Nuclear Warfare Policy: Cold War to Today: Part 4
Presidential Directive/NSC-59: Countervailing Implementation - Part 3 of 3 for the PD-59 Series
President Jimmy Carter and his administration created a new target classification for the U.S. strategic nuclear forces when he released Presidential Directive 59, also called PD-59/NSC-59, in July 1980. President Carter added the new classification of "countervailing" to the existing classifications of countervalue and counterforce. The countervailing strategy was a new strategy that was meant to deter the Soviet Union from attacking the U.S. or its allies with the threat of a nuclear strategy that was meant to target what Soviet leaders considered most valuable to maintain their control of the country, which could include their very lives.
The Soviet leadership in the 1970s was suspected of adopting a strategy of surviving and thus winning a nuclear war with the United States, whether a limited nuclear war or a general nuclear war. This included improving the survivability of Soviet nuclear forces for a U.S. counterforce attack through the use of re-usable ICBM silos and mobile ICBM launchers. Building bigger and deeper nuclear-proof bunkers also contributed to the leadership's survivability, enabling them to survive a nuclear war and command from the bunker's protection. The countervailing strategy was to negate this Soviet strategy and return the balance of nuclear deterrence.
PD-59 established targeting objectives to support the countervailing strategy through planning and capabilities. The U.S. prioritized the countervailing strategy in its initial response, targeting Soviet military forces and facilities that control both nuclear and non-nuclear operations. The part that is left unsaid in this section is mentioned earlier that a sufficient reserve nuclear force was to be withheld for a follow-on response and can be assumed to include the countervalue targets of the Soviet cities by American submarine-launched ballistic missiles.
The Single Integrated Operational Plan, or SIOP, was to add a countervailing strategy to its pre-planned targets, providing the NCA with options for a nuclear attack, based on previously planned options. Pre-planning included the following countervailing suboptions:
• Strategic and nuclear forces, available for use against strategic and theater weapons, and to include nuclear storage sites
• Military command, control, communications and intelligence capabilities
• Military forces both stationary and mobile
• Industrial facilities that provide immediate support to military operations in wartime
PD-59 also added that if the U.S. was in a prolonged limited nuclear war with the Soviet Union, there needs to be pre-planned options to include political control systems and general industrial capacity and that such options need to limit the collateral damage to such attacks. This likely explains why the yields of U.S. ICBM warheads were generally lower than those of the Soviet version.
The directive also stated that the U.S. needed to maintain continuity of leadership while at the same time degrading the Soviet leadership’s continuity. This included a re-emphasis on the necessity for the U.S. command, control, communications (C3), and intelligence to remain sustainable, even in the event of a general nuclear war that implements the Mutually Assured Destruction plan option. The directive references prior directives that utilized telecommunication companies to maintain the survivability of the U.S. C3 to ensure government continuity and the continuation of the war if possible. In an era of countervailing, U.S. leadership had to outlast Soviet leadership.
The directive ended with requirements for the implementation of PD-59 and the countervailing strategy. This included the following:
• Two exercises involving the NCA to be conducted annually to evaluate U.S. capabilities and implementation of the U.S. doctrine
• Continued analysis and study to improve the countervailing strategy will be conducted by the Department of Defense
• The exercises and analysis will be used to provide the bases of modification to the countervailing strategy included employment and acquisition policies
• Annual report submitted to the President on employment plans to include size and capability of the reserve force and the degree of flexibility and limiting factors in flexibility and the status to provide improvements to the limiting factors
• Any changes to or new pre-planned options will be submitted to the President for review and approval
President Carter declares at the end of the document that PD-59/NSC-59 replaces the 1974-signed NSDM-242 during the Nixon administration.
This is the final installment of the PD-59/NSC-59 review. The directive, while not the first to discuss the concept of limited nuclear war, formalized it without abandoning the prevailing strategy of nuclear equivalency or MAD. The directive retained the possibility of a U.S. first strike against the Soviet Union, while also incorporating the idea of countervailing and establishing favorable conditions for negotiations to end a limited nuclear war. PD-59 superseded NDSM-242, which means that it took six years to create a new nuclear targeting doctrine, and this needs to be remembered in the context of the Russian public claims of changing its nuclear doctrine in short order during the Ukraine War.
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Reference:
https://www.ruhr-uni-bochum.de/gna/Quellensammlung/11/11_nsc59_1980.htm