Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-jkksz Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-28T03:14:15.512Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Soviet Atomic Blackmail and the North Atlantic Alliance*

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  18 July 2011

Hans Speier
Hans Speier
Affiliation:
Social Science Division of The RAND Corporation
Get access

Extract

The uncertainty about whether atomic weapons will be used in future war, whether local or general, lends itself to political exploitation in the cold war. The efficiency of nuclear weapons in wartime, and their resulting threat-value in either war- or peacetime, constitute their political-military worth. In peacetime, the threat-value of weapons can be exploited in many ways: by an ultimatum, by authoritative or inspired statements on capabilities or intentions, by studied disclosures of new weapons at ceremonial occasions, by means of maneuvers, redeployments of forces, or by so-called demonstrations.

Type
Research Article
Information
World Politics , Volume 9 , Issue 3 , April 1957 , pp. 307 - 328
Copyright
Copyright © Trustees of Princeton University 1957

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

1 Dulles, John Foster, “Policy for Security and Peace,” Foreign Affairs, XXXII, NO. 3 (April 1954), pp. 353–64.CrossRefGoogle Scholar Cf. also Vice-President Nixon's radio and television address on March 13, 1954, published in New York Times, March 14, 1954. For a useful discussion of the various forms and possible motives of Mr. Dulles' statements on the New Look, see Raymond Platig, E., “The ‘New Look’ Raises Old Problems,” Review of Politics, xvii, No. 1 (January 1955), pp. 111–35.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

2 New YorK Times, March 14, 1954.

3 Dulles, , op. cit., pp. 5Google Scholar and 22.

4 See Admiral, Rear, SirBuzzard, Anthony W., R.N., “Massive Retaliation and Graduated Deterrence,” World Politics, VIII, No. 2 (January 1956), pp. 228–37Google Scholar; SirSlessor, John, “The Great Deterrent and Its Limitations,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, XII, No. 5 (May 1956), pp. 140–46CrossRefGoogle Scholar; and Hanson W. Baldwin, “The New Face of War,” ibid., pp. 153–58.

5 Buzzard, , op. cit., p. 229.Google Scholar

6 New York Times, December 9, 1953.

7 At his press conference on January 23, 1957, the President made a statement which implied that the United States might use small atomic weapons in opposing Communist armed aggression in the Middle East.

8 In his report to Congress on foreign aid in May 1956, President Eisenhower announced his desire to hand over armaments with “atomic capability” to certain allies. If such a policy is approved, British troops stationed in Germany are likely to be offered “Honest John” rockets, “Corporal” guided missiles, and the 280-mm. cannon, all three of which are capable of firing atomic warheads. The sharing of such warheads, however, requires a modification of the Atomic Energy Act. It is possible that the British will be able to produce an atomic projectile for the “Corporal” guided missile before the Atomic Energy Act is amended by Congress.

9 Pravda, February 20, 1956.

10 Field-Marshal Viscount Montgomery, “A Look Through a Window at World War III,” Journal of the Royal United Service Institution, XCIX, No. 596 (November 1954), pp. 507–23.Google Scholar

11 Communiqué of the North Atlantic Council Meeting of December 18, 1954, published in New YorK Times, December 19, 1954.

12 The views of German military experts on atomic defense and atomic blackmail are presented in subsequent sections of the study from which this extract is taken.

13 On January 23, 1957, the Tass news agency, quoting “leading circles of the Soviet Union,” mentioned specifically Great Britain, France, West Germany, Italy, Iran, and Japan as nations which had placed themselves “under the threat of retaliatory atomic blows” by allowing themselves to be used by the United States “as bridgeheads for the preparation of atomic warfare” (New YorK Herald Tribune, January 24, 1957).

14 Unless otherwise indicated, all quotations are taken from the text of the messages as published in New York Times, November 6, 1956. The texts of the notes to Eden, Mollet, and Ben-Gurion were supplied by Reuters; all others by the Associated Press.

15 On the effect of this intelligence upon the government, see the detailed account by Murphy, Charles J. V., “Washington and the World,” Fortune, LV, No. I (January 1957), pp.78ff.Google Scholar

16 Compare this warning with the one which the Department of State issued on November 29 (New York Times, November 30, 1956). In the second warning, the Soviet government was told, without reference to the United Nations, that the United States would view any change in the territorial status of the Baghdad Pact countries “with the utmost gravity.”

17 New York Times, November 8, 1956.

18 ibid., November 7, 1956.

19 ibid., November 14, 1956.

20 Frankfurter Allgemeine Zeitung, November 9, 1956. Mr. Murphy's account (op. cit.), which seems to be based on inside information, suggests that me main concern of the government was not aroused by Bulganin's letters of November 5 but by later intelligence of Soviet military moves. It would appear from this account that without the additional military intelligence that became available on November 6, the government would not have taken the military countermeasures on which it decided that afternoon, but would have confined itself to issuing the White House statement and to urging Eden and Mollet to order a cease-fire. Mr. Murphy writes that the United States took military countermeasures despite the fact that CIA, in revising its estimate of Soviet intentions twice on November 6, had by 12:15 moved back from its alarmist mid-morning position toward the calmer estimate that it had held early that day; the government did so “just in case.”

21 On previous instances of Soviet rudeness and the function of such rudeness in the political behavior of Bolsheviks, see Leites, Nathan, “It Pays to be Rude,” A Study of Bolshevism, Glencoe, Ill., 1953, pp. 34–42.Google Scholar