Plans
for a nuclear war devised by the US Army in the 1960s considered
decimating the Soviet Union and China by destroying their industrial
potential and wiping out the bulk of their populations, newly
declassified documents show.
A review
of the US general nuclear war plan by the Joint Staff in 1964, which
was recently published by George Washington University’s National
Security Archive project, shows how the Pentagon studied options “to
destroy the USSR and China as viable societies.”
The
review, conducted two years after the Cuban Missile Crisis, devises
the destruction of the Soviet Union “as a viable society”
by annihilating 70 percent of its industrial floor space during
pre-emptive and retaliatory nuclear strikes.
A
similar goal is tweaked for China, given its more agrarian-based
economy at the time. According to the plan, the US would wipe out 30
major Chinese cities, killing off 30 percent of the nation’s urban
population and halving its industrial capabilities. The successful
execution of the large-scale nuclear assault would ensure that China
“would no longer be a viable nation,” the review reads.
The
Joint Staff had proposed to use the “population loss as the
primary yardstick for effectiveness in destroying the enemy society
with only collateral attention to industrial damage.” This
“alarming” idea meant that, as long as urban workers and managers
were killed, the actual damage to industrial targets “might not
be as important,” the George Washington University researchers
said.
The 1964
plan doesn’t specify the anticipated enemy casualty levels, but –
as the researchers note – an earlier estimate from 1961 projected
that a US attack would kill 71 percent of the residents in major
Soviet urban centers and 53 percent of residents in Chinese ones.
Likewise, the 1962 estimate predicted the death of 70 million Soviet
citizens during a “no-warning US strike” on military and
urban-industrial targets.
The
Pentagon continues to rely heavily on nuclear deterrence, and –
just like in the 1960s – the US nuclear strategy still regards
Russian and Chinese military capabilities as main “challenges”
faced by Washington. The latest Nuclear Posture Review, adopted in
February, outlined “an unprecedented range and mix of threats”
emanating from Beijing and Moscow. The document, which mentions
Russia 127 times, cites the modernization of the Russian nuclear
arsenal as “troubling” for the US.
The
existing nuclear strategy also allows the US to conduct nuclear
strikes not only in response to enemies’ nuclear attacks, but also
in response to “significant non-nuclear strategic attacks”
on the US, its allies and partners.
The
newest US Nuclear Posture Review was heavily criticized by Russia and
China. Moscow denounced the strategy as “confrontational,” while
Beijing described the Pentagon’s approach as an example of
“Cold-War mentality.”
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