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    75 Years on: Tactical Nuclear Weapons Historically and Today.. Archived Message

    Posted by Gerard on August 9, 2020, 5:25 pm

    "Depending on how Castro and his forces reacted to that, and whether the Soviets would have begun removing the detected missiles, Kennedy and the military planned that the United States would begin an invasion. The military found the idea of invasion desirable, or at least feasible, because as McNamara told Kennedy, there were “about 8 to 10,000” Soviet “personnel, probably military personnel” in Cuba. As it turned out, this was an “unknown known” — a thing American leaders thought they knew but did not. The Soviets actually had far more troops on the island — 42,000 — which was not revealed until 2008.

    If Kennedy had assented to his generals’ constant pressure to invade Cuba, the higher-than-known Soviet troop numbers likely would have made the landing and ground war much more difficult to win. This, in turn, would have created even greater pressure on Kennedy to escalate in order to avoid a politically devastating defeat. Such escalation would have then probably driven the Cubans/Soviets to use some of these nuclear weapons against invading forces. American officials would have assumed that Khrushchev had authorized this use of nuclear weapons. Therefore nuclear war was underway at Khrushchev’s instigation. The United States’ nuclear plans then called for unleashing most of the more than 18,000 nuclear weapons the U.S. military deployed in 1962, against the Soviet bloc and China.

    When McNamara learned about the Soviet deployment of tactical nuclear weapons to Cuba 30 years after the fact, in 1992, he declared: “We don’t need to speculate what would have happened. It would have been an absolute disaster for the world … No one should believe that a U.S. force could have been attacked by tactical nuclear warheads without responding with nuclear warheads. And where would it have ended? In utter disaster.”" https://www.politico.eu/article/terrifying-lesson-of-the-cuban-missile-crisis-nuclear-weapons-kennedy/

    https://www.belfercenter.org/sites/default/files/legacy/files/CMC50/SavaranskayaColdWarIntlHistBulletin2003TacticalNuclearWeaponsinCubaNewEvidence.pdf

    "NATO’s policy of basing U.S. tactical nuclear weapons in several European countries has lasted long after the end of the Cold War, despite increasing pressure from parliamentarians, disarmament advocates, and public opinion. Now, a more mundane yet more tangible force may now tip the balance against the status quo: money. Public statements from and interviews with government officials and experts in Europe indicate that European governments may not be willing to make the investments in a new generation of nuclear-capable aircraft or participate in relevant technology sharing that would be needed to sustain the policy.

    Nuclear sharing was developed during the Cold War to deepen U.S.-European military ties and to create a forum where Europe could have a say in Washington’s nuclear policies. As the Cold War ended, about 4,000 U.S. tactical nuclear weapons remained on European soil, intended to offset Soviet conventional and nuclear forces. In a series of bilateral understandings with the Soviet Union and then with Russia in the early 1990s, President George H. W. Bush sharply reduced that number. Today, an estimated 480 B-61 gravity bombs remain deployed in Belgium, Germany, Italy, the Netherlands, Turkey, and the United Kingdom, which also possesses its own nuclear arsenal. Of these weapons, 180 are assigned for use by the five non-nuclear-weapon states. These weapons remain under U.S. custody during peacetime but can be released to U.S. allies for delivery in times of war*.

    U.S. and European officials readily acknowledge that they have held on to the weapons for predominantly political rather than military reasons. In its 1999 Strategic Concept, NATO implied that improved relations with Russia meant that the weapons’ military purpose had largely ended, but called for retaining the weapons as a means of shoring up the political solidarity of the alliance. U.S. and European officials have also seen the weapons as a potential bargaining chip to encourage Russia to part with its own much larger arsenal of such weapons, variously estimated at about 3,000 deployed operational warheads.

    But the status quo is imperiled by the aging of NATO’s nuclear-capable fighter fleet. Over the next several years, a number of European NATO members involved in nuclear sharing arrangements have to decide whether to replace aging fighter aircraft capable of delivering nuclear weapons, commonly known as “dual-capable aircraft.” Amid budget pressures and growing public concern, some key groups are beginning to balk. These concerns come as NATO is expected to update the 1999 Strategic Concept, including a possible revision of its nuclear doctrine." https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2006-07/news-analysis-end-us-tactical-nuclear-weapons-europe#Sidebar

    *Italics mine.

    https://fas.org/wp-content/uploads/2019/11/Brief2019_EuroNukes_CACNP_.pdf

    https://www.arafel.co.uk/2018/03/update-on-unofficial-nuclear.html

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