And top military and intelligence leaders presented an assessment of those plans to President John F. military did prepare plans for a preemptive nuclear strike against the U.S.S.R., based on our growing lead in land-based missiles. The main documented exception was the Air Force Chief of Staff in the early 1960s, Curtis LeMay, a seemingly idiosyncratic case.īut beginning in 1957 the U.S. authorities ever contemplated a first strike against the Soviet Union, except in response to a Soviet invasion of Western Europe, or that they doubted the deterrent power of Soviet nuclear forces.
And why should it be? Virtually nothing in the public record suggests that high U.S. aggression in nuclear conflict is seldom considered. Orthodox history holds that a succession of defensive nuclear doctrines and strategies - from "massive retaliation" to "mutual assured destruction" - worked, almost seamlessly, to deter Soviet aggression against the United States and to prevent the use of nuclear weapons. Thirty years later, no nation has yet fired any nuclear missile at a real target.
During the early 1960s the intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) introduced the world to the possibility of instant total war.
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