This question is sort of half GQ and half GD; I’ll try posting it here.
The BushJr administration seems to be edging towards a doctrine of flatly declaring that we will not allow any country to possess nuclear weapons without our permission. This brings up the question of why did the US permit the USSR to build up a nuclear arsenal? Granted in 1949 the US did not have a large stockpile of bombs, or the ready means to deliver them, and was tired/afraid of war after four years of WW2. But if nothing else, the US might have identified the Soviet Union’s nuclear production facilites from the air and destroyed them. So why didn’t we?
The U.S had practically no stockpile of nuclear armaments in 1949. And the ones it did have were the little, pipsqueak variety that we’d used on Hiroshima and Nagasaki, not the huge wipe-out-the-whole-metro-area hydrogen bombs that we have today.
In fact, we took quite a risk dropping our second A-bomb on Nagasaki, because we didn’t have any more at the time!
Add to that the fact that we did not have as effective delivery system as we have now - you actually had to send the bombers over the target to drop the bombs in most cases, IIRC, we did not have ICBMs at that point. We could have sent the bombers, but there was no gaurantee that they would make it to Moscow (or wherever) before being shot down by AA. Like Tracer said, we did not have enough nukes to carpet all major Soviet installations - especially when you assume that the majority will probably not make it to their targets.
My favorite reason, however, is that it is just plain wrong to start dropping nukes on innocent civilians because of political wranglings between two governments; then, as now, there would have been serious international ramifications, even from our allies…
My impression is that the United States was caught somewhat by surprise by the Soviets’ development of nuclear weapons.
Well, remember, there were no spy satellites in 1949, so this would have actually had to be done “from the air”. Scouting out a country as big as the Soviet Union, violating someone else’s airspace every time you do so, thus risking immediate attack from their anti-aircraft fire or their fighters, plus the possibility of provoking an all-out war…this is not an easy task. Gathering intelligence was a lot harder back then than it is now. And it’s still not exactly easy–look at the trouble Iraq and North Korea–two countries which would be lost in the vastnesses of Siberia and Central Asia–have given the U.S. as far as trying to keep track of their weapons programs, and that’s with satellites to monitor them from space.
As MEBuckner mentioned, it was hard to find these factories at the time without the aid of modern technology. Also, even if we had been able to look over the whole nation without an early Gary Powers kinda thing happening (no small task), we were just starting with the nuclear age and finding out what was a production faculity and what was not would be nearly impossible (this could be compaired to today’s war on bioterrorism, Is that a brewery or a smallpox incubation site?). Also, even if we did find their nuke factory and we did bomb it, that would be all the more reason for them to set their resources to rebuilding, producing nukes then getting the revenge they would well be within their rights to give.
And (this has been mentioned) we didn’t want to fight another war that could drag on like the last one.
(And I apologize for the spelling errors, I know there are many)
I seem to recall reading somewhere, perhaps in “Dark Sun” by Rhodes, that there was a point were it was determined that we had lots more nukes than the USSR, and a military advisor was for nuking every Soviet city in a pre-emptive strike. The president at the time (maybe JFK?) rejected this idea as the horror that it is.
I imagine also that the Russian military not caught up in this mini-holocaust would have reacted rather badly. Sure, without leadership it wouldn’t have been at its most effective, but would you really want even a half-cocked Red Army bearing down on conscripts ready to go home? The limited number of nuclear weapons would have become pretty obvious to everyone once the Allies (or US alone) realise there’s nothing left to drop on Russia’s surviving conventional forces.
Well, if you believe Trent Lott’s assertion that, when he was talking about Strom Thurmond’s 1948 Presidential bid, he really meant that Strom’s defense policies would have been good for the country (as opposed to his segregationist stance), then the answer is clearly that we didn’t bomb the USSR in 1949 because we had failed to elect President Thurmond.
IIRC, quite a few of the spies who leaked nuclear secrets to the Soviets claimed that they had done so in order to prevent the US from nuking Russia on a whim. Whether or not the spies are just sugar-coating their intentions after the fact is anybody’s guess, but I will grant that MAD was probably a better deterrent to an unprovoked nuclear attack than good old fashioned morality would have been.
Even more so because AFAIK one of the bombs was of an untested type. IIRC Little boy was a gun type and fat man was a spherical implosion type. Wasn’t the single test an implosion bomb?
More true than might think, UR. This thread got me skimming into “Dark Sun” again, and I think what I really half-remembering was not LeMay’s “Sunday Punch”, but his desire during the Cuban missile crisis that we bomb Cuba to take out the missile sites. What nobody knew until 1989 was that Soviet forces in Cuba had 20 nuke warheads for med-range R-12 ballistic missiles that could have targeted US cities as far North as Washington DC, and 9 tactical field nukes which the Soviet field commanders had been delegated authority to use.
If Kennedy hadn’t rejected LeMay’s advice, there could have been 20 less US cities right now.
BushJr administration seems to be edging towards a doctrine of flatly declaring that we will not allow any country to possess nuclear weapons without our permission.
No, that’s not what Bush is doing at all. Both Iraq and N. Korea (the two countries you are implicitly referring to) have agreed in the past to give up their nuclear weapons programs and NOT make/buy any future nukes. Period. Iraq made this agreement to end the Gulf War; North Korea made this agreement to get money from us because its people are starving. This is not Bush declaring that no country can have nukes without our permission. This is Bush holding other countries to their international agreements. Simple breach of contract, nothing more. Find me a nuclear-capable country that has NOT agreed to give up nuclear weapons that Bush is complaining about, and I’m all ears.
