Book reviews: A hawk, a dove and the missile man of America

Two books on the Cold War

1. The Hawk and the Dove: Paul Nitze, George Kennan, and the History of the Cold War - Nicholas Thompson

In this book, Nicholas Thompson provides a fascinating account of the life, times and work of probably the two most important American diplomats of the Cold War. George Kennan and Paul Nitze were starkly opposite in many respects, yet both provided immensely important direction to American geopolitics through their advice to many Presidents and shaped the Cold War more than any other two American policy makers.

Of the two Kennan is the more famous and is regarded by many as the most important American diplomat of the twentieth century (he passed away in 2005 at the ripe age of 101 and was known for the resplendent prose in his many books which I could strongly recommend). Kennan is mainly known for a famous 1946 telegram that he sent from the Soviet Union. At this time Americans were still trying to understand the looming Soviet menace and Kennan was probably the most knowledgeable Soviet expert in the country. He rightly understood Stalin's bluster and sent a telegram describing the intentions and nature of the Soviet state. The telegram instantly catapulted him to recognition and set in place the official policy of "containment" which Kennan's name became synonymous with. In the telegram Kennan indicated that the Soviets would respond to only strength and not reconciliation and weakness. In his book on the hydrogen bomb, Richard Rhodes says that it was this telegram along with Churchill's "Iron Curtain" speech and Stalin's rousing speech in Moscow that inaugurated the Cold War.

However Kennan did not advocate necessarily employing military strength. This was advocated by Paul Nitze, a man who may not be as famous as Kennan but who was no less important. Nitze is regarded by many as the "father of threat inflation". As a measure of his influence as a hawk, it suffices to realize that many of the neo-conservatives in the Bush administration were either Nitze acolytes or acolytes of Nitze's proteges. Just like Kennan Nitze also became famous for a secret 1950 document called NSC-68 that advocated the use of preemptive force against the Soviets and exaggerated their military might. This was a pattern that Nitze and his growing band of followers (among them in various ways were Albert Wohlstetter, Richard Pipes, Richard Perle, Paul Wolfowitz and Donald Rumsfeld) would consistently pursue; whenever they thought that liberals were trying to be too reconciliatory toward the Soviet Union, they would prepare documents and advocate polices exaggerating Soviet military potential and intentions. Their policies frequently worked and became especially influential during the Reagan administration (formerly they did a good job of portraying Carter as being weak on the Soviets). To some extent they were responsible for the dangerous arms race between the two nations.

Needless to say, such hawkish views radically differed from those of Kennan the dove whose more measured opinions fell somewhat out of favor in later years. Yet the book does an outstanding job of showing that the agendas of both men were more subtle and complicated. Occasionally when it was necessary Nitze would take a softer approach, and during the later Reagan years he joined the President in pressing for open disarmament and reconciliation when many of his followers continued to take a hard line. In his later life Nitze mellowed down, and in 1999 went so far as to write a New York Times op-ed recommending unilateral nuclear disarmament for the US. Although Nitze rightly perceived the work that he had done to be very important in dictating Cold War policy, it is tragic that unlike him, others did not have the sense to see the shortcomings and detrimental effects of these policies in a post Cold War world (Nitze and the accompanying rise of the neo-cons are very well-documented in J. Peter Scoblic's
"Us vs Them: How a Half-Century of Conservatism Has Undermined America's Security").

With such differing perspectives one would think that Nitze and Kennan would have been mortal enemies. But remarkably, through several decades of acute differences and disagreements, the two men remained close personal friends. As Thompson who is Nitze's grandson shows, it is a mark of the character of both men that they managed to rise above their political differences no matter how severe these were. Thompson shows in this highly readable volume, the tremendous impact on US foreign policy that the work of Nitze and Kennan had. He bring both of them to life and sensitively and wisely dissects their personalities, thoughts and lives. Very strongly recommended for foreign policy/Cold War enthusiasts.

2. A Fiery Peace in a Cold War: Bernard Schriever and the Ultimate Weapon- Neil Sheehan

Neil Sheehan apparently spent 15 years writing this account of a little known Air Force General, Bernard Schriever, and the time he spent on the man shows in this comprehensive account. He has performed a very valuable service in bringing this rather obscure character to life and driving home the importance of his accomplishments. Schriever was one of the individuals most responsible for jump starting the US's missile program, especially shepherding the development of the ICBM. Sheehan does a great job bringing to life all the characters that Schriever was associated with, from his mentors in flight school (including General "Hap" Arnold) to his bete noir, the notorious Curtis LeMay, to his contact with brilliant scientists John von Neumann and Edward Teller whose contributions were critical for America's missile and atomic bomb programs.

Sheehan provides ample background and little known tidbits of Schriever's life and times. For instance I was not aware that the US Air Force was a rather inefficient backwater organization till the mid-1930s, easily outclassed by its European counterparts. Apparently at one point, pilots were asked to deliver the mail in the wake of a post office scandal. Their inexperience in flying and the loss of life that resulted galvanized FDR and others to issue directives for a modern Air Force that would become among the best in the world.

The main problem I have is that while Sheehan's digressions (for instance on the atomic bomb project and Soviet espionage) are fascinating and reflect the most up-to-date information, they are too many and too frequent. An editor who could have shaved off a few pages and encouraged a tighter narrative would have definitely helped. The digressions draw your attention from direct information about General Schriever. To be fair the book is not supposed to be just about him, but a little less meandering would have been a boon.

In spite of this deficiency, the book will be fascinating for Cold War enthusiasts who want to know about the development of the US Air Force and its atomic and missile arsenals during the early Cold War. There is also a fair amount of technical detail about missiles explained in relatively plain and accurate language. After JFK came to power Schriever's influence waned and the latter part of the book is not as interesting. Nevertheless, Sheehan has done a valuable and outstanding job in bringing a little known individual to life and telling us about his enormous contributions during a critical period of American history.

SPACE: THE VIOLENT FRONTIER?

A couple of days ago, the US quite ostensibly sent up a missile to blow up a "rogue" satellite. China had also done the same thing a year or so ago. These actions seem like ominous preludes to a possible arms race in space, the last thing the world wants.

In the latest issue of Pragati, Adityanjee has an article that exhorts India to develop its own ASAT (anti-satellite) system in response to these actions by the US and China. While developing such a system might be good insurance and a future bargaining chip, the first and most important thing we all need to do is keeping pushing for an international treaty to ban weapons in space. Not only will a failure to do this lead to a possible new Cold War, but it can also render space inhospitable for peaceful technologies, an event that will be disastrous for countries that currently use satellites for weather forecasting and precipitation for example.

Mike Moore, who is a previous editor of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, has written a new book on the history and current status of attempts by the US to weaponise and militarise space. As in many other cases, the US- no friend of treaties for quite some time now- is unique in having vetoed and blocked attempts to forge international treaties to ban weapons in space. This is probably not too surprising considering the attempts by the US since the 19060s (when they were developing a purported system to oust Chinese ballistic missiles) to the 1980s (age of the infamous Star Wars) to the 2000s (the Bush administration's obsession with National Missile Defense). True to other traditions, the US has constantly underscored its sovereign right to exceptionalism when the rest of the world thinks otherwise. The US satellite blowup comes close on the heels of renewed efforts of China and Russia to push for an international treaty to ban space weapons.

In his book, Moore documents how President Eisenhower made spirited efforts to stop an arms race in space. However, every administration since the Reagan administration has vetoed attempts by other space-faring countries to negotiate such treaties. The Pentagon's love affair with GPS-guided precision weapons in the 90s fueled ambitions to weaponise space. Again, it's the US that is leading the world into a dangerous era and is interested in unilaterally pursuing belligerent aims. It seems to be still living in Cold War mode. As Moore says, China and Russia (and presumably India) have many more important problems to tackle and spend money on than building a space weapons capability. However, they can, and will, build this capability if they see the US constantly trying to do so.

The US in fact has a golden opportunity right now to preserve its superiority in weapons technology. The situation reminds me of the early days of the arms race, when an exceptional opportunity to preserve the US superiority over Russia in nuclear arms was lost because of politicking by right wing hawks and threat inflation specialists. After that, Russia soon caught up and it was too late. Similarly, now is the time for the US to talk to other nations and sign a space-weapons ban, thus preserving and possibly sealing its current technological advantage.

One of the central points of missile defense that I have often made in other posts, is that it is almost assuredly going to fail against ballistic missiles, a point which should have been emphasized in the Pragati article. This points needs to be constantly emphasized because like some annoying virus, it keeps infecting and enamoring the minds of US and world officials in every successive administration, in spite of its proven lack of feasibility. Shooting down ballistic missiles realistically has always been a pipe dream harboured by zealous government officials, and the fallibility of this has been demonstrated time and time again by distinguished scientists and other officials. Any attempt to build an anti-ballistic missile system is a huge waste of money, time and talent, and as an added insidious side-effect, it breeds hostility in other nations, something that has already happened because of the US National Missile Defense system. Missile defense should rankle the hearts of democracy and peace-lovers, libertarians and economic conservatives.

Shooting down satellites is another matter, and unfortunately easier than shooting down ballistic missiles. But as Moore points out in his book, one of the many effects of such an exchange will be an amplification of debris in low-earth orbit, debris that will likely make it impossible to use satellites for peaceful purposes, including missions to other planets in the solar system. And of course, it will add perhaps irreversibly to the hubris-laden image that the US has in the world right now.

Every attempt should be made by all space-faring countries to push for an international treaty banning any kind of weapons in space. But sadly, it's the US again that is posing the biggest impediment to the forging of such a consensus. The next President should make it a priority to sign such a treaty, and Obama has indicated that he might be interested. Any attempt by the US to develop a space weapons capability will lead to a dangerous arms race with Russia, China, India and others, involving huge expenditures and wasted efforts. It will contribute to an already deeply dividing feeling of international resentment and animosity. But perhaps most importantly, it will send out a signal that space, that ultimate refuge that is supposed to be the equal sovereign right of every human being on the planet, can be belligerently conquered and manipulated by a few nations. After that, everything will be up for grabs.

MISSILE DEFENSE: THE ETERNAL BUG

Some bugs never seem to die, especially those of the Presidential type. The missile defence bug is surely one of these. It has bitten almost every President from JFK to GWB, sapped away billions of taxpayer dollars from the nation's coffers, and regularly evaded the attempts of dozens of eminent experts to declare it futile and ominous.

It started in 1957, when Sputnik blazed across the sky. For the next thirty years or so, US Presidents projected a false 'missile gap' to the nation, and devoted manpower and an immense amount of money to building bigger and better missiles that could carry thermonuclear warheads across continents and initiate global nuclear conflict. This was inspite of the fact that the perceived missile gap was never a gap in the middle days of the Cold War. By banning the development of ballistic missiles as well as nuclear weapons, the United States could have retained a clear advantage over its opponents. But bugs as we know can be all-pervasive and recalcitrant. In the 60s, the Cold War reached new heights with the Cuban Missile Crisis, and the testing of many new missiles. Mercifully, nuclear tests in the atmosphere, underwater, and in space were banned in an important 1963 test ban.

The Chinese had been engaged in nuclear weapons research since the 1950s, and affairs had come to a head in 1950 during the Korean War. In 1964, China had detonated its first atomic bomb. After the Soviet Union, it was seen as the biggest threat to the US. Sometime in the 1960s, the bug caught the imagination of Washington, and plans were made to employ a huge anti-ballistic missile (ABM) system that could deflect a potential Chinese nuclear attack. The plans were first conducted in secret, and then, even before China really had the requisite technology to engage in such attacks, were heavily publicised by Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, thus giving the Chinese carte blanche to go ahead.

Missile defense can be a tricky concept. On the face of it, it seems to guarantee a nation's safety from first nuclear strikes. But this sense of safety is misleading, for several reasons. First of all, technical ones; it was shown repeatedly, most strikingly in 1968 in a Scientific American article by the great physicist Hans Bethe and Richard Garwin, that almost any countermeasure that the US could take against such an attack could be defeated by 'countercountermeasures' by the enemy. This could include the use of any number of decoys, from aluminium foil to fake explosions and warheads, to mislead defensive missiles. On a very local scale, missile defense could be partially successful, but the authors showed that the marginal expense necessary for deflecting missile attacks was much more for the US than for the enemy. In other words, it was relatively easier for the enemy to thwart defensive missiles than for the US to thwart offensive ones.
The more important problem with missile defense is political. By employing such a defense, the US gives out a signal to other countries that since it is now securely defended, it may not have a problem launching a first nuclear strike itself. The result of such an impression is predictable; the enemy would put even more resources into developing more and better missiles and weapons to penetrate the system. If there is a good way to initiate another nuclear arms race, this way would be close to the top of the list. For example, in 1968, one could not have blamed the Chinese for accelerating their own missile development after hearing of US plans to develop such a defense system. In fact, it would have been a nice excuse for them.

In any case, the 1960s system fortunately did not work out, but not before millions of dollars were spent on it. A respite came in 1972, when Richard Nixon signed the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, that limited the numbers of deployable ballistic missiles on both sides. But like other treaties, this treaty also contained a slippery slope, because it said nothing about developing more sophisticated missiles, simply about deploying them. Also, it did not say anything about the number of nuclear warheads that a single missile could carry. This loophole (probably intentionally left in) led to one of the most dangerous developments of the Cold War; Multiple Independently targeted Reentry Vehicles (MIRVs), in which a single missile such as the Minuteman could carry upto 10, independently targetable warheads. This probably was not much better than the situation before the treaty.

But the icing on the cake was laid by the charismatic Ronald Reagan, with his espousal of a really ridiculous, unfeasible, and prvocative system- the famous "Star Wars", or Strategic Defense Initiative. Star Wars envisioned hundreds of missiles and weapons based in space. It got rescued from early demise by a new invention, the X-ray laser, which could shoot its gigawatt beam across miles of space and supposedly blow out missiles and thermonuclear warheads into oblivion.
However, after Reagan enthusiastically took up the gospel, it began to become apparent that the project had been oversold, and scientists who worked on it had been pressured into remaining silent about its limitations. While hawkish Edward Teller lobbied for it, the resourceful Hans Bethe and his colleagues again rose to the cause, and published another article in Scientific American on the same lines as before, arguing yet again that the enemy could always emply suitable decoys and defeat the system, and that it would lead again to an accelerated arms race.

Nuclear weapons have been brought in check somewhat by various treaties since then. But needless to say, George Bush has inherited the mantle from his esteemed Cold War predecessor and has gloriously validated it. In 2002, after honouring the anti-ballistic missile treaty for 30 years, the administration withdrew from it in an ominous development. Part of the reason was a short-lived but dangerous resurgence of "small" nuclear weapons R & D. These "low-yield" weapons called "bunker busters" were intended to bust underground enemy bunkers. However, it was convincingly argued that contrary to what their proponents would have everyone believe, they were no "safer" or "contained" than conventional nukes, and in some respects even less so.

The most important reason for withdrawing from the treaty obviously is the renewed interest in another missile defense system, "Son of Star Wars", this time ostensibly against North Korea and Iran, and this time based in both Europe and the US.
Yet another article was published by Bethe's collaborator Richard Garwin in Scientific American in 2004, arguing against the proposed system. Again, the most important objection is political. What kind of signal is the US giving to N. Korea and Iran? It's clearly an invitation for these nations to become even more suspicious of the US, and get the perfect pretext for developing their own missiles.

Perhaps the US wants to adopt the Cold War strategy to try to economically bleed these nations out by making them spend huge sums on missiles, a justification that is often made in support of this endeavor. But this strategy is not only dubious but misguided. Firstly, there is no guarantee that another nation would not atack the US in any way until it faces economic collapse, so that the overall risk to the US increases. Secondly, even if it does not attack, it would develop any number of weapons and missile systems and possibly help them proliferate. This brings us to the third and most pertinent point. In this age of nuclear terrorism, it is highly unfeasible that Iran or N. Korea wil use nuclear warheads on missiles to attack the US if they really wanted to wage war against it. It would be suicide for them. Instead, as the late Carl Sagan, an outspoken opponent of missile defense used to point out, these states would smuggle in a low yield or dirty bomb through a suitcase or through diplomatic pouch. Graham Allison also affirms this in his highly readable Nuclear Terrorism. In fact, it is highly unlikely that these states would do something like this that would threaten to drop the curtain on their own existence. The real threat is from independent terrorist groups with no return labels and fear of retaliation. And it is almost impossible and ludicrous that they would use missiles to attack the US. However, nations like N. Korea and Iran would happily and anonymously provide the technology which they have developed to these terrorists.

In the latest developments, the US is pressurizing Vladimir Putin and other European leaders to employ missile defense in Europe. I commend Putin and these leaders for not giving in to this inane and misguided demand. One must not forget that it was the presence of Jupiter missiles in Turkey which threatened the Soviet Union in 1961, and became one of the causes of the missile crisis. By again employing missiles in Europe, the US is only going to make itself and the world a less safer place.

Times have changed, but the US still very much seems to be living in Cold War times. It still has about 10,000 warheads, many on hair-trigger 15 minute launch alerts. The threatening nature of this state of affairs has been certified by both conservatives and liberals. The strategies of missile defense that it's trying to employ are Cold War era tactics. And they were unworkable and dangerous during the Cold War, and are dangerous right now. One would think that statesmen would have learnt from such a long experience of dealing with possible death and destruction. But, like bacteria, these bugs don't die out. They can be resisted and rooted out though, but statesmen don't have the intelligence and conviction to resist them, and would rather let the bugs turn them into zombies.