterforce Fantasy, Foreign Affairs, March/April 2010

[aaron]

Re: 8 Years Later - Primacy Reached?

Interesting article... Is there a follow up written in this decade?

remember how great Reagan was because he drove the soviets to overspend themselves on their military build up? Well, it seems to me the role has been reversed over the last decade. China and Russia are watching US spend all treasure. They laugh their butts off while their kids master hacking our missile systems for ten dollars an hour.

For example, the Chinese have been developing missiles that can shoot down satellites . Likely, the research is part of their space program. Kill the satellites, hack the attackers, threaten allies, take out a carrier group or three. Of course, they likely spend little money on this, but US will respond with a $trillion extra in spending to counter their $200 million in experiments.

Now, Russia moves a few troops to their border and you know Europe/US will spend one trillion on defense ("energy security"). During that time Russia makes more money because of higher oil and gas prices. They continue to use the dollar system because, frankly, it works for them.

[sutro]

Re: 8 Years Later - Primacy Reached?

Interesting article... Is there a follow up written in this decade?

remember how great Reagan was because he drove the soviets to overspend themselves on their military build up? Well, it seems to me the role has been reversed over the last decade. China and Russia are watching US spend all treasure. They laugh their butts off while their kids master hacking our missile systems for ten dollars an hour.

For example, the Chinese have been developing missiles that can shoot down satellites . Likely, the research is part of their space program. Kill the satellites, hack the attackers, threaten allies, take out a carrier group or three. Of course, they likely spend little money on this, but US will respond with a $trillion extra in spending to counter their $200 million in experiments.

Now, Russia moves a few troops to their border and you know Europe/US will spend one trillion on defense ("energy security"). During that time Russia makes more money because of higher oil and gas prices. They continue to use the dollar system because, frankly, it works for them.

Here is some followup,
http://csis.org/blog/american-nuclea...d-or-new-start

[aaron]

Re: 8 Years Later - Primacy Reached?

Here is some followup,
http://csis.org/blog/american-nuclea...d-or-new-start

Thank you, Sutro for the link.

[Woodsman]

Re: 8 Years Later - Primacy Reached?

Thank you, Sutro for the link.

I have a question.

Say I am a near peer competitor with similar capability. Why do I need primacy? All I need is a ten percent solution on the best countervalue targets and we're right back to MAD. I mean, if you're intent on my total annihilation, why should I bother with counterforce attacks? At a guaranteed minimum, I'm taking you back to the 19th Century via EMP bursts. From then on, I work my way down a list and leave it to God/Fate. And in the specific case of Russia and China, I have to ask; who could adapt best to a situation of mass death/destruction followed by a decade or more of pre-industrial conditions, us or them? This presumes no "nuclear winter" scenario that threatens the viability of Homo Sapiens generally.

Note also recorded history. The US held such primacy for the largest part of the Cold War. At the height of the "Missile Gap" controversy in 1960, the US had 185 armed ICBMs. The Sovs had 4 ICBMs, most of which were prototypes taking the better part of a day to fire. By then US primacy was decisive. This is demonstrated in documents released by the National Archives in 2001 detailing notes of a "Net Evaluation Subcommittee" tasked with providing the President an analysis of the implications of nuclear war and our own response.

The report presumed US forces would deliver "a surprise attack in late 1963, preceded by a period of heightened tensions." To back this up Curtis LeMay expected the taxpayer to pay for at least 2400 Minutemen missiles, wings of Mach 3 bombers and fleets of submarines all of which and more were to be unleashed in a single knockout punch called SIOP, the Single Integrated Operating Plan. The President at the time is said to have walked out of the meeting in disgust, but his views would be vetoed by history. The same script would be dusted off and played out again in the late 70s under the auspices of the neocon dominated "Team B" and then again by the same cast of characters in 2000.

I take this latest report with a large, iceberg sized grain of salt. That said, it does leave me with a distinct anticipatory sense of BOHICA.

[lektrode]

Re: 8 Years Later - Primacy Reached?

and just imagine, all it took for all this to start happnin?

was for one little exec order back in the 90's

at this point, would say ole obama... uhhh... i mean osama&co's little plan is working purrfectly, if somewhat slower than planned - but that plan has been underway, for what - going on 1000 years, now - eh woody?

[sutro]

Re: 8 Years Later - Primacy Reached?

I have a question.

Say I am a near peer competitor with similar capability. Why do I need primacy? All I need is a ten percent solution on the best countervalue targets and we're right back to MAD. I mean, if you're intent on my total annihilation, why should I bother with counterforce attacks? At a guaranteed minimum, I'm taking you back to the 19th Century via EMP bursts. From then on, I work my way down a list and leave it to God/Fate. And in the specific case of Russia and China, I have to ask; who could adapt best to a situation of mass death/destruction followed by a decade or more of pre-industrial conditions, us or them? This presumes no "nuclear winter" scenario that threatens the viability of Homo Sapiens generally.

Note also recorded history. The US held such primacy for the largest part of the Cold War. At the height of the "Missile Gap" controversy in 1960, the US had 185 armed ICBMs. The Sovs had 4 ICBMs, most of which were prototypes taking the better part of a day to fire. By then US primacy was decisive. This is demonstrated in documents released by the National Archives in 2001 detailing notes of a "Net Evaluation Subcommittee" tasked with providing the President an analysis of the implications of nuclear war and our own response.

The report presumed US forces would deliver "a surprise attack in late 1963, preceded by a period of heightened tensions." To back this up Curtis LeMay expected the taxpayer to pay for at least 2400 Minutemen missiles, wings of Mach 3 bombers and fleets of submarines all of which and more were to be unleashed in a single knockout punch called SIOP, the Single Integrated Operating Plan. The President at the time is said to have walked out of the meeting in disgust, but his views would be vetoed by history. The same script would be dusted off and played out again in the late 70s under the auspices of the neocon dominated "Team B" and then again by the same cast of characters in 2000.

I take this latest report with a large, iceberg sized grain of salt. That said, it does leave me with a distinct anticipatory sense of BOHICA.

Bohica is right! I think the question is would we go nuclear if the 173rd Airborne (now deployed in Lithuania) is about to get overrun by the Russians.

[thriftyandboringinohio]

Re: 8 Years Later - Primacy Reached?

Bohica is right! I think the question is would we go nuclear if the 173rd Airborne (now deployed in Lithuania) is about to get overrun by the Russians.

Lithuania became a member of NATO in 1991.
If a NATO member is attack, all NATO members respond in force together.
Russia knows that and will not attack any NATO country, not Lithuania, or Latvia, or Estonia.

[sutro]

Re: 8 Years Later - Primacy Reached?

Lithuania became a member of NATO in 1991.
If a NATO member is attack, all NATO members respond in force together.
Russia knows that and will not attack any NATO country, not Lithuania, or Latvia, or Estonia.

West Germany was a NATO member during the Cold War as well. The Warsaw Pact had more powerful conventional forces at that time. The US had forward deployed tactical nuclear weapons with their NATO contingent. The question back then was "use them or loose them?" when faced with the prospect of overrun by the Soviets. It was thought that the Soviets would respond in kind, triggering an all out nuclear war. MAD kept this from happening.

I don't think the current notion of "primacy" changes that calculus. There are still too many fat tail risks involved with launching a nuclear war.

[don]

Re: 8 Years Later - Primacy Reached?

How long has the 173rd been there?

[thriftyandboringinohio]

Re: 8 Years Later - Primacy Reached?

West Germany was a NATO member during the Cold War as well. The Warsaw Pact had more powerful conventional forces at that time. The US had forward deployed tactical nuclear weapons with their NATO contingent. The question back then was "use them or loose them?" when faced with the prospect of overrun by the Soviets. It was thought that the Soviets would respond in kind, triggering an all out nuclear war. MAD kept this from happening.

I don't think the current notion of "primacy" changes that calculus. There are still too many fat tail risks involved with launching a nuclear war.

I see your point, sutro, and I recognize that you are exploring a hypothetical scenario because it's interesting.

People have a healthy fear of nuclear war, large or small.
I think general officers on both sides would use them only as a last resort to defend their own major cities.

I don't think Putin is crazy. He knows, on the one hand, that he can take Ukrain, Belaruse, and Moldova without a military response from the west.
The economic pain he is just now feeling from sanctions vis-a-vis Ukraine may stop him, and may not.
He might choose to endure ever harsher sanctions to gain that territory. If he does, he'll get away with it.

But he will not attack any NATO country.
Just to spitball about that scenario, I don't think it would go nuclear.
The old Soviet armed forces were over-hyped, and the present Russian military is even less capable as an attacking force.
NATO combined conventional forces would destroy the Russian military in a few days, no need for a mushroom cloud.

[sutro]

Re: 8 Years Later - Primacy Reached?

How long has the 173rd been there?

A week or two. Supposed to last unitl the end of the year.
http://www.usnews.com/news/articles/...poland-baltics

[don]

Re: 8 Years Later - Primacy Reached?

Freeman Dyson

Churchill’s Bomb: How the United States Overtook Britain in the First Nuclear Arms Race
by Graham Farmelo
Basic Books, 554 pp., $29.99


This book is the story of a love triangle. The three characters are Winston Churchill the statesman, H.G. Wells the writer, and Frederick Lindemann the scientist. Churchill was in love with war and weapons, ever since he was a small boy playing with a historic collection of toy soldiers. Wells wrote books about war and weapons, real and imaginary. Lindemann invented weapons and enjoyed trying them out. War and weapons brought the three of them together. But Churchill could only listen to one guru at a time. The chief source of Churchill’s ideas about the application of science to war was Wells in World War I and Lindemann in World War II. Lindemann and Wells, being rivals in love, had nothing but contempt for each other.

Churchill was deeply involved in the prehistory of the atomic bomb for forty years before the bomb existed. More than any other politician, and more than any of the leading scientists of that time, he took seriously the possibility of nuclear weapons. He was born with a romantic attachment to soldiering, enjoyed applying high technology to military problems, and found kindling for his imagination in the science-fiction stories of H.G. Wells.

His personal friendship with Wells began in 1901, when he read Wells’s nonfiction work Anticipations and responded with an eight-page fan letter. The friendship lasted until Wells’s death in 1946. Churchill reacted enthusiastically to Wells’s book The War in the Air, which appeared in 1908 with vivid descriptions of the military uses of the newly invented airplane. In January 1914 Wells published The World Set Free, a story that gave starring roles to two new inventions, “land ironclads,” later known as tanks, and “atomic bombs,” later known as nuclear weapons. Churchill pushed the development and use of tanks in World War I. He understood that they would give soldiers a chance to break out of the horrors of the trenches, making warfare quick and mobile. His tanks came too late to get the boys out of the trenches in that war, but they arrived in time to have a decisive effect in World War II. He gave full credit to Wells for the idea.

Churchill’s thinking about nuclear weapons was summarized in a piece, “Fifty Years Hence,” published in Strand Magazine in 1931. “There is no question among scientists,” he wrote,

that this gigantic source of energy exists. What is lacking is the match to set the bonfire alight…. The busy hands of the scientists are already fumbling with the keys of all the chambers hitherto forbidden to mankind…. Without an equal growth of mercy, pity, peace and love, science herself may destroy all that makes human life majestic and tolerable.

The match to light the nuclear fire was the fission of uranium, discovered in 1938 by Otto Hahn and Fritz Strassmann in Berlin.


Lindemann worked at the Royal Aircraft Factory at Farnborough during World War I and became famous for solving the problem of tailspin. Many pilots were losing their lives because their aircraft would stall during combat maneuvers, fall into a tailspin, and helplessly spin into the ground. Lindemann worked out the theory of tailspin and found a remedy. He calculated that the pilot could give a counterintuitive push to the rudder, which would convert the spin into a straight dive and allow the pilot to regain control. He then borrowed an airplane, put it into a tailspin, applied the push that he had calculated, pulled out of the straight dive, and flew the plane safely home. This combination of scientific wizardry and courage won him the lifelong admiration of Churchill.

Lindemann met Churchill for the first time in 1921 and explained recent scientific discoveries in simple language. Churchill found him to be a kindred spirit, an old-fashioned patriot who saw no shame in using science to win wars. In 1924, Churchill wrote an essay about the future of warfare with the title “Shall We All Commit Suicide?,” describing apocalyptic visions of anthrax weapons and “a bomb no bigger than an orange…[with] a secret power to concentrate the force of a thousand tons of cordite and blast a township at a stroke.” Before writing the piece, he turned for advice to Lindemann and not to Wells.

Still Wells remained faithful to his old love. In 1908 he had written a piece for theDaily News, “Why Socialists Should Vote for Mr. Churchill.” In 1940 he wrote a piece for Colliers magazine, “Churchill, Man of Destiny.” His verdict on Churchill in 1940: “He has pulled himself together. He is pulling us all together. It is like awakening from a nightmare to think of what might have happened to my country without him.” When the chips were down, Wells was an old-fashioned patriot too.

Wells was a spinner of fanciful tales while Lindemann was a real scientist. Paradoxically, the information that Wells gave to Churchill was mostly right, while the information that Lindemann gave was mostly wrong. Wells had been right about airplanes and tanks before World War I. Lindemann was wrong about radar in 1935, when it was first proposed for defending Britain against attack from the air. He gave low priority to radar, which turned out to be the decisive technology of World War II and was crucial to the defense of Britain in 1940. One of the offshoots of radar was the proximity fuse, which enabled an antiaircraft shell, guided by radar, to destroy an aircraft without hitting it directly. The proximity fuse multiplied the kill rate of antiaircraft artillery by a factor of ten. In 1944, when the V-1 drone airplanes were attacking London, a massive line of antiaircraft guns with proximity fuses was deployed along the coast and succeeded in shooting down 70 percent of the V-1s before they reached England. If the Germans had had proximity fuses for their antiaircraft guns, they could probably have stopped our large-scale bombing of Germany.

Lindemann gave the highest priority to aerial mines. Aerial mines were his pride and joy. The idea was to destroy airplanes with mines floating in the air, just as ships were destroyed by mines floating in the water. The big difference between air and sea is that the air has three dimensions while the surface of the sea has two dimensions. An aerial mine has to kill airplanes over a wide range of heights. The mine with the explosive charge must hang at the bottom of a long steel wire with a parachute at the top. If an airplane flies into the wire, the wire will bite into the skin of the wing until it reaches solid metal. Pulled upward by the drag of the parachute, the wire will slide up through the wing until the explosive charge reaches the airplane and detonates. Lindemann continued to play with this toy all through the years of World War II. It absorbed a large amount of money and attention that might have been put to better use.

It was obvious to almost everyone except Lindemann that aerial mines could not be an effective defense. The wire had to be thousands of feet long and correspondingly heavy. Even with a big parachute, it would not stay in the air for more than a few minutes. To defend an important target, a fleet of airplanes would be required to continue sowing mines over the area as long as the attack continued. If many targets were to be defended, the defense would quickly run out of mines. And it was easy to invent countermeasures. A system of small clippers along the leading edge of an airplane wing could cut the wires and make aerial mines harmless.

When I was working for the British Bomber Command toward the end of World War II, we would from time to time receive inquiries from some high level of government, asking whether damage to returning bombers gave any evidence that the Germans were using aerial mines. Our answer was always negative. My boss told me confidentially that the inquiries were coming from Lindemann.

Lindemann was enthusiastic about technical toys such as aerial mines, but he remained unenthusiastic about nuclear weapons. One week after the beginning of World War II, he moved from Oxford to London to become full-time scientific adviser to Churchill, who was then First Lord of the Admiralty. Lindemann was well aware of the discovery of fission and the possibility of nuclear weapons, but he waited for two years before advising Churchill to begin a project to develop a British bomb. Toward the end of the war, Lindemann visited the American bomb laboratory at Los Alamos and remarked privately to his friend Reginald Jones, “What fools the Americans will look after spending so much money.” Jones had been Lindemann’s student before the war, and worked closely with him as head of scientific intelligence. Jones said that until the bomb exploded at Alamogordo, Lindemann never really believed that the thing would work.

The title, Churchill’s Bomb, is misleading. The title was probably chosen by the publisher to attract readers rather than to describe the book. Graham Farmelo’s main subject is the personal rivalry surrounding the British nuclear weapons project, in which Winston Churchill played a leading part. But the book is not a history of the bomb. It does not answer some of the obvious questions that a reader might ask. What were the technical obstacles to be overcome? What did the scientists actually do while the politicians argued about it? How was the bomb built? How was it supposed to be delivered? What effect has it had? Is the bomb still relevant in the world of today, sixty years after it was built? Why is it called Churchill’s bomb rather than Attlee’s bomb? After all, it was Clement Attlee and not Winston Churchill who gave the order to build it.

The subtitle, “How the United States Overtook Britain in the First Nuclear Arms Race,” is also misleading. There was never an arms race between the United States and Britain. There was an arms race between Britain and Germany, beginning in 1939 and ending in 1942. During that time the United States was still neutral and not seriously engaged in the race. Britain won the race when Werner Heisenberg and Albert Speer secretly agreed to abandon the German nuclear bomb project. Then, in 1942, with the United States at war, Britain and the US still believed that they were in a race with Germany, since they did not know that the Germans had given up. The choice for Britain was whether to join forces with the US or to try to build a bomb independently.

Churchill made the decision to merge British efforts with the American project. A merger meant sharing secrets, and the sharing of secrets was always a delicate problem. A year went by before sharing became effective and British scientists were working at Los Alamos. During that year, the American project took a great leap forward and the British project stalled. Enrico Fermi with his American colleagues built the first nuclear reactor in Chicago and explored the new world of nuclear power. British scientists spent the year waiting for the American authorities to allow them to participate. It was true that the United States overtook Britain, but Churchill was not racing. Churchill had already decided that he wanted a partnership with America and not a race.


The nuclear partnership began in 1943 and came to a sudden end with the passing of the McMahon Act by the United States Congress in 1946. That year, the United States had bombs and the industrial equipment to make more bombs, and Britain was shut out. Britain had to decide whether to give up or go ahead with building an independent British bomb. Attlee had taken Churchill’s place as prime minister in 1945. Attlee made the decision to go ahead with the British bomb. It was successfully tested in 1952, when Churchill was back in power. In that same year the Americans tested the first hydrogen bomb with a yield of ten megatons. Churchill quietly gave the order for a British hydrogen bomb, which was built and successfully tested in 1957. By that time Churchill had ended his second term as prime minister, but he achieved his goal of restoring the nuclear partnership and the sharing of secrets with America.

Churchill, Lindemann, and Wells did not fundamentally disagree about nuclear strategy. They agreed that nuclear weapons were desirable as instruments of power, immensely dangerous, and historically decisive. Churchill and Lindemann saw the bomb as necessary to preserve the status of Britain as a great power. Wells saw it as necessary to establish the authority of a future world government.

Only one voice spoke out in well- reasoned opposition to these views. The opposing voice belonged to Patrick Blackett, a physicist who had served as a naval officer in World War I, survived the Battle of Jutland in 1916, and led the team of scientists helping the Royal Navy to defeat German U-boats in World War II. He won a Nobel Prize in 1948 for discoveries in particle physics. Both as a scientist and as an expert in war-fighting, Blackett had far better credentials than Lindemann. But Blackett was a socialist and was active in left-wing politics. Lindemann hated him, and Churchill distrusted him. They made sure that Blackett was kept out of all high-level discussions of nuclear policy so long as Churchill was prime minister.

As soon as Clement Attlee became prime minister in 1945, he appointed Blackett to his Advisory Committee on Atomic Energy. The next year was the decisive turning point in the history of nuclear weapons. Several governments made serious proposals to put the newly created United Nations organization in charge of the nascent nuclear industries all over the world, with power to prevent any nation from building nuclear bombs. This was the last chance to avoid a large-scale nuclear arms race. Robert Oppenheimer in the United States and Niels Bohr in Denmark were the leaders of a world-wide campaign of scientists for international control of nuclear energy. The United Nations Atomic Energy Commission was created to exercise whatever form of international control the member nations could agree to establish. Everything depended on finding an international legal frame that the United States and the Soviet Union could both accept.

The United States proposal for international control was known as the Baruch Plan because it was written by Bernard Baruch, a conservative banker and a friend of Churchill. The essential point that made it unacceptable to the Soviet Union was the enforcement clause, which gave the United Nations Security Council power to enforce the agreement by majority vote. In all other actions of the Security Council, each permanent member of the council had the right to veto majority decisions. In the Baruch Plan the right to veto was abolished for decisions concerning nuclear weapons. In any dispute involving the Soviet Union, the Soviet Union was likely to be in the minority and the United States in the majority, so the Baruch Plan was giving a permanent nuclear hegemony to the United States. Oppenheimer fought hard inside the American government for a plan that would recognize the Soviet need for equal treatment. Blackett fought hard inside the British government. Oppenheimer failed to convince Truman and Blackett failed to convince Attlee. American hegemony was what both Truman and Attlee wanted and hoped to make permanent.

Stalin knew that the American hegemony would not last long. He said, “The atomic bomb is a good weapon for threatening people with weak nerves.” Stalin did not have weak nerves. He knew that his country had produced more tanks than Germany in wartime and could produce more atomic bombs than the United States in peacetime. In 1946 the Soviet Union proposed a simple prohibition of nuclear weapons, overseen by the United Nations but without any enforcement clause. After a year of argument about details, the negotiations ended and the nuclear arms race began. The American hegemony ended with the first Soviet bomb test in 1949.

Looking back with seventy years of hindsight, we can see clearly that Churchill was deluded. Central to his vision of the world was the power and glory of the British Empire. He fought his wars for the preservation of the Empire. The young people who fought for Britain in World War II were not fighting for the Empire. They knew that the Empire was crumbling and most of them were happy to see it swept away. That was why they voted in 1945 to sweep Churchill away. They knew that Churchill was living in the past, out of touch with the real world. I have a vivid memory of the British general election of 1950, when Attlee was running for reelection after five years of slow recovery from the war. Attlee came to Birmingham, where I was then living, to give a campaign speech to a large crowd. He spoke at length about the social programs that the Labour Party had carried out during his tenure, the big improvements in public housing and public education, and the National Health Service. The crowd listened to this without much enthusiasm. Then at the end of his speech, Attlee said, “We gave freedom to India,” and the crowd responded with loud and long cheering. Giving freedom to India was the one thing that Churchill would never have done. Attlee won the election.

When Churchill returned for his second term as prime minister, he recognized that the Empire was fading, and based his nuclear policy on another illusion, the special relationship between Britain and America. During World War II he had enjoyed a special relationship with Franklin Roosevelt, with frequent telephone calls and many personal meetings. His friendship with Roosevelt was a crucial part of his war strategy. It allowed him to think of himself as one of the Big Three, deciding the fate of the world in conferences with Roosevelt and Stalin. After returning to office in 1951, he tried to reestablish his special relationship with Presidents Truman and Eisenhower. Truman and Eisenhower found his personal advances annoying and gently pushed him off. After the British hydrogen bomb was demonstrated in 1957, sharing of nuclear secrets was successfully reestablished, but Churchill’s belief that this would perpetuate Britain’s status as a Great Power remained an illusion.

[astonas]

Re: 8 Years Later - Primacy Reached?

I don't think the current notion of "primacy" changes that calculus. There are still too many fat tail risks involved with launching a nuclear war.

I concur. This old excerpt from "Yes, Prime Minister" still applies just as well as it did when it was made (replacing "German" with "Ukraine" of course) and covers why Putin has nothing to fear from a western nuclear arsenal as well:

http://www.google.com/url?sa=t&rct=j...65788261,d.cGU

We are now witnessing exactly the "Salami Tactics" described. The clip is well worth the few minutes, and is eerily prescient, considering it was filmed while Thatcher was in power.

[lektrode]

Re: 8 Years Later - Primacy Reached?

nice/glad to see you back astonas.