Ellsberg recounts his efforts to make civilian officials, the secretary of "defense" and the president, aware of top nuclear war plans kept secret and lied about by the military. This was his first form of whistleblowing: telling the president what the military was up to. He also touches on the resistance of some in the military to some of President Kennedy's decisions, and Soviet leader Nikita Khrushchev's fear that Kennedy might face a coup. But when it came to nuclear policy, the coup was in place before Kennedy got to the White House. Commanders of distant bases that often lost communications understood (understand?) themselves to have the power to order all of their planes, carrying nuclear weapons, to take off simultaneously on the same runway in the name of speed, and at risk of disaster should one plane change speed. These planes were to all head off to Russian and Chinese cities, without any coherent plan of survival for each of the other planes crisscrossing the area. What Dr. Strangelove may have gotten wrong was just not including enough of the Keystone Cops.
Kennedy declined to centralize nuclear authority, and when Ellsberg informed Secretary of "Defense" Robert McNamara of U.S. nukes being illegally kept in Japan, McNamara refused to take them out. But Ellsberg did manage to revise U.S. nuclear war policy away from exclusively planning to attack all cities and in the direction of considering the approach of targeting away from cities and seeking to halt a nuclear war that had begun, which would require maintaining command and control on both sides, which would allow such command and control to exist. Writes Ellsberg: "'My' revised guidance became the basis for the operational war plans under Kennedy--reviewed by me for Deputy Secretary Gilpatric in 1962, 1963, and again in the Johnson administration in 1964. It has been reported by insiders and scholars to have been a critical influence on U.S. strategic war planning ever since."
Ellsberg's account of the Cuban Missile Crisis alone is reason to get this book. While Ellsberg believed U.S. actual dominance (in contrast to myths about a "missile gap") meant there would be no Soviet attack, Kennedy was telling people to hide underground. Ellsberg wanted Kennedy to privately tell Khrushchev to stop bluffing. Ellsberg wrote part of a speech for Deputy Secretary of Defense Roswell Gilpatric that escalated rather than reduced tensions, possibly because Ellsberg was not thinking in terms of the Soviet Union acting defensively, of Khrushchev as bluffing in terms of second-use capability. Ellsberg thinks his blunder helped lead to the USSR putting missiles in Cuba. Then Ellsberg wrote a speech for McNamara, following instructions, even though he believed it would be disastrous, and it was.
Ellsberg opposed taking U.S. missiles out of Turkey (and believes it had no impact on the resolution of the crisis). In his account, both Kennedy and Khrushchev would have accepted any deal rather than nuclear war, yet pushed for a better outcome until they were right at the edge of the cliff. A low-ranking Cuban shot down a U.S. plane, and the U.S. was unable to imagine it wasn't the work of Fidel Castro under strict orders direct from Khrushchev. Meanwhile Khrushchev also believed it was the work of Castro. And Khrushchev knew that the Soviet Union has put 100 nuclear weapons in Cuba with local commanders authorized to use them against an invasion. Khrushchev also understood that as soon as they were used, the United States might launch its nuclear assault on Russia. Khrushchev rushed to declare that the missiles would leave Cuba. By Ellsberg's account, he did this before any deal regarding Turkey. While everyone who nudged this crisis in the right direction may have helped save the world, including Vassily Arkhipov who refused to launch a nuclear torpedo from a Soviet submarine, the real hero of Ellsberg's tale is, in the end, I think, Nikita Khrushchev, who chose predictable insults and shame over annihilation. He was not a man eager to accept insults. But, of course, even those insults that he ended up accepting never included being called "Little Rocket Man."
The second part of Ellsberg's book includes an insightful history of the development of aerial bombing and of the acceptance of slaughtering civilians as being something other than the murder it was widely considered to be prior to World War II. (In 2016, I would note, a presidential debate moderator asked candidates if they would be willing to bomb hundreds and thousands of children as part of their basic duties.) Ellsberg first gives us the usual story that first Germany bombed London, and only a year later did the British bomb civilians in Germany. But then he describes British bombing, earlier, in May 1940, as revenge for the German bombing of Rotterdam. I think he could have gone back to the April 12 bombing of a German train station, the April 22 bombing of Oslo, and the April 25 bombing of the town of Heide, all of which resulted in German threats of revenge. (See Human Smoke by Nicholson Baker.) Of course, Germany had already bombed civilians in Spain and Poland, as had Britain in Iraq, India, and South Africa, and as had both sides on a smaller scale in the first world war. Ellsberg recounts the escalation of the blame game prior to the blitz on London:
"Hitler was saying, 'We will pay back a hundredfold if you continue this. If you do not stop this bombing, we will hit London.' Churchill kept up the attacks, and two weeks after that first attack, on September 7, the Blitz commenced--the first deliberate attacks on London. This was presented by Hitler as his response to British attacks on Berlin. The British attacks, in turn, were presented as a response to what was believed to be a deliberate German attack on London."
World War II, by Ellsberg's account -- and how could it be disputed? -- was, in my words, aerial genocide by multiple parties. An ethics accepting of that has been with us ever since. A first step toward opening the gates of this asylum, recommended by Ellsberg, would be to establish a policy of no-first use. Help do that here.
(Note: You can view every article as one long page if you sign up as an Advocate Member, or higher).
2
1
1
