US–Soviet Nuclear Arms Race (HSC SSCE Modern History): Revision Notes

US–Soviet Nuclear Arms Race

Overview of the arms race

After the United Nations was sidelined on the issue of nuclear weapons control, the United States and the Soviet Union embarked on an intense nuclear arms race that would last for over four decades. This competition fundamentally shaped the Cold War period and brought the world closer to nuclear catastrophe on several occasions.

Development of the nuclear arms race

The nuclear arms race began with political commitment from the leadership of both superpowers to develop nuclear weapons programmes. This commitment then triggered a chain of developments that built upon each other.

Key stages of development

The arms race progressed through several crucial stages:

• Both nations mobilised their scientific expertise and recruited top physicists and engineers to work on weapons development
• They acquired fissile material through uranium mining operations, which provided the fuel needed for nuclear weapons
• Construction of extensive infrastructure followed, including nuclear power plants, weapons manufacturing facilities, and testing sites
• Scientists and engineers designed and built nuclear bombs, which then required testing to verify they would function as intended
• The tests served both technical and political purposes, demonstrating military capability to potential adversaries

Initially, the only way to deliver nuclear weapons was by dropping bombs from aircraft. However, this method had limitations, so both nations invested heavily in developing new delivery systems. The primary method eventually became the nuclear missile, which could be launched from various platforms including underground silos, mobile launchers mounted on vehicles, fighter aircraft, and submarines.

The military-industrial complex

In both the United States and Soviet Union, a powerful military-industrial complex emerged. This term describes the network of individuals in the military and in arms-producing industries that operates as a powerful force influencing government policy. The complex created a self-reinforcing cycle where military officials and arms manufacturers worked together to promote continued weapons development and production.

President Dwight D Eisenhower recognised this danger and warned against it in his farewell address on 17 January 1961.

New military doctrines were developed to justify the use of these weapons, along with numerous war plans designed to deal with every possible scenario for nuclear conflict. The entire structure was connected through command and control systems that could efficiently and reliably launch thousands of nuclear weapons according to predetermined military plans.

Civil defence and public concerns

Both governments developed civil defence plans and educational programmes to prepare their populations for the possibility of nuclear war. However, these schemes had more to do with reassuring the public than ensuring their survival. In reality, surviving a full-scale nuclear exchange would have been impossible for most people.

Nuclear warheads and delivery systems

By the time of the Trinity Test in July 1945, the United States had already built a massive network of industrial facilities and scientific laboratories. These facilities continued operating seamlessly to produce more atomic bombs and to develop new types of weapons, delivery systems, and operational plans.

Development of the hydrogen bomb

US scientists believed they could create an even more powerful bomb than the atomic bomb, which they called the 'Super'. After the Soviet Union tested its first atomic bomb on 29 August 1949, President Truman was convinced by scientists such as Edward Teller that the United States must maintain technological superiority. He ordered development of this new bomb, which became known as a hydrogen or thermonuclear bomb.

The United States detonated its first hydrogen bomb on 1 November 1952. The Soviets followed and exploded their first hydrogen bomb on 12 August 1953 at Semipalatinsk in Kazakhstan. This bomb had a yield of 400 kilotons (the destructive force equal to 400,000 tonnes of TNT), which was 20 times larger than the 20-kiloton Nagasaki explosion. However, it wasn't a true hydrogen bomb and was much smaller than the American test, which had been 10 megatons (10,000 kilotons). On 22 November 1955, the Soviets detonated their first 'true' hydrogen bomb with a yield of 1.6 megatons.

Evolution of delivery systems

The nuclear warhead is the actual explosive part of the bomb, but various delivery systems were developed to transport the warhead to its target. These systems evolved significantly over time.

The first delivery method was the gravity bomb dropped from a bomber plane. The atomic bombs dropped on Japan were delivered by B-29 Superfortress bombers. Throughout the 1950s and 1960s, new varieties of gravity bombs were developed for use by both strategic bombers (for attacking cities and industrial centres) and tactical fighter bombers (for battlefield use). The United States maintained whole fleets of B-52 Stratofortress bombers on constant alert, flying 24 hours a day, loaded with nuclear weapons and ready to attack enemy territory.

The missile revolution

The development of ballistic missiles changed everything. Both superpowers had been working on missiles based on the German V2 rocket, which they had captured at the end of World War II.

Both superpowers then expanded their nuclear forces with various types of missiles capable of carrying nuclear warheads:

• Intermediate Range Ballistic Missiles (IRBMs) for shorter ranges were developed in large numbers, with many deployed in Europe
• From 1970, missiles with Multiple Independently Targetable Re-entry Vehicle (MIRV) capability entered service. A MIRV was a ballistic missile containing multiple warheads that would separate during flight and head for different targets
• Submarine Launched Ballistic Missiles (SLBMs) – missiles that can be fired from a submarine while still submerged – were developed and deployed to new classes of submarines like the Polaris, which entered service in 1960

The Polaris submarine carried 16 SLBMs with MIRV capability, each with three warheads, making a total of 48 warheads per submarine. Each warhead had a yield of 200 kilotons – 10 times the size of the Hiroshima bomb.

Defensive and cruise missiles

Another type of missile was the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM), a defensive missile designed to destroy incoming enemy missiles. In the 1960s, the Soviets were the first to deploy ABM missiles to defend Moscow. They used the nuclear-armed Galosh missile as an interceptor, which meant that ABM missiles stopped incoming missiles by detonating their own warheads in the atmosphere.

The first operational cruise missile was the German V1 flying bomb, deployed in 1944 to attack London. A cruise missile is essentially a small, pilotless aircraft carrying an explosive warhead, which could be either conventional or nuclear. In the 1970s, the US developed a revolutionary type that cruised at low altitude, closely following the terrain to evade radar detection. This made it the perfect weapon for a surprise nuclear attack.

Military doctrine

Throughout the Cold War, a set of beliefs or doctrines about nuclear weapons and their use was developed. The challenge in developing military doctrine, strategy and plans for fighting a nuclear war is that none of these can be based on actual experience, since no nuclear war has been fought.

Throughout the Cold War, serious theoretical thinking about nuclear war produced some dominant ideas and myths that shaped policy.

The doctrine of nuclear deterrence

One of the most influential beliefs of the US-Soviet nuclear arms race was the concept of nuclear deterrence. Deterrence means dissuading an adversary by convincing them that the costs of hostile action will outweigh any potential benefits. Deterrence works by persuading decision makers that the consequences of their actions will be unacceptable.

In everyday situations, we know that deterrence doesn't always work. However, when it came to nuclear weapons, policymakers presumed it would be different. The theory of nuclear deterrence became enormously important in shaping the thinking of foreign policy decision makers.

The belief in nuclear deterrence survived the end of the Cold War. Each of the nine countries possessing nuclear weapons today justifies their arsenals by claiming they need them for deterrence.

Extended Nuclear Deterrence (END)

A related concept is Extended Nuclear Deterrence (END), which means extending the protection of a country's nuclear arsenal to its allies. During the Cold War, the NATO alliance played a crucial role in deterring Soviet attacks on Western Europe. Every US president since Eisenhower has made clear that any invasion or attack on a NATO ally would be considered an attack on the United States itself, and that they would retaliate with nuclear weapons.

Extended Nuclear Deterrence continued after the Cold War ended. The United States today extends the protection of its nuclear umbrella to:

• The other 28 member nations of NATO
• Its allies in Asia including Japan, South Korea, Taiwan and Australia

Since 1994, Australia has included its reliance on END in its Defence White Papers. The 2016 Defence White Paper stated: "Only the nuclear and conventional capabilities of the United States can offer effective deterrence against the possibility of nuclear threats against Australia."

Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD)

Another doctrine that came to symbolise the absurdity of the nuclear arms race was Mutually Assured Destruction (MAD). This concept was first articulated by US Defence Secretary Robert McNamara in 1962. In essence, any attack by the Soviet Union would result in such a powerful retaliation by the United States and NATO that the destruction of both sides would be 'assured'. In other words, the Soviet Union should be deterred from contemplating a first-strike attack because it would be destroyed as well.

Eventually, many people began to think that the acronym MAD accurately reflected the real implications of such a doctrine. The MAD doctrine intensified public fear of nuclear war throughout the Cold War, particularly during the 1980s. By that time, there was global uneasiness regarding official military doctrine on nuclear weapons. Propaganda about being able to survive a nuclear war was no longer believed by many people.

Military plans

Canadian historian Gwynne Dyer observed that we know little about the debates that occurred on the Soviet side regarding military strategy. As for the United States, there was an ongoing argument throughout the Cold War between two groups:

• Those who believed nuclear weapons should never be used again and should only deter others from using them
• Those who continually sought ways to make nuclear weapons usable in war

The Single Integrated Operations Plan (SIOP)

In the 1960s, US military strategy on nuclear weapons settled on the idea of one integrated military plan for use in the event of war, called the Single Integrated Operations Plan (SIOP). The SIOP coordinated all nuclear weapons from the Army, Air Force and Navy into one comprehensive plan.

McNamara refined SIOP-63 so that it included five categories from which the US president could choose in the event of war. Only the president had authority to authorise a nuclear attack. Communication protocols were established to ensure that any message from the president was authorised and genuine. The launch codes were carried in a briefcase called the 'football' by an aide who remained constantly near the president.

Strategic and tactical nuclear weapons

There were two main categories of nuclear weapons: tactical and strategic:

• Strategic nuclear weapons were usually larger and targeted cities and industrial areas
• Tactical nuclear weapons were usually smaller and designed for battlefield use
• Both types would be integrated into the SIOP

Each new US president has participated in a role-play exercise of the SIOP with the Joint Chiefs of Staff (the heads of the US Army, Navy and Air Force, who advise the president on national security matters). During these exercises, the president is presented with various scenarios and asked which targets to choose.

The nuclear triad

Both superpowers created nuclear arsenals based on three methods of delivery – the nuclear triad of land, air and sea. This meant that both sides' nuclear arsenals were designed to retain a second-strike capability: the ability to absorb an attack and still retaliate with massive force.

The nuclear triad consisted of:

• Land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) in silos
• Strategic bombers capable of delivering nuclear weapons
• Submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs)

The development of global strike

The end of the Cold War should have eliminated the need for nuclear deterrence. However, during the 1990s, whilst Russia dealt with massive political, social and economic problems during its rebirth as a fledgling democracy, the United States political and military establishment struggled with the loss of their old Cold War adversary. The Clinton administration failed to push hard for global military disarmament, and justifications for keeping military arsenals re-emerged. In the 1990s, the US military began targeting non-nuclear states, and political leaders talked increasingly about 'rogue states' and terrorists obtaining nuclear weapons.

During the George W Bush administration (2001-2009), the United States developed the global strike policy. The idea was to use overwhelming US conventional and nuclear superiority to deter any nation or group from attacking the United States or its allies – essentially, to be ready to target anywhere on the planet. The SIOP was replaced by two plans:

• OPLAN 8044, which targeted the Russian nuclear arsenal
• OPLAN 8022-02, a flexible plan covering the rest of the globe

On 18 November 2005, Global Strike Command became operational. This represented a shift from the Cold War balance of terror to a policy of superiority and action, where the United States declared superiority over all adversaries and even all conceivable future adversaries.

Command and control systems

Everything in a country's nuclear war-fighting capacity depended on its command and control system. Each superpower's command and control system had to:

• Coordinate early warning systems and ensure alerts were analysed quickly and passed to military command
• Ensure all mobile missiles (IRBMs), missiles in silos (ICBMs), submarines (SLBMs), and all gravity bombs or cruise missiles carried in bomber and fighter planes were ready for use
• Ensure sound and secure communications between all people in the system
• Ensure the safety of all weapons and fissile material from accidents, mistakes or terrorist attacks

Accidents and near misses

In his 2013 book Command and Control, Eric Schlosser conducted a detailed study of the history of the United States' command and control system. Using declassified documents, he found many accidents, mishaps, malfunctions and mistakes that could have ended in nuclear catastrophe, though fortunately none did. There has been no equivalent of a Chernobyl or Fukushima disaster with a nuclear weapon – yet.

Nuclear Age tensions

The Doomsday Clock, created by the Federation of American Scientists in 1947, measures how close experts believe we are to the end of human civilisation. The board meets twice yearly to discuss the current state of global threats. Since 2007, climate change and other global threats have been included in their deliberations.

Crisis points during the Cold War

Several critical moments brought the world close to nuclear catastrophe:

The cost of the nuclear arms race

The decisions taken by political leaders in 1945 and 1946 led to a nuclear arms race between the two superpowers that lasted 46 years. The alternative choice would have been international control of nuclear technology, but this road was not taken. Instead, the two superpowers embarked on a nuclear arms race that put the entire planet at risk and inflicted enormous costs on the economies and societies of both nations.

Economic costs

In his 2007 book Arsenals of Folly, Richard Rhodes estimates that for the United States alone, the cost of the nuclear arms race was at least US$5.5 trillion and perhaps as high as US$10 trillion. The 'overkill' in spending by the US military-industrial complex led to an inability to address problems in American cities including crime, poverty, riots, pollution and basic infrastructure decay.

Impact on the Soviet Union

If the United States paid a heavy price for 'winning' the Cold War, the Soviet Union paid an even heavier price for no gain whatsoever. The nuclear arms race, along with other dysfunctional economic policies, virtually bankrupted the communist superpower.

Since the end of the Cold War, the Russian Federation has struggled with a dysfunctional and corrupt capitalist economy that strains to meet its people's basic needs whilst wealthy oligarchs have become richer.

Global impact

Finally, the rest of the world paid a price for the nuclear arms race. Beyond 46 years of fear, there was a humanitarian and environmental cost from 2,056 nuclear weapons tests conducted by the end of 2017 in many locations around the world. Two hundred and nineteen of these tests were conducted in the atmosphere, spreading radioactive dust around the globe.

Living with the bomb: civil defence

Whilst world leaders embarked on the nuclear arms race, the people of the world had to learn to 'live with the bomb'. Growing fear of nuclear weapons in the 1950s, generated by revulsion towards Hiroshima and the massive hydrogen bomb tests conducted in the atmosphere in the Pacific and over Kazakhstan, convinced successive US presidents that civil defence programmes were needed to ease public concern.

Massive amounts of money were spent on civil defence plans and educational programmes. In schools, regular civil defence drills were conducted. Communities were taught how to build makeshift fallout shelters, instructed to stockpile supplies, and given tips for surviving in a post-nuclear attack world.

Remember!