[How nuclear weapons gradually became a key part of international
relations. ]
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MARTIN SHERWIN’S “GAMBLING WITH ARMAGEDDON” STRIPS AWAY THE
MYTHS OF NUCLEAR DETERRENCE  
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Lawrence Wittner
January 15, 2023
History News Network [[link removed]]

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_ How nuclear weapons gradually became a key part of international
relations. _

A US helicopter flies above the Soviet submarine B-59 during the
blockade of Cuba, October 28-29, 1962,

 

_Martin J. Sherwin _Gambling with Armageddon
[[link removed]]:
Nuclear Roulette from Hiroshima to the Cuban Missile Crisis (Vintage
Paperback Edition 2022).

The development and the deployment of nuclear weapons are usually
based on the assumption that they enhance national security.  But, in
fact, as this powerful study of nuclear policy convincingly
demonstrates, nuclear weapons move nations toward the brink of
destruction.

The basis for this conclusion is the post-World War II nuclear arms
race and, especially, the Cuban missile crisis of October 1962.  At
the height of the crisis, top officials from the governments of the
United States and the Soviet Union narrowly avoided annihilating a
substantial portion of the human race by what former U.S. Secretary of
State Dean Acheson, an important participant in the events, called
“plain dumb luck.”

The author of this cautionary account, Martin Sherwin, who died
shortly after its publication, was certainly well-qualified to tell
this chilling story.  A professor of history at George Mason
University, Sherwin was the author of the influential _A World
Destroyed: Hiroshima and Its Legacies _and the co-author, with Kai
Bird, of _American Prometheus: The Triumph and Tragedy of J. Robert
Oppenheimer_, which, in 2006, won the Pulitzer Prize for biography. 
Perhaps the key personal factor in generating these three scholarly
works was Sherwin’s service as a U.S. Navy junior intelligence
officer who was ordered to present top secret war plans to his
commander during the Cuban missile crisis.

In _Gambling with Armageddon_, Sherwin shows deftly how nuclear
weapons gradually became a key part of international relations. 
Although Harry Truman favored some limitations on the integration of
these weapons into U.S. national security strategy, his successor,
Dwight Eisenhower, significantly expanded their role.  According to
the Eisenhower administration’s NSC 162/2, the U.S. government would
henceforth “consider nuclear weapons as available for use as other
munitions.”  At Eisenhower’s direction, Sherwin notes, “nuclear
weapons were no longer an element of American military power; they
were its _primary _instrument.” 

Sherwin adds that, although the major purpose of the new U.S.
“massive retaliation” strategy “was to frighten Soviet leaders
and stymie their ambitions,” its “principal result . . . was to
establish a blueprint for Nikita Khrushchev to create his own
‘nuclear brinkmanship’.”  John F. Kennedy’s early approach to
U.S. national security policy―supplementing U.S. nuclear superiority
with additional conventional military forces and sponsoring a
CIA-directed invasion of Cuba―merely bolstered Khrushchev’s
determination to contest U.S. power in world affairs. 
 Consequently, resumption of Soviet nuclear weapons testing and a
Soviet-American crisis over Berlin followed.     

Indeed, dismayed by U.S. nuclear superiority and feeling disrespected
by the U.S. government, Khrushchev decided to secretly deploy medium-
and intermediate-range ballistic nuclear missiles in Cuba.  As
Sherwin observes, the Soviet leader sought thereby “to protect Cuba,
to even the balance of nuclear weapons and nuclear fear, and to
reinforce his leverage to resolve the West Berlin problem.” 
Assuming that the missiles would not be noticed until their deployment
was completed, Khrushchev thought that the Kennedy administration,
faced with a _fait accompli_, would have no choice but to accept
them.  Khrushchev was certainly not expecting a nuclear war.

But that is what nearly occurred.   In the aftermath of the U.S.
government’s discovery of the missile deployment in Cuba, the Joint
Chiefs of Staff demanded the bombing and invasion of the island. They
were supported by most members of ExComm, an ad hoc group of
Kennedy’s top advisors during the crisis.  At the time, they did
not realize that the Soviet government had already succeeded in
delivering 164 nuclear warheads to Cuba and, therefore, that a
substantial number of the ballistic missiles on the island were
already operational.  Also, the 42,000 Soviet troops in Cuba were
armed with tactical nuclear weapons and had been given authorization
to use them to repel an invasion.  As Fidel Castro later remarked: 
“It goes without saying that in the event of an invasion, we would
have had nuclear war.”

Initially, among all of Kennedy’s advisors, only Adlai Stevenson,
the U.S. ambassador to the United Nations, suggested employing a
political means―rather than a military one―to secure the removal
of the missiles.  Although Kennedy personally disliked Stevenson, he
recognized the wisdom of his UN ambassador’s approach and gradually
began to adopt his ideas.  “The question really is,” the
president told his hawkish advisors, “what action we take which
lessens the chance of a nuclear exchange, which obviously is the final
failure.”  Therefore, Kennedy tempered his initial impulse to order
rapid military action and, instead, adopted a plan for a naval
blockade (“quarantine”) of Cuba, thereby halting the arrival of
additional Soviet missiles and creating time for negotiations with
Khrushchev for removal of the missiles already deployed.

U.S. military leaders, among other ostensible “wise men,” were
appalled by what they considered the weakness of the blockade plan,
though partially appeased by Kennedy’s assurances that, if it failed
to secure the desired results within a seven-day period, a massive
U.S. military attack on the island would follow.  Indeed, as Sherwin
reveals, at the beginning of October, before the discovery of the
missiles, the U.S. Joint Chiefs of Staff were already planning for an
invasion of Cuba and looking for an excuse to justify it.

Even though Khrushchev, like Kennedy, regarded the blockade as a
useful opportunity to negotiate key issues, they quickly lost control
of the volatile situation.

For example, U.S. military officers took the U.S.-Soviet confrontation
to new heights.  Acting on his own initiative, General Thomas Power,
the head of the U.S. Strategic Air Command, advanced its nuclear
forces to DEFCON 2, just one step short of nuclear war―the only
occasion when that level of nuclear alert was ever instituted.  He
also broadcast the U.S. alert level “in the clear,” ensuring that
the Russians would intercept it.  They did, and promptly raised their
nuclear alert level to the same status. 

In addition, few participants in the crisis seemed to know exactly
what should be done if a Soviet ship did not respect the U.S. blockade
of Cuba.  Should the U.S. Navy demand to board it?  Fire upon it?
 Furthermore, at Castro’s orders, a Soviet surface-to-air battery
in Cuba shot down an American U-2 surveillance flight, killing the
pilot.  Khrushchev was apoplectic at the provocative action, while
the Kennedy administration faced the quandary of how to respond to it.

A particularly dangerous incident occurred in the Sargasso Sea, near
Cuba.  To bolster the Soviet defense of Cuba, four Soviet submarines,
each armed with a torpedo housing a 15-kiloton nuclear warhead, had
been dispatched to the island.  After a long, harrowing trip through
unusually stormy seas, these vessels were badly battered when they
arrived off Cuba.  Cut off from communication with Moscow, their
crews had no idea whether the United States and the Soviet Union were
already at war. 

All they did know was that a fleet of U.S. naval warships and
warplanes was apparently attacking one of the stricken Soviet
submarines, using the unorthodox (and unauthorized) tactic of forcing
it to surface by flinging hand grenades into its vicinity.  One of
the Soviet crew members recalled that “it felt like you were sitting
in a metal barrel while somebody is constantly blasting with a
sledgehammer.”  Given the depletion of the submarine’s batteries
and the tropical waters, temperatures ranged in the submarine between
113 and 149 degrees Fahrenheit.  The air was foul, fresh water was in
short supply, and crew members were reportedly “dropping like
dominoes.”  Unhinged by the insufferable conditions below deck and
convinced that his submarine was under attack, the vessel’s captain
ordered his weapons officer to assemble the nuclear torpedo for
action.  “We’re gonna blast them now!” he screamed.  We will
die, but we will sink them all―we will not become the shame of the
fleet.”

At this point, though, Captain Vasily Arkhipov, a young Soviet brigade
chief of staff who had been randomly assigned to the submarine,
intervened.  Calming the distraught captain, he eventually convinced
him that the apparent military attack, plus subsequent machine gun
fire from U.S. Navy aircraft, probably constituted no more than a
demand to surface.  And so they did.  Arkhipov’s action, Sherwin
notes, saved not only the lives of the submarine crew, “but also the
lives of thousands of U.S. sailors and millions of innocent civilians
who would have been killed in the nuclear exchanges that certainly
would have followed from the destruction” that the “nuclear
torpedo would have wreaked upon those U.S. Navy vessels.”

Meanwhile, recognizing that the situation was fast slipping out of
their hands, Kennedy and Khrushchev did some tense but serious
bargaining.  Ultimately, they agreed that Khrushchev would remove the
missiles, while Kennedy would issue a public pledge not to invade
Cuba.  Moreover, Kennedy would remove U.S. nuclear missiles from
Turkey―reciprocal action that made sense to both men, although, for
political reasons, Kennedy insisted on keeping the missile swap a
secret.  Thus, the missile crisis ended with a diplomatic solution.

Ironically, continued secrecy about the Cuba-Turkey missile swap,
combined with illusions of smooth Kennedy administration calibrations
of power spun by ExComm participants and the mass communications
media, led to a long-term, comforting, and triumphalist picture of the
missile crisis.  Consequently, most Americans ended up with the
impression that Kennedy stood firm in his demands, while Khrushchev
“blinked.”  It was a hawkish “lesson”―and a false one.  As
Sherwin points out, “the real lesson of the Cuban missile crisis . .
. is that nuclear armaments create the perils they are deployed to
prevent, but are of little use in resolving them.”

Although numerous books have been written about the Cuban missile
crisis, _Gambling with Armageddon _ranks as the best of them. 
Factually detailed, clearly and dramatically written, and grounded in
massive research, it is a work of enormous power and erudition.  As
such, it represents an outstanding achievement by one of the
pre-eminent U.S. historians.

Like Sherwin’s other works, _Gambling with Armageddon_ also
grapples with one of the world’s major problems:  the prospect of
nuclear annihilation.  At the least, it reveals that while nuclear
weapons exist, the world remains in peril.  On a deeper level, it
suggests the need to move beyond considerations of national security
to international security, including the abolition of nuclear weapons
and the peaceful resolution of conflict among nations.

Securing these goals might necessitate a long journey, but Sherwin’s
writings remind us that, to safeguard human survival, there’s really
no alternative to pressing forward with it.

_DR. LAWRENCE S. WITTNER [[link removed]] is
Professor of History Emeritus at SUNY/Albany and the author
of Confronting the Bomb
[[link removed]] (Stanford
University Press)._

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* nuclear weapons
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* History
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* international relations
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* Harry Truman
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* Dwight D. Eisenhower
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* John F. Kennedy
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* Nikita Khrushchev
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* stevenson
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* Soviet Union
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* Cuba
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