LIT5: Elsberg , D. D. (2017) The Doomsday Machine: Confessions of a Nuclear War Planner. Introduction pp. 5-22

Question 1

What is the US Nuclear Strategy in the cold war?

Answer 1

1. Deterring a surprise Soviet nuclear attack—or responding to such an attack—has
   never been the only or even the primary purpose of their nuclear plans and
   preparations. The nature, scale, and posture of US’ strategic nuclear forces has
   always been shaped by
   the attempt to limit the damage to the United States
   from Soviet or Russian retaliation to a U.S. first strike against the USSR or
   Russia.
2. The required U.S. strategic capabilities have always been for a first-strike force.
   Though officially denied, preemptive “
   launch on warning” (LOW)—either on
   tactical warning of an incoming attack or strategic warning that nuclear escalation is probably impending—has always been at the heart of our strategic alert
3. Nuclear weapons have been used, mostly in secret from the American public, as extended deterrence.
4. The persistent rejection by the United States of a no-first-use commitment has
   always encouraged proliferation in other states.
5. With respect to deliberate, authorized U.S. strategic attacks,
   the system has always been designed to be triggered by a far wider range of events than the public has ever imagined. Moreover, the hand authorized to pull the trigger on U.S. nuclear forces has never been exclusively that of the president, nor even his highest military officials.
6. Despite what I believe was the determination of both leaders to avoid nuclear war during the Cuban missile crisis, events spiraled out of control, coming within a handbreadth of triggering our plans for general nuclear war.
7. The strategic nuclear system is more
   prone to false alarms, accidents, and
   unauthorized launches than the public (and even most high officials) has ever
   been aware
8. Potentially catastrophic dangers have been systematically concealed from the
   public. US secret nuclear decision-making, policy, plans, and practices for general
   nuclear war endangered, by the JCS estimate, hundreds of millions of people,
   perhaps a third of the earth’s population.

Question 2

What is Kubricks Doomsday Machine?

Answer 2

At the conclusion of his famous satirical film of 1964, Dr. Strangelove, Stanley Kubrick
introduced the concept of a “
Doomsday Machine” designed to deter nuclear attack on the Soviet Union by destroying all human life as an automatized response to such an
attack.

Little did we know that
an American Doomsday Machine already existed in 1961
—and had for years—
in the form of pre-targeted bombers on alert in the
Strategic Air Command (SAC), soon to be joined by Polaris submarine-launched
missiles. Although this machine wasn’t likely to kill outright or starve to death literally
every last human, its effects, once triggered, would come close enough to that to
deserve the name Doomsday