Rear Admiral Thomas Buchanan, the Director of Plans and Policy of the United States Department of Defense’s Strategic Command (STRATCOM), while speaking at the Project Atom 2024 event at the Center for Strategic and International Studies on Wednesday, November 20th, 2024, said that the United States would allow a nuclear exchange if the outcome was on terms that he described as "acceptable" to the country and its interests. This meant, Buchanan continued, that the United States would after such an exchange “continue to lead the world.”
These comments are being seen as dangerous since they imply that a limited nuclear war could be fought and won - a shift from the longstanding understanding that a nuclear exchange between the United States and a nuclear power such as the Soviet Union and its successor Russian state would lead to Mutually Assured Destruction i.e. MAD.
The idea of "winning" a nuclear war despite knowing that many American cities would be incinerated goes back to the time of Herman Kahn, an influential American physicist and military strategist who was prominent in the 1950s and 1960s. Kahn’s “First Strike” doctrine posited that a nuclear war was winnable. His influence penetrated the Pentagon and certain military figures such as Air Force General Curtis LeMay subscribed to his views. A right-wing war hawk, in 1949 LeMay drew up plans to destroy 77 Russian cities in a single day of bombing.
Buchanan’s comments come at a time of increased tension between Russia and the United States. The Russian Federation has redrafted its nuclear doctrine in the light of the decision of the outgoing administration of U.S. President Joe Biden to enable the use by Ukraine of long range ATACMS and Storm Shadow missiles for use against the Russian Federation during its conflict in Ukraine.
There have been calls for U.S. Secretary of State for Defense Lloyd Austin to sack RAdm Buchanan.
© Adeyinka Makinde (2024).
Adeyinka Makinde is a writer based in London, England.
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