Most of the targets in the SIOP were still part of the Soviet war machinery — missile sites, air bases, command centers, ports. But the desire for assured destruction of the Soviet economy inspired calculations that made Fred Iklé’s theories about urban bombing seem like a relic of the Stone Age. RAND had developed a computer model to provide speedy estimates of the casualties and deaths that would be caused by different nuclear attacks. It was called QUICK COUNT. The types of weapons to be used in an attack, their targets, the prevailing winds, and the density of the local population were entered into an IBM-7090 computer — and then QUICK COUNT produced graphs, charts, and summaries of the potential carnage. It predicted the consequences of various attacks not only on the Soviet Union, but also on Eastern Europe, Western Europe, and the United States. And it included, as a bonus, an “Urban DGZ Selector” that helped war planners maximize the destruction of cities, allowing them to select the desired ground zeros likely to kill the most people.
A government report later outlined the “obstacle course to recovery” that victims of such nuclear attacks would have to navigate:
Although the human toll would be grim, the authors of the report were optimistic about the impact of nuclear detonations on the environment. “No weight of nuclear attack which is at all probable could induce gross changes in the balance of nature that approach in type or degree the ones that human civilization has already inflicted on the environment,” it said. “These include cutting most of the original forests, tilling the prairies, irrigating the deserts, damming and polluting the streams, eliminating certain species and introducing others, overgrazing hillsides, flooding valleys, and even preventing forest fires.” The implication was that nature might find nuclear warfare a relief.
Kissinger had once thought that Western Europe could be defended with tactical nuclear weapons, confining the damage to military targets and avoiding civilian casualties. But that idea now seemed inconceivable, and the refusal of America’s NATO allies to build up their conventional forces ensured that a military conflict with the Soviet Union would quickly escalate beyond control. During a meeting in the White House Situation Room, Kissinger complained that NATO nuclear policy “insists on our destruction before the Europeans will agree to defend themselves.”
Nixon’s administration soon found itself in much the same position as Kennedy’s, urgently seeking alternatives to an all-out nuclear war with the Soviet Union. “I must not be — and my successors must not be — limited to the indiscriminate mass destruction of enemy civilians as the sole possible response,” President Nixon told Congress. Phrases like “flexible response” and “graduated escalation” and “pauses for negotiation” seemed relevant once again, as Kissinger asked the Joint Chiefs of Staff to develop plans for limited nuclear war. But the Joint Chiefs still balked at making changes to the SIOP — and resisted any civilian involvement in target selection. The debacle in Vietnam had strengthened their belief that once the United States entered a war, the military should determine how to fight it. When Kissinger visited the headquarters of the Strategic Air Command to discuss nuclear war plans, General Bruce K. Holloway, the head of SAC, deliberately hid “certain aspects of the SIOP” from him. The details about specific targets were considered too important and too secret for Kissinger to know.
The Pentagon’s reluctance to allow civilian control of the SIOP was prompted mainly by operational concerns. A limited attack on the Soviet Union might impede the full execution of the SIOP — and provoke an immediate, all-out retaliation by the Soviets. A desire to fight humanely could bring annihilation and defeat. More important, the United States still didn’t have the technological or administrative means to wage a limited nuclear war. A 1968 report by the Weapons Systems Evaluation Group said that within five to six minutes of launching a submarine-based missile, the Soviet Union could “with a high degree of confidence” kill the president of the United States, the vice president, and the next fourteen successors to the Oval Office. The World Wide Military Command and Control System had grown to encompass eight warning systems, sixty communications networks, one hundred command centers, and 70,000 personnel. But the ground stations for its early-warning satellites could easily be destroyed by conventional weapons or sabotage, eliminating the ability to detect Soviet missile launches.
