Launching an Armageddon

By Hugh Sidey

Awhile back Richard Nixon presided over a dinner discussion of NATO strategy, which called for a nuclear response to a massive Soviet ground attack. "Would an American President take out Leningrad and Moscow if he knew he would lose New York and Los Angeles?" asked the former Chief Executive, who then rushed on to answer his own question: "No President is going to do that."

Henry Kissinger was asked recently if he had ever encountered in Moscow or Washington a man, or group of men, he thought capable of pushing the mythical "button" that would send off a first salvo of missiles. Kissinger, who has spent more time than anyone else with the leaders of both nations, was silent for a few seconds. He began to chew at one of his gnawed fingernails. "You mean, is there anyone capable of knowingly bringing about a nuclear holocaust? ... I really do not know," Kissinger finally answered. "We talk about it a great deal, but it is beyond human comprehension. I am not sure there is any leader in either country who, when confronted with the choice, could actually push the button."

John Kennedy told France's Charles de Gaulle that the U.S. would nuke the Soviet Union if it ever attacked Europe. De Gaulle never believed him, and indeed Kennedy wept one day when contemplating a possible confrontation with the Soviets over Berlin. Jimmy Carter sat straight-backed in his chair in the Oval Office a couple of years ago and insisted that he could order a nuclear attack. None of his listeners thought he could.

Gerald Ford and Leonid Brezhnev once held each other's hands in the back seat of the Soviet leader's limousine as they pledged their personal commitments to maintain peace. To this day, Ford does not think that Brezhnev, no matter how great the Soviet missile advantage may be, is capable of marching into the Kremlin's command center and launching Armageddon. Ford obviously was not. "You won't do that because you are a human being," he said last week. His former Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger finds it "very dubious" that either of the major powers would really have the psychological capacity to strike first. He doubts the "madman" theory and the idea that missiles might be launched by computer failure. The human minds in charge of today's arsenals will still reject the holocaust as long as there is a fragment of evidence that it doesn't have to happen. There will always be that fragment. Clark Clifford, the Washington sage who has served four Presidents, declares: "It never seriously enters [Presidents'] minds that they really will have to use today's missile forces."

There are dissenters, of course. Zbigniew Brzezinski, Carter's National Security Adviser, doubts that the men in the world who are now in power are capable of starting the big nuclear war. But he also believes that the Soviet system is capable of producing "another Stalin," a man who may have, says Brzezinski, presided over the slaughter of 60 million of his own people. Thus Ronald Reagan and his experts must plan for the possibility and declare that they are up to the hideous potential, no matter how remote. Pentagon experts by the score argue that the Soviets, given their nuclear advantage and the chance to incinerate the U.S., might do it. And among these men is a shared belief that a terrorist or a rogue nation with a nuclear weapon or two could trigger atomic exchanges that might lead to global devastation.

What all of this suggests is that we have built ourselves into an era of nuclear absurdity. We have created a glittering armada of rockets, warheads and electronics, controlled by the unfathomable workings of the minds of a few frightened men. From all over the world there is the muttered protest of people who perceive this as a technological monstrosity. America's march up the nuclear mountain was made in the name of peace. The time for a courageous march down, under the same banner, may be at hand--if the other side is willing.

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