Nuclear Warfare Policy: Cold War to Today: Part 6
Carter Administration’s Civil Defense Policy Review (Part 2 of 2 – U.S. Civil Defense Assessment and Strategic Risk)
“…by the mid-sixties the U.S government no longer worried about shelters. America’s strategic theory for a while actually held that it was not only practically impossible to protect the civilian population in a nuclear war but that it was wrong and dangerous even to try. Nuclear war would only be unthinkable if the people on each side were helpless hostages to the other sides’ nuclear weapons. The doctrine of Mutual Assured Destruction, MAD for short.” - Gwynne Dyer, War, 1983.
The previous article in this series introduced Presidential Directive 41, or PD-41, which primarily outlined the role of U.S. civil defense in the U.S. strategic doctrine. It also linked to other directives and studies, comparing the capabilities of the U.S. civil defense plan with the Soviet Union's civil defense plan. The previous article also included a series of evaluative summaries of the Soviet civil defense system, which U.S. national security officials concluded were considerably more capable than similar U.S. plans, as the Soviets had invested more and created a more formalized structure throughout their government. Despite this, U.S. officials concluded that the Soviet program was insufficient to significantly alter the strategic balance of the prevailing nuclear deterrent.
The prevailing nuclear deterrent was Mutual Assured Destruction; even in the limited nuclear war doctrines that initially avoided the population centers, the underwritten threat was that these targets, called countervalue targets, would be held out as a point of leverage or a hostage to prevent further escalation by either side. The doctrine made sense in a strange way, as if a country's population is destroyed, so goes the entire nation. What government, American or Soviet, would risk its own destruction, thereby achieving the ultimate deterrence? The logic, of course, breaks down in a limited war scenario where one side could see itself losing in a limited exchange and either face defeat or push up the escalation chain up to and including a countervalue attack.
If civil defense proved effective, it could be one of the only technically viable methods during the Cold War to protect the population by relocating entire population and disperse them across large swaths of the rural U.S. and Soviet Union. The U.S. officials had concluded that if the Soviet Union had a week to prepare for a nuclear war, it could evacuate its cities and reduce its casualties by 83% versus a 2-hour surprise attack window. The similar U.S. program was deemed significantly less capable.
In December 1976, NSSM-244, a classified study, published the U.S. Civil Defense Policy. The U.S. in 1976 was only spending $2.5 million on civil defense when compared to the Soviet Union’s $2 billion annual budget. The evaluation deemed the U.S. entirely inadequate with a $2.5 million budget.
Status of U.S. Civil Defense (in a nuclear war scenario):
• Focuses almost exclusively on population protection. Does not include economic/industrial protection programs which are important for recovery.
• With only a one-week notice, only a few million could be expected to survive without a civil defense program.
• It would take a one-year warning, considered unrealistic, significantly increase U.S. population survival.
• It will take about a decade, mid-1980s, before the U.S. had a nationwide city crisis re-location program.
The document summary immediately follows up by stating the importance of protecting the U.S. population.
• U.S. capability to protect the U.S. population in event of a nuclear attack is important on moral and political grounds
o U.S. places high value on human life
o Population survival needed for post-war recovery
o The lack of ability to protect the U.S. population could affect the willingness or perceived willingness to react to Soviet threats at the thresholds between non-use, or limited employment of nuclear weapons.
• While Soviet civil defense does not degrade U.S. nuclear deterrent, hardening and dispersal programs could pose problems for U.S. strategic objectives and weapon acquisition and employment policies in the future.
The above gets to the point that civil defense is at least needed to keep the U.S. population engaged and politically supporting the U.S. administrations. Should the populace in a democratic republic perceive their government neglecting their protection, they might demand a shift in U.S. nuclear, foreign, and overall defense policies. The succeeding administrations would create a change in the strategic world balance and cede the Cold War initiative to what was seen as an aggressive and encroaching Soviet Union. Whether this was a real concern, an overblown concern, or a self-serving interest of the defense establishment is up for a separate debate.
The importance of saving a population for the existence of a nation or in a post-war recovery cannot be understated, as the population represents labor in one of the four economic factors of production, but the civil defense, as admitted, does not have a program to save critical industries and infrastructure needed for the other factors of production.
The other part of this section is stating the Soviet civil defense was not to the point of changing nuclear deterrence or U.S. weapons and targeting policy, but that it was feared that progression in the Soviet program could change that in the future. Outside of a surprise nuclear first strike, the response to this threat would be to increase the number and/or size of nuclear weapons to counteract population dispersal. This, in turn, would alter the nuclear equivalency theory that underpins the Mutual Assured Destruction doctrine, necessitating an increase in the reserve strategic force for countervalue attacks in a limited nuclear war or general nuclear war scenario. Either way, the result would be the same: a new arms race if civil defense programs were to become more effective on the Soviet or the U.S. side.
NSSM-244 went on further to make a U.S. civil defense recommendations for its goals:
• U.S. move toward a week warning and surge capability to protect 75% of the U.S. population from a nuclear attack through a combination of the use of bomb and fallout shelters and crisis relocation.
o One week is considered reasonable for planning purposes
o A modest cost of $215 million a year
o The U.S. program could not be construed as an attempt to develop a first strike capability because it would depend on a one-week surge and is a relatively modest cost program.
The point is that a more robust U.S. program could not be viewed as a first-strike development capability, as a one-week crisis relocation program would telegraph the possibility of a first strike, thus negating the possibility. A relocation program therefore would not be initiated until a nuclear crisis was already occurring, and both the U.S. and Soviet nuclear forces would already be on a heightened state of alert and thus reducing the likelihood of a surprise first strike.
The updated strategic nuclear doctrine in PD-59 included PD-41, which reasserted the findings of NSSM-244 and PRM-32. The statement reaffirmed the role of U.S. civil defense in the strategic balance. Although it lagged behind the Soviet program, it was crucial to uphold the perception that it favored the U.S. This perception was crucial to prevent the Soviet Union from coercing the U.S. with a nuclear threat. President Carter further stated that the U.S. civil defense should leverage the relative mobility of the U.S. population, utilizing private cars and an extensive highway system to facilitate relocation, as well as utilizing non-urban housing available for the urban population. Largely transferring the responsibility of national relocation from the government to the individual.
The apparent decision by President Carter in PD-41 was to follow the policies of his predecessors in maintaining a civil defense at a nearly bare minimum level to be something slightly more than a talking point for morale purposes with a plan that was not able to meet the requirements of national relocation and sustainment once relocated. A more significant civil defense program that included both preservation and sustainment of the population and industry that were needed to rebuild after a nuclear attack in itself would be prohibitively expensive and in itself would be destabilizing to nuclear deterrence, whether in a limited or general nuclear war situation, and would most likely lead to another round of the nuclear arms race.
U.S. policymakers in the 1960s were largely correct when they concluded that trying to protect the U.S. population through civil defense was not feasible and was insufficient to maintain a functioning society. If civil defense proved effective, it would undoubtedly lead to destabilization. Later administrations resuscitated civil defense to sustain domestic morale and uphold Cold War policies, in concern that doing otherwise could be politically damaging by the loss of political support. Despite the differing motivations of Soviet citizens, the state and its policies required their unwavering support as well. The conclusion was that the populations were necessary pawns in the nuclear deterrent game, and anything that disrupted this in any meaningful way was undesirable, at least in the U.S.
If you like my content, please consider becoming a Substack subscriber to Pegasus Research or support me through Patreon, Buy Me A Coffee or Ko-Fi.
Reference:
https://irp.fas.org/offdocs/pd/pd41.pdf
https://www.fordlibrarymuseum.gov/sites/default/files/pdf_documents/library/document/0310/nssm244.pdf