The document summarizes the slightest location of military positions, their management, and how and why they may be deployed. This is the first doctrinal research paper with these lines published in the last 14 years and it provides somewhat disturbing lessons. This was probably a mistake because it was quickly removed from the website – but the American Federation of Scientists (FAS) did not have the opportunity to archive the paper before. The Pentagon released a document on nuclear war earlier this month (titled “Nuclear Operations”). “U.S. nuclear power serves the national goal of maintaining peace through energy,” the document reads.
The document then explains how nukes could be hired to “accelerate” the military operation and allow it to sue for peace in the United States “on more favorable terms.” It further states that “the spectrum of nuclear warfare can range from strategic application to limited regional use, to global employment by friendly forces and/or enemies,” Indicates potential use for smaller, more localized nuclear weapons. Arguably, a policy could make nuclear war and winter much more likely. “Employment of nuclear weapons could radically change or accelerate the course of the campaign,” the document continues.
“A nuclear weapon may be brought to the fore as a result of a perceived failure in conventional propaganda, a loss of control, or a loss of control, or to escalate the conflict in order to sue for peace on more favorable terms.” Kahn was a physician who fell into the real-life inspiration behind Stanley Kubrick’s wartime parody film Dr. Strangelove titular character. This view is further
illustrated in a quote from a Cold War strategist named Herman Kahn: My idea is that nuclear weapons will be used in the next hundred years, “However, their use is far less widespread and likely to be limited than illegal,” the quote reads also included in the document. “The document provides an effective overview of U.S. nuclear power structure, planning, and management,” Steven Aftergood, who directed the FAS, project on official privacy, told IFLScience in an email. “While the interesting thing for the reader is that the treatment of nuclear warfare is an invisible phenomenon and the US forces can exist in it.”
It also comes at a time when the United States has pulled out of two nuclear agreements – the Comprehensive Joint Plan with Iran (2015) and the Mid-Range Nuclear Forces Agreement with Russia (1987) – and the third (New Start) Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty. The term will expire in 2021 if negotiations on renewal fail.
It is important to add that this is not a new shift in the direction of nuclear thinking. Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Non-Expansion Project at the Middlebury Institute of International Studies, told vice: “There’s a lot of stupid shit out there, but I have to keep in mind that it’s the same stupid trick that has been pursuing nuclear tactics for decades, without it being a sensible idea to be fascinated with certain things.” Regarding this controversial document on the nuclear campaign, a spokesman for the Joint Chiefs of Staff told the Guardian that it had been removed from the (publicly accessible) website because “it was determined that this publication, like other Joint Chiefs of Staff publications, should be for official use only.”
