While my background is in international political economy, getting a PhD in political science exposes one to a lot of what we called "bombs and rockets." In particular, I recall two things that are relevant to this discussion. The first is from a job talk I saw as an undergraduate at the University of Oregon in the late 1970s. The interviewee was a specialist in nuclear affairs, and presented data much like what is presented here. He described the building of both the US and the Soviet nuclear arsenals as an "arms competition," not an arms race. He attributed much of the US pattern as a function of both the miniturization of warheads and increases in accurancy, as measured by declining circular error probabilities for each warhead. Thus more accurate weapons allowed for fewer warheads with diminished yield needed to achieve the same result. The Soviet side, in contrast, was the result of bureaucratic inertia. After the Cuban Missle Crisis, the Soviets built a huge bureaucratic infrastructure to build nuclear missles (as bomber and submarine technology was at the time insufficiently advanced ) to catch up to the US, and in the Soviet system if the state did something it was by defition the correct policy, and if the program was correct there was no reason to stop it. In short, stopping the buildup might imply that the Party was incorrect in some way, and that could not be allowed.
The second was a few years later, when I was a grad student at the University of Michigan. I was picked to serve as a teaching assistant for Jerome Wiesner, who was a visiting professor and had been Kennedy's science advisor. He told me two stories. The first concerned the new Kennedy administration's solution to the "missle gap" problem. In the 1960 election, Kennedy had ran on a platform that included the criticism that the Eisenhower/Nixon administration had allowed the Soviets to surpass the US in constructing nuclear armed missles (an impact of Sputnik), thus a "missle gap" (much like the earlier supposd "bomber gap") existed between the two. Once in power, Kennedy got access to the data, and learned that the Soviets had but a few missles. Yet he had promised to build up the US nuclear missle force. When he asked the military how many were needed, they answered "more." So the discussion centered on a figure of 1000 because, as Wiesner put it, it sounded like a lot.
The second Wiesner story concerns the impact of missle accurancy and the development of MIRV technology, which the Nixon Administration kept out of the SALT I negotiations because they thought that they had a decade or more before the Soviets would develop it (they were very wrong). As Wiesner described it, the guidance system of the standard Minuteman ICBM was a small box stuffed with electronics not much bigger than a shoe box. When MIRV'd, this left sufficient space for three warheads on the then standard Minuteman. The Soviet guidance system, in contrast, was mechanical, and many magnitudes larger and heavier. Thus the Soviets had to build bigger missles to push that less accurate guidance system, along with the warhead, to its intended target. Enter the MIRV technology. Through the 1970s and 1980s the Soviets learned to reduce the size and weight of their guidance systems (in part by acquiring Western dual use technology--hence all the conflict among the US, Western Europe, and Japan regarding technology sales to the Soviets), leaving them with these comparatively huge platforms with lots of space for large numbers of MIRVs. This would be politicized in the US by the 1980 Reagan campaign as the so-called "window of vulnerability," whereby the large increase in the number of Soviet warheads would allow for the possibility of a disarming first strike aimed at US ICBM silos, and leave the Soviets with enough ICBMs to say to the US that they could ride out a bomber and SLBM counter-force strike and still threaten US cities (this was before the deployment of the US D-5 SLBM warhead).
The upshot of all this is to suggest that the pattern of warhead number and yield across the two states may have as much to do with technological change, as well as domestic political idiosyncrasies and rationalities, as with any sort of strategic calculations. It also underscoresas how completely insane the process was.
One subject I would love for you to address, as it deals with modeling, is the model that predicts a Nuclear Winter event with as few as 100 cities targeted.
The reason I'm interested in your take is this - we did an actual 1:1 scale test of this theory when the Allied powers firebombed 77 cities across Germany and Japan in WW2 between 44 and 45. To the best of my knowledge, the late 40's early 50's were not remembered for large scale climate catastrophe that the Nuclear Winter theorists say should happen when firestorms rage through that many cities. I did ask one of the scientists involved about this, and he said it was something they were aware of and looking at, but I never heard anything about this since.
My concern is the whole Nuclear Winter theory is something that is taboo to try to think about critically: You are a monster to suggest it's not real, because if you think it's not real then you are in favor of nuclear warfare, or at least want to make nuclear warfare less taboo to engage in. Who wants to be that monster? Certainly not me... but at the same time, this seems like such a glaring dataset ommission to account for, it makes the science behind it suspect.
I do believe in Climate Science, I do believe in Human Caused Climate Change... but Nuclear Winter I'm giving the side eye to.
Lots of interesting information in these charts. The most striking thing to me is the US big bomb craze around 1954-1960, when the number of warheads increased by a factor of 10 and the megatonnage by a factor of 60. Then, almost as quickly as it began, it was over: the stockpile growth began to taper off and the average yield went down sharply. It would be interesting to hear your thoughts on what caused this unique period, and why did it end.
Another thing visible in several of the charts is that the Soviet stockpiles seem to follow steady long-term trends while the US ones swing back and forth a lot. Do you think this reflects a real difference, or is it an artifact of data availability? If the Soviet data is less accurate that could hide smaller fluctuations.
While my background is in international political economy, getting a PhD in political science exposes one to a lot of what we called "bombs and rockets." In particular, I recall two things that are relevant to this discussion. The first is from a job talk I saw as an undergraduate at the University of Oregon in the late 1970s. The interviewee was a specialist in nuclear affairs, and presented data much like what is presented here. He described the building of both the US and the Soviet nuclear arsenals as an "arms competition," not an arms race. He attributed much of the US pattern as a function of both the miniturization of warheads and increases in accurancy, as measured by declining circular error probabilities for each warhead. Thus more accurate weapons allowed for fewer warheads with diminished yield needed to achieve the same result. The Soviet side, in contrast, was the result of bureaucratic inertia. After the Cuban Missle Crisis, the Soviets built a huge bureaucratic infrastructure to build nuclear missles (as bomber and submarine technology was at the time insufficiently advanced ) to catch up to the US, and in the Soviet system if the state did something it was by defition the correct policy, and if the program was correct there was no reason to stop it. In short, stopping the buildup might imply that the Party was incorrect in some way, and that could not be allowed.
The second was a few years later, when I was a grad student at the University of Michigan. I was picked to serve as a teaching assistant for Jerome Wiesner, who was a visiting professor and had been Kennedy's science advisor. He told me two stories. The first concerned the new Kennedy administration's solution to the "missle gap" problem. In the 1960 election, Kennedy had ran on a platform that included the criticism that the Eisenhower/Nixon administration had allowed the Soviets to surpass the US in constructing nuclear armed missles (an impact of Sputnik), thus a "missle gap" (much like the earlier supposd "bomber gap") existed between the two. Once in power, Kennedy got access to the data, and learned that the Soviets had but a few missles. Yet he had promised to build up the US nuclear missle force. When he asked the military how many were needed, they answered "more." So the discussion centered on a figure of 1000 because, as Wiesner put it, it sounded like a lot.
The second Wiesner story concerns the impact of missle accurancy and the development of MIRV technology, which the Nixon Administration kept out of the SALT I negotiations because they thought that they had a decade or more before the Soviets would develop it (they were very wrong). As Wiesner described it, the guidance system of the standard Minuteman ICBM was a small box stuffed with electronics not much bigger than a shoe box. When MIRV'd, this left sufficient space for three warheads on the then standard Minuteman. The Soviet guidance system, in contrast, was mechanical, and many magnitudes larger and heavier. Thus the Soviets had to build bigger missles to push that less accurate guidance system, along with the warhead, to its intended target. Enter the MIRV technology. Through the 1970s and 1980s the Soviets learned to reduce the size and weight of their guidance systems (in part by acquiring Western dual use technology--hence all the conflict among the US, Western Europe, and Japan regarding technology sales to the Soviets), leaving them with these comparatively huge platforms with lots of space for large numbers of MIRVs. This would be politicized in the US by the 1980 Reagan campaign as the so-called "window of vulnerability," whereby the large increase in the number of Soviet warheads would allow for the possibility of a disarming first strike aimed at US ICBM silos, and leave the Soviets with enough ICBMs to say to the US that they could ride out a bomber and SLBM counter-force strike and still threaten US cities (this was before the deployment of the US D-5 SLBM warhead).
The upshot of all this is to suggest that the pattern of warhead number and yield across the two states may have as much to do with technological change, as well as domestic political idiosyncrasies and rationalities, as with any sort of strategic calculations. It also underscoresas how completely insane the process was.
One subject I would love for you to address, as it deals with modeling, is the model that predicts a Nuclear Winter event with as few as 100 cities targeted.
The reason I'm interested in your take is this - we did an actual 1:1 scale test of this theory when the Allied powers firebombed 77 cities across Germany and Japan in WW2 between 44 and 45. To the best of my knowledge, the late 40's early 50's were not remembered for large scale climate catastrophe that the Nuclear Winter theorists say should happen when firestorms rage through that many cities. I did ask one of the scientists involved about this, and he said it was something they were aware of and looking at, but I never heard anything about this since.
My concern is the whole Nuclear Winter theory is something that is taboo to try to think about critically: You are a monster to suggest it's not real, because if you think it's not real then you are in favor of nuclear warfare, or at least want to make nuclear warfare less taboo to engage in. Who wants to be that monster? Certainly not me... but at the same time, this seems like such a glaring dataset ommission to account for, it makes the science behind it suspect.
I do believe in Climate Science, I do believe in Human Caused Climate Change... but Nuclear Winter I'm giving the side eye to.
Lots of interesting information in these charts. The most striking thing to me is the US big bomb craze around 1954-1960, when the number of warheads increased by a factor of 10 and the megatonnage by a factor of 60. Then, almost as quickly as it began, it was over: the stockpile growth began to taper off and the average yield went down sharply. It would be interesting to hear your thoughts on what caused this unique period, and why did it end.
Another thing visible in several of the charts is that the Soviet stockpiles seem to follow steady long-term trends while the US ones swing back and forth a lot. Do you think this reflects a real difference, or is it an artifact of data availability? If the Soviet data is less accurate that could hide smaller fluctuations.
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Who thinks the Cold War couldn't be predicted? It seems like the default path once both sides have enough bombs (or at least a high-probability path).
The Cold War never going hot does seem unpredictable, but from the context that's unlikely to be what the authors mean.