Category Archives: Angry Pigs Organized Against Gerbils

New Affiliate Website: NuclearDeterrence.net

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Nuclear deterrence has been a central element of American security policy since the Cold War began. The deterrence concept is straight-forward: persuade a potential adversary that the risks and costs of his proposed action far outweigh any gains that he might hope to achieve. To make deterrence credible, the United States built up powerful strategic, theater and tactical nuclear forces that could threaten any potential aggressor with the catastrophic risks and costs of a nuclear retaliatory strike against his homeland.

During the Cold War, the primary focus of this deterrent was the Soviet Union. The Soviets built their own nuclear force targeting the United States, producing a situation of mutual deterrence, often referred to as “mutual assured destruction” or MAD. Continue reading →

U.S. Nuclear Deterrence: The Cold War and Colorado’s Nuclear Weapons Factory

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Coming-Soon_RFB2_Front_Cvr_300x450pxWe are excited to announce a new book by Farrel Hobbs titled, “U.S. Nuclear Deterrence: The Cold War and Colorado’s Nuclear Weapons Factory,” arriving at Amazon.com by Sept. 15, 2018.

In an extensively researched account seasoned with secrecy and espionage, Hobbs traces the emergence of nuclear technology through the development and testing of the first atomic weapons. Initially intended to crush the WWII Axis powers in Western Europe, atomic weapons were first deployed in the Pacific Ocean theater. But post-WWII events brought an unexpected change in tensions among the Western Allies and U.S.-Soviet relations, in particular.

In late 1948 massive numbers of Soviet tanks and armed forces lined up in Eastern Europe facing a diminished and war-wearied Allied defenses. Stalin continued to amass combat forces and materiel that the Soviet military had prepared for a World War III.

Stalin had been planning this offensive as he fought alongside Allied Forces during World War II. He was waiting for the moment that his increasingly powerful armies could sweep through Western Europe and initiate his visionary communist world domination. Continue reading →

The Man Behind the Rosenbergs Again

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man-behindI recently decided to reread this book by retired KGB agent Alexander Feklisov with Sergei Kostin hoping to better understand why Americans were willing to spy for the Soviet Union during World War II. Communism and “the worker’s paradise” of the USSR was a lure during the crushing poverty created by the Great Depression. There was also the belief by some that Communism was the only viable protection from Fascism, although the mutual defense pact signed by Hitler’s Germany and Stalin’s Soviet Union confused some of those people. Many of the people recruited by the Soviets were American Jews who were children of Russian immigrants. They were convinced that the United States should share any useful technology with the Soviet Union as an ally in the war against Hitler. Feklisov saw those people as “anti-Fascist activists” who were heroes and not spies.  Feklisov managed large networks of American spies, and his book provides insight into their motivations.

Feklisov mentions that many U.S. politicians weren’t friendly to the Soviet Union. Harry Truman as a Senator expressed the point of view about the conflict between Germany and the Soviet Union, that “…if Germany is winning we must help Russia; if Russia was winning, the help should go to Germany.” The first prize for bluntness would go to the New York Daily News, which published a cartoon depicting the USSR and Germany as two snakes fighting each other. The caption read, ‘Let’s let them eat each other’.” Feklisov portrays FDR as being a moderate whose attitude toward the USSR, which was “…bearing the brunt of the war efforts, was favorable.”  Continue reading →

America in the Cold War: A Reference Guide

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america-in-cold-warThis book by William T. Walker is exactly as advertised in the title. It has a very useful chronology of events in the front. The main body is contains “Clift Notes” versions of important events and has much to recommend it as a reference book. The Preface leads, “On Christmas night, December 25, 1991. George H.W. Bush addressed the American people to report the Soviet Union had ceased to exist and a new Commonwealth of Independent States and several new countries, including Russia, had been recognized immediately by the United States. On January 28, 1992, in his State of the Union Address to a joint session of Congress, Bush proclaimed the United States had won the Cold War.” The reality was that the remnants of the Cold War lingered in China, Cuba, North Korea, and Vietnam. Historians began the debates about whether the Soviet Union collapsed because of internal corruptions and inefficiencies, whether American wealth and power had defeated them, or whether the Soviet Union was “…an artificial state that succumbed to the nationalist identities and ambitions of its own people.” The answer is undoubtedly a combination of all of those plus some other reasons. Regardless of the reason, it was a remarkable event.

A section titled “The Beginning: Allies Become Antagonists” is a good example of how the book presents complicated history briefly and precisely. It begins with the Americans providing Lend Lease to the Soviets as they reeled under the Nazi invasion. The alliance the World War II alliance with the Soviets began to fray before the Potsdam Conference. The Americans decided they had to step in to stop Communist advances in the later 1940s with the Truman Doctrine and the Marshall Plan and the Soviets responded by blockading Berlin. All of that in less than two pages.

The Soviet government had been given full diplomatic recognition on November 17, 1933 under the FDR administration. The Soviets promised in return that they would “…abstain from conducting propaganda within the United States.” The Great Depression moved FDR further left, and several “…Americans were attracted to the Soviet experiment, entered the federal government, and provided secret information on American policies and interests to the Soviet Union.” By the end of World War II the Soviets had focused on establishing hegemony in Eastern Europe. Some historians blame the beginning of the Cold War on the use of the atomic bomb in Japan. Stalin decided the bombings were done to intimidate the Soviet Union. He pushed his scientists to build an atomic bomb to counter the American monopoly. Continue reading →

The National Security: Its Theory and Practice, 1945-1960

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national securityI was able to get this book on an interlibrary loan, but the book wasn’t available on Amazon. The United States Military Academy at West Point held a symposium April 21-23, 1982 with the above title. It has some crucial information about why the decision was made to build a site for construction of more nuclear weapons, which is the subject of my quest to write a book about the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant. The book comprises seven essays presented at the symposium with an introduction and conclusion prepared by the editor. The “…burgeoning fears of the U.S.S.R…determined character and magnitude of American security policy.” “What began as a cautious and contested move toward nuclear power in the Truman years evolved under Eisenhower into a massive nuclear arsenal of almost incomprehensible proportions.”

The introduction by Norman A Gaebner discusses how Americans generally viewed the Soviet Union after World War II as “…a valiant ally.” However, diplomats who dealt with the Soviets predicted trouble despite FDR’s assurances that he and Stalin “got along fine.” Events following the war proved the Soviets intended to use the land power it had gained and American politicians took note. Arthur Vandenberg, Republican leader in the Senate wrote in his diary, “FDR’s appeasement of Russia is over.” James Forrestal advocated a showdown with the Soviets in the spring of 1945 rather than later. The United States was in a position of power with its atomic monopoly and two thirds of the world’s capital wealth. The Soviet Union had lost more than 2000 towns and cities, 20 million deaths, and much of its resources. Despite the magnitude of its losses, the U.S.S.R. was becoming increasingly threatening. National Security Council (NSC) documents declared, “The ultimate objective of Soviet-directed world communism is the domination of the world.” Secretary of State Dean Acheson “…developed the promising concept of negotiation from strength.” Consistent with that policy, Truman decided to proceed with the development of the hydrogen bomb.

Richard D Challener wrote that Truman would not have approved a 300 percent increase in the defense budget called for in NSC 68 if the Korean War hadn’t begun. The concept of nuclear deterrence became a key to defense strategy, but the U.S. had only nine atomic bombs in 1946. There were over fifty by the end of 1948. David Rosenberg wrote that Truman viewed the atomic bomb as a weapon of terror and a weapon of first resort. Despite that, he ordered vast increases in production facilities. On July 14, 1949 Truman told his top advisors, “Since we can’t obtain international control we must be the strongest in atomic weapons.” He approved a substantial increase in nuclear production in the fall of 1949 and an additional increase after the outbreak of the Korean War. Those approvals led, in part, to the construction of the Rocky Flats Nuclear Weapons Plant in Colorado. Continue reading →

Bridge of Spies

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bridge-of-spiesThis is a wonderful book that describes what is portrayed in the current movie with the same title starring Tom Hanks . I thought Mark Raylance’s portrayal of Soviet spy Rudolph Abel stole the spotlight from Hanks, who was admirable in portraying James Donovan. Donovan was the lawyer who defended Abel and later was the intermediary who arranged the swap of U-2 pilot Gary Francis Powers for Abel and Frederic Pryor, a hapless young intellectual who was snared in Cold War politics.

An interesting aspect of the book is how Powers was treated after he had taken the risk of flying over the Soviet Union to take photographs of secret military facilities. John F. Kennedy as a candidate for Presidency of the United States had successfully used the “missile gap” as a campaign issue against Richard Nixon. The planned Powers flight would have delivered the evidence that the Soviets in fact only had four ICBMs. Powers and his U-2 were shot down instead of presenting the evidence that would have disputed Kennedy’s campaign rhetoric. Kennedy “…promised as a candidate to close a ‘missile gap’ that did not exist and declined to meet Powers on his return to the United States.”

A fascinating bit of theory for dedicated “Conspiracy Theorists” is that the Power’s mission was intended to fail. Eisenhower and Khrushchev had intended to launch a new era of détente until Powers and his U-2 was shot out of the skies. The Paris summit was wrecked and “…threw into high gear the arms race that took the world to the brink of nuclear war during the Cuban missile crisis of 1962 and did not end until the collapse of the Soviet empire nearly three decades later. From the moment Powers was reported missing, there were well-places skeptics on both sides of the cold war who suspected that his entire mission had been planned to fail, and in doing so to prevent the outbreak of superpower peace. It is a theory that lingers to this day.”

The real name of the spy who is the central character in the drama was William Fisher, and he had been born in Britain. There is no doubt he was a brilliant man, since he could speak five languages and was a math genius. “Fisher’s main task was to rebuild the Soviet spy network in America. Perhaps the most interesting part of the Fisher story is that he was completely ineffective as a spy. “There is no evidence that Fisher recruited any useful agents who have not been identified or transmitted any significant intelligence by those who have been. This did not stop both sides colluding in the creation of the legend of Willie Fisher—by another name—as the most effective Soviet spy of the cold war.”  The “Fisher myth” was perpetuated by Soviet officials because he became famous for his loyalty and refusal to betray the USSR to gain personal benefits. Continue reading →