AMERICAN CAPITALISM BEGAN TO FAIL IN ABOUT 1973----Episode 22

SOVIET LEADERS FEARED A NUCLEAR FIRST STRIKE 
BY THE UNITED STATES IN THE EARLY REAGAN YEARS 

   The Soviet leaders not only feared the kind of decapitating first strike envisioned in Presidential Directive 59 [ The one signed by Carter describing "flexible" and "limited" nuclear wars, as opposed to mutually destructive wars ] , drummed up by the members of the Committee on the Present Danger, they took concrete steps to ensure the survivability of their nuclear deterrent ----- a form of sub-delegation similar to that undertaken earlier by Eisenhower. Their fears were heightened by U.S. deployment of Pershing and cruise missiles in Europe in 1983, which meant that Soviet leaders would have even less time to launch a retaliatory strike. As David Hoffman details in his Pulitzer Prize-winning 2009 work, The Dead Hand, Soviet leaders contemplated constructing a fully automated system, the "Dead Hand," in which computers would launch a nuclear counterstrike if leaders were incapacitated. Frightened by this Strangelovian prospect ----"It was complete madness," said Colonel Valery Yarynich of the Strategic Rocket Forces ---they instead settled on a system in which a small number of duty officers in deep underground bunkers would authorize the launch. The system was tested in November 1984 and put into operation soon thereafter. 

    Yarynich grappled with a profoundly troubling question that often plagued U.S. nuclear planners as well : he wondered if, knowing that their country was already destroyed, Soviet duty officers would actually decide to launch their weapons. He explained : 

      We have a young lieutenant colonel sitting there, communications are destroyed, and he hears "boom," "boom," everything is shaking ---he might fail to launch. If he doesn't begin the launching procedure there will be no retaliation. What's the point of doing it if half the globe had already been wiped out ? To destroy the second part? It makes no sense. Even at this point, this lieutenant colonel might say , "No, I won't launch it." No one will condemn him for it or put him before a firing squad. If I were in his place, I wouldn't launch. 

   Yarynich understood that it was the unpredictability of the officer's response that gave the system whatever limited deterrent effect it might have. He also thought it irrational that the Soviets were going out of their way to hide rather than broadcast the system's existence. 

   Reagan traced his commitment to eradicating nuclear weapons to his earliest presidential briefings about nuclear weapons : 

     One of the first statistics I saw as president was one of the most sober and startling I've ever heard. I'll never forget it : The Pentagon said at least 150 million American lives would be lost in a nuclear war with the Soviet Union --- even if we "won." For Americans who survived such a war, I couldn't imagine what life would be like. The planet would be so poisoned the "survivors" would have no place to live. Even if nuclear war did not mean the extinction of mankind, it would certainly mean the end of civilization as we knew it. No one could "win" a nuclear war. 

   Despite his abhorrence of nuclear war, Reagan possessed a dark side that fantasized about using those weapons to defeat his enemies. Such thinking slipped out in shocking fashion when Reagan quipped during a sound check for a radio broadcast, "My fellow Americans, I am pleased to tell you today that I've signed legislation that will outlaw Russia forever. The bombing begins in five minutes." Reagan was unaware that the tapes were rolling when he spoke. The reaction was quick and unsparing. Colorado Senator Gary Hart thought that Reagan's "poor judgment" might have been caused by the stress of his reelection campaign but worried that "more frighteningly, it's in moments of that sort that his real feelings come out, which is the most dismaying and distressing possibility." The New York Times reported that the story was front-page news across Europe. Paris's Le Monde figured that psychologists would have to determine whether the comments were an "an expression of repressed desire or the exorcism of a dreaded phantom." West Germany's Social Democrats dismissed Reagan ----"The lord of life or combustion of all Western Europe" --- as "an irresponsible old man . . . who can no longer distinguish whether he is making a horror movie or commanding a superpower," ," while the Greens exclaimed that the "perverse joke makes the blood of every reasonable person run cold." TASS, the Soviet news agency, quoted a Western leader who described Reagan as a man "who smiles at the possibility of the mass extermination of people" and decried "the hypocrisy of his peace rhetoric." Izvestia called it a "monstrous statement."