Michael Dobbs - One Minute to Midnight

“This war here is a dirty business,” he wrote his Swedish girlfriend, Inga Arvad, in 1943. It was difficult to persuade his men that they were dying for a great cause when they were fighting on “some islands belonging to the Lever Company, a British concern making soap…. I suppose if we were stockholders we would perhaps be doing better.” Unlike the Japanese, who were willing to sacrifice themselves for their emperor, the typical American soldier felt a divided loyalty—“He wants to kill but he is also trying to prevent himself from being killed.” The lesson that Jack drew was that politicians had better think very carefully before they sent their children off to war. He was scornful of abstract phrases like “global war” and “all-out effort.”

It’s very easy to talk about the war and beating the Japs if it takes years and a million men, but anyone who talks like that should consider well his words. We get so used to talking about billions of dollars, and millions of soldiers, that thousands of casualties sound like drops in the bucket. But if those thousands want to live as much as the ten that I saw [in his PT-boat, which was sliced in half by a Japanese destroyer], the people deciding the whys and wherefores had better make mighty sure that all this effort is headed for some definite goal, and that when we reach that goal we may say it was worth it, for if it isn’t, the whole thing will turn to ashes, and we will face great trouble in the years to come after the war.

Kennedy grew even more concerned with the unintended consequences of war after becoming commander in chief. In early 1962, the historian Barbara Tuchman published a book about the start of World War I called The Guns of August, which remained on The New York Times best-seller list for forty-two consecutive weeks. Her main point was that mistakes, misunderstandings, and miscommunication can unleash an unpredictable chain of events, causing governments to go to war with little understanding of the consequences. The president was so impressed by the book that he often quoted from it, and insisted his aides read it. He wanted “every officer in the Army” to read it as well. The secretary of the Army sent copies to every U.S. military base in the world.

One of Kennedy’s favorite passages was a scene in which two German statesmen are analyzing the reasons for the most destructive military confrontation up until that time.

“How did it all happen?” the younger man wanted to know.

“Ah, if only one knew.”

As Kennedy tried to imagine a war with the Soviet Union over the missiles in Cuba, one thought kept returning to trouble him. He imagined a planet ravaged by “fire, poison, chaos, and catastrophe.” Whatever else he did as president of the United States, he was determined to avoid an outcome in which one survivor of a nuclear war asked another, “How did it all happen?” and received the incredible reply, “Ah, if only one knew.”

The nuclear strike codes were kept inside a black vinyl briefcase known as “the Football.” The Football enabled the president to order the obliteration of thousands of targets in the Soviet Union, China, and Eastern Europe. Within seconds of the authentication of a presidential order, missiles would lift off from silos on the plains of Montana and North Dakota; B-52 bombers heading toward Russia would fly past their fail-safe points to their targets; Polaris submarines in the Arctic Ocean would unleash their nuclear warheads.

At first, Kennedy viewed the Football as just one more piece of presidential paraphernalia. But after a year in the White House, he started asking more pointed questions about its use. Some of his questions were prompted by a novel published recently, Seven Days in May, by Fletcher Knebel and Charles W. Bailey, which described an attempted military coup against a fictional American president. He quizzed his military aide, General Chester “Ted” Clifton, about some of the details. He was interested, in particular, about the military officer who looked after the nuclear codes.

“The book says one of those men sits outside my bedroom door all night. Is that true?”

Clifton replied that the duty officer responsible for the Football remained downstairs in the office area, not upstairs in the residence. “He’ll be upstairs—we’ve timed it many times; he can make it even if he has to run up the stairs and not use the elevator—in a minute and a half. If he knocks at your door some night and comes in and opens the valise, pay attention.”

On another occasion, Kennedy wanted to clarify precisely how he would go about ordering “an immediate nuclear strike against the Communist Bloc,” should that become necessary. He drew up a list of written questions for the Joint Chiefs of Staff, asking what would happen if he pushed “the red button on my desk phone” and to be connected to the Joint War Room at the Pentagon:

• If I called the Joint War Room without giving them advance notice, to whom would I be speaking?

• What would I say to the Joint War Room to launch an immediate nuclear strike?

• How would the person who received my instructions verify them?

These were hardly abstract questions. The president and his aides had explored the pros and cons of a nuclear first strike against the Soviet Union, often in the context of a Soviet attack on Berlin. Some military leaders, such as LeMay and Power, were enthusiastic proponents of the first-strike option. The idea repelled and frightened Kennedy—he agreed with McNamara that it was impossible to guarantee the destruction of all Soviet nuclear weapons—but the plans were drawn up anyway. The nuclear debate was shifting from an abstract faith in deterrence through “mutual assured destruction” to practical considerations on how to fight and win a limited nuclear war.

The American nuclear war plan was known as the Single Integrated Operational Plan, SIOP for short. Kennedy had been horrified by the first such plan, SIOP-62, which called for the dispatch of 2,258 missiles and bombers carrying 3,423 nuclear weapons against 1,077 “military and urban-industrial targets” scattered throughout the “Sino-Soviet bloc.” One adviser characterized the plan as “orgiastic, Wagnerian.” Another described it as “a massive, total, comprehensive, obliterating strategic attack…on everything Red.” Among other points, it envisaged the virtual annihilation of the tiny Balkan country of Albania. Even though China (and Albania) had rejected Moscow’s tutelage, no distinction was made between different Communist states. All were targeted for destruction.

“And we call ourselves the human race,” was Kennedy’s sardonic comment, when briefed about the plan.

Appalled by the all-or-nothing choices in SIOP-62, the Kennedy administration drew up a new plan, known as SIOP-63. Despite its title, this one came into effect in the summer of 1962. It allowed the president several “withhold” options, including China and Eastern Europe, and made some attempt to distinguish between cities and military targets. Nevertheless, the plan was still built around the notion of a single devastating strike that would totally destroy the Soviet Union’s ability to make war.

None of these options appealed to Kennedy at the moment of actual decision. He had asked the Pentagon how many people would die if a single Soviet missile got through and landed somewhere near an American city. The answer was six hundred thousand. “That’s the total number of casualties in the Civil War,” JFK exploded. “And we haven’t gotten over that in a hundred years.” As he later acknowledged, the twenty-four intermediate-range Soviet missiles in Cuba constituted “a substantial deterrent to me.”

He had privately concluded that nuclear weapons were “only good for deterring.” He thought it “insane that two men, sitting on opposite sides of the world, should be able to decide to bring an end to civilization.”