The Soviets knew Gen. Curtis LeMay wouldn’t hesitate to bomb them if ordered. That may be why he never had to.
OPINION
APRIL 15, 2010
‘Peace Is Our Profession’
The Soviets knew Gen. Curtis LeMay wouldn’t hesitate to bomb them if ordered. That may be why he never had to.
By WARREN KOZAK
In 1964, Hollywood mirrored the world’s fears with two major motion pictures focused on nuclear nightmare scenarios—”Fail-Safe” and “Dr. Strangelove.” That same year saw the famous Daisy TV commercial linking the Republican presidential nominee, Barry Goldwater, to reckless nuclear behavior. This was during the Cold War, when the United States and the Soviet Union would target thousands of nuclear weapons at each other. The fear of an exchange due to a breakdown in relations or a simple misunderstanding or malfunction was very real.
We have come a long way from that frightful era as President Obama hosted the first international summit this week to reduce the overall numbers and the spread of nuclear weapons. The Soviet Union is no more. China’s diplomatic and trade relationship with the U.S. has been strong for decades. The fear today, as Mr. Obama acknowledged at the close of the talks, comes not from a superpower standoff but from rogue states or even non-state sponsored terrorists.
Given our very changed world, the nuclear threat of a half-century ago can look as antiquated as a 1955 Buick. Yet there are still important lessons we can learn.
If one man embodies the fears of that bygone era, it is U.S. Air Force Gen. Curtis E. LeMay, who headed the Strategic Air Command (SAC) and later the entire Air Force. LeMay was the inspiration behind the Buck Turgidson character in “Dr. Strangelove,” and for good reason. He believed in nuclear weapons and said so again and again, sometimes at the most inopportune moments. Today he is dismissed as some sort of troglodyte; in 1966 journalist I.F. Stone labeled him the “caveman in the jet bomber.” In reality, LeMay was far more complex and, ironically, may have been one of the greatest reasons the world never witnessed a nuclear exchange.
LeMay believed that the real purpose of having nuclear weapons was not to use them but to threaten to use them. He wanted to so terrify adversaries that they would never even consider a move against the U.S.
He came to this conclusion the hard way. Forced to fight the far superior Luftwaffe in the early days of World War II with inadequate and untrained forces, LeMay watched the slaughter of thousands of American teenagers under his command. He vowed never to let his country be so ill-prepared again. Much as many of our recent military commanders were formed by the Vietnam experience, Pearl Harbor and our appalling state of readiness in 1941 deeply influenced the U.S. military of the Cold War.
In the Pacific theater during World War II, LeMay leveled scores of Japanese cities with incendiary bombs, and he finished the war by dropping two atomic bombs. The Soviets knew he wouldn’t hesitate for a second to bomb them too if necessary. LeMay knew that they knew.
When LeMay took command of SAC in 1948, he transformed it into the most efficient and deadliest military organization the world had ever seen. Huge B-52 bombers were constantly in the air within striking distance of the Soviet Union. Each bomber carried a strike potential many times greater than the bomb dropped on Hiroshima—but the real threat was that the man behind it all was Curtis LeMay.
The logic behind SAC and the entire U.S. nuclear strategy was straight out of the schoolyard—if you try to inflict pain on us, we will inflict 10 times the amount of pain on you. It fit perfectly with LeMay’s world view: Always negotiate from a position of strength; do not bother anyone, but if bothered don’t be bullied.
By the 1950s, that basic lesson became known as mutual assured destruction (MAD). It worked throughout the Cold War. But given the changes since the collapse of the Soviet Union and its replacement by a fanatic and suicidal enemy, is the old paradigm applicable today? If the U.S. reduces its nuclear weapons, will that make the world safer? Will it induce Islamic fundamentalists to cease their efforts to acquire nuclear weapons or a dirty bomb? For instruction, perhaps we have to go further back to 1939, when well-intentioned men tried to negotiate with extremists.
That is where Curtis LeMay learned his sustaining lesson. And that is why LeMay believed you should never take the threat of nuclear weapons off the table. The idea of limiting oneself or showing one’s hand when elements around the world still clearly threaten us would have struck him as irresponsible. To LeMay, the U.S. nuclear arsenal was the sheriff that protected the small Western town. It was the cop on the beat. And he truly believed in SAC’s motto, which he helped coin: “Peace is our profession.”
Mr. Kozak is the author of “LeMay: The Life And Wars Of General Curtis LeMay” (Regnery, 2009).
Comments are closed.
