Lecture 10 Nuclear Diplomacy Flashcards
The crisis of containment
- Global commitment v. selected strategic areas
- Military/strategic v. political/economic level
- (Temporary) coexistence = weakness, moral failure
Beyond containment: NSC 68, 04/1950
♠ Assumptions:
1. USSR totalitarian → inevitably aggressive
2. Interdependence/domino theory: «a defeat anywhere is a defeat everywhere»
3. Warfare state → Welfare state
♠ Tools:
- Rearmament
♠ Goals:
- «preponderance of power»
- «Credibility»: perception of US power
Total ideological warfare
“Unwillingly our free society finds itself mortally challenged by the Soviet system. No other value system is so wholly irreconcilable with ours, so implacable in its purpose to destroy ours…” (NSC 68)
Eisenhower’s “New Look”
- Nuclear weapons (“massive retaliation”) v. military keynesianism
- Get allies involved (burden-sharing) and delegate them responsibilities → control, interference
- No economy-based explanation/remedy re: world Communism
- Unconventional tools: intelligence agencies, covert operations (ex. Iran, Guatemala)
Eisenhower’s Rhetoric and Strategy
- “Roll-back” communism v. Containment
- “Massive retaliation” v. limited/symmetric response
Massive retaliation: the strategic and economic rationale
- Desire to normalize the “awesome” weapon
• Kissinger, Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy, 1957 “translate power into policy” - Pro-active approach
- Fiscal conservatism
Massive retaliation as liability?
- Lack of credibility
- Rigidity: idea that US would make alliance as only option short of weakness and reluctance to fight
- Danger: possibility of some escalation or incident, episode which would go from a local to global crisis
TO SUM UP Eisenhower and Nuclear Weapons
- Cheap (costs/benefits)
- Element of US primacy
- To regain initiative
- Willingness to “nuclearize” allies (i.e.: FRG) to partially disengage
Ike’s Fiscal Conservatism
- Attacked for alleged military weakness (domestic politics - missile gap J.F.K.)
- Attacked for insufficient attention to Third World and modernization
Nuclear weapons/cold war - Wrap Up
- Define New Ranking/Hierarchy of Power
- Competition and arms race
- Symbolic value
Pros and Cons: what were/are/should be nuclear weapons for?
♠ Pros
- Attempt to normalize/rationalize them
- Effort to justify political/strategic relevance of nuclear superiority (prepeonderance v. symmetry)
- Effort to magnify their stabilizing power (paradox: non-use defined their significance)
• “The likelihood of war decreases as deterrent and defensive capabilities increase.” (K. Waltz)
♠Cons
- Fear of proliferation
- Invitations to ban them
Realist critique of the use of nuclear weapons
“limited nuclear capabilities, operating independently, are dangerous, expensive, prone to obsolescence and lacking in credibility as a deterrent” (Robert McNamara, 1962)
Toward Détente: the 1960s
- Cuban missile crisis, 10.1962
- Risk of accidental war (Dr. Strangelove, 1964)
- Soviet Rearmament
→ Test Ban Treaty, 1963
→ Non proliferation Treaty, 1968
→ SALT
Test Ban Treaty
1963 - a treaty prohibiting all test detonations of nuclear weapons except underground. It was developed both to slow the arms race (nuclear testing was, at the time, necessary for continued developments in nuclear weapons), and to stop the excessive release of nuclear fallout into the planet’s atmosphere.
Non proliferation Treaty
1968 - Having more nuclear-weapon states would reduce security for all, multiplying the risks of miscalculation, accidents, unauthorized use of weapons, or from escalation in tensions, nuclear conflict.
