LEARN TO LEAD - Civil Air Patrol

turned to the nuclear arsenal as a substitute for conventionalparity. In the president’s view, the United Statescould effectively deter Soviet aggression by placinggreater emphasis on nuclear weapons in American nationalsecurity policy. Commonly called the “New Look,”the president’s emphasis on the growth of advanced nuclearweapons and delivery platforms led to developmentof a large fleet of nuclear bombers and, by the end of theEisenhower administration, the nuclear triad. 9 Composedof three legs, the triad provides the United States withthree distinct delivery platforms for nuclear weapons.The first and oldest leg includes the nation’s long-rangebombers and their payload of gravity bombs and airlaunched cruise missiles. At its apex in the early to mid-1960s, Strategic Air Command included more than 1,300nuclear-capable bombers, including 700 of the then-newB-52s. 10 By 1990 the nation’s long-range bomber fleet haddeclined to 347 total aircraft. 11 Today, nuclear-capablebombers account for about half of the Air Force’s bomberfleet of 162 aircraft. 12A second leg became part of the nation’s nuclear arsenalin 1959 with deployment of the first six Atlas D ICBMs.Just three years later, the first Minuteman I deployed.Not until 1970 did America’s ICBM force reach its peakwith a mix of 1,054 Titan II and Minuteman I, II, and IIImissiles—most of which carried three to 12 warheads.These numbers remained constant until 1982. 13 Sincethen, the number of operationally deployed ICBMs hassteadily declined to its current size of 450. 14The addition of the Polaris SLBM in 1960 completed thetriad. Like the other two legs, SLBMs waxed at the heightof the Cold War and waned as it ended. By 1967 theUnited States had deployed 656 SLBMs aboard 41 ballisticmissile submarines (SSBN). When the Soviet Unioncollapsed in December 1991, the sea leg of the triad remainedlargely intact with 33 SSBNs carrying 608SLBMs. 15 Today, however, only 14 Ohio-class submarinesremain, each carrying 24 Trident II nuclear missiles.Throughout the Cold War, the United States maintained asubstantial inferiority in conventional military forces butenjoyed the protection of a sizable nuclear umbrella. Asthe Cold War progressed and American thinking aboutnuclear conflict developed, “assured destruction” tookprecedence as the approach of choice. Developed byThomas Schelling and others while he worked for theRAND Corporation in the 1960s, the concept of assureddestruction purposefully left the United States vulnerableto a first strike, yet the nation maintained a credible second-strikecapability. 16 Although nuclear policy evolvedthroughout the Cold War, its essential nature remainedmuch the same. Because of the exorbitant fiscal cost ofbuilding a large underground industrial infrastructure,for example, the nation chose to accept the risk of an unprotectedpublic—but only as long as it was defended bybombers standing at alert, ICBMs protected in their reinforcedsilos, and submarines quietly prowling the world’soceans. In the end, deterrence seems to have worked.A second aspect of American nuclear policy—often overlookedin the current debate— dates back to the earliestdays of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO)when the United States and its European allies made aconscious decision to forgo creation of a NATO militaryequal in strength to that of the Warsaw Pact. Instead, theEuropean members of NATO chose to rely on America’sstrategic nuclear weapons— based in the United Statesand at sea— as well as tactical nuclear weapons, based inEurope, as a guarantor that Eastern Bloc troops wouldnot roll through the Fulda Gap on their way to Paris. 17 Extendeddeterrence, as it came to be known, enabled WesternEurope to focus on economic development instead ofheavy investment in national security. Although this typeof deterrence often proved unpopular with Europeanpublics, governments throughout Western Europe dependedupon the security provided by basing nuclearweapons throughout the West.ENTERING THE POST–COLD WAR ERAIn the immediate aftermath of the Cold War, assured destructionand related nuclear strategies that had servedthe nation well for more than two generations were almostforgotten as the euphoria that engrossed Americatook hold. 18 With it, the triad fell into decline. As the formerSoviet Union sought to stabilize its deterioratingeconomy by lowering its military expenditures, theUnited States joined Russia in making dramatic reductionsto the overall size of the nuclear arsenal. The “peacedividend” promised to the American people by presidentsGeorge H. W. Bush and Bill Clinton led to a refocusing ofUS foreign policy. With the Russian Bear focused on internalstruggles, the United States was free to take on therole of global hegemon and concentrate its efforts onserving as the world’s policeman. The 1990s saw the USmilitary intervene in a number of failing or failed statessuch as Somalia, Haiti, Bosnia, and Serbia, while also emphasizingdemocratization of the former Soviet Unionand globalization of the international economy. 19As Francis Fukuyama suggested in his article “The End ofHistory?” “What we may be witnessing is not just the endof the Cold War, or the passing of a particular period ofpostwar history, but the end of history as such: that is, theend point of mankind’s ideological evolution and the universalizationof Western liberal democracy as the final107