Hacker News Board Hacker News, browsed like a classic message board
Live data from Hacker News

Seeing the Pentagon Papers in a New Light

propublica.org

Post reply on HN
Print view View original

51–60 of 60 posts

Re: Seeing the Pentagon Papers in a New Light

#51

Post by fit2rule »

redis_mlc wrote: post #34
simonebrunozzi wrote: post #15

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Thanks a lot!

You can just watch the movie "Dr. Strangelove." People thought it was SciFi, but it was actually a documentary. The nuclear silo launch code for decades was "000000" to save time to launch. Also, Reagan and Russia didn't care about some goofy MAD doctrine - they wanted actual ABM defenses. That's why there's an ABM ring allowed by treaty around Moscow, and why Reagan funded SDI (lasers weren't implemented, but anti-m…

>Although Russia's weapons worked just fine, the US over-estimated Russian belligerence and grossly under-estimated the CCP.

Imagine if the people of Russia and USA could unite with Europe and form the basis of a new state.

Seems like it'd be worth the effort a bit more than going to Mars. Or, maybe the two conditions will be .. related.

Re: Seeing the Pentagon Papers in a New Light

#52

Post by fit2rule »

eitland wrote: post #48
int_19h wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or we could look at the internal policy discussions that took place among Soviet leadership back in the day, since now much of that is unclassified. And it turns out there was no serious threat of a large-scale conventional war in Europe initiated by the USSR - at least not since 1960s or so. If anything, the Soviets were scared that NATO would do it.

Well well. That's one way to look at it and it is an interesting way to look at it Another way to look at is that is equally important IMO is to realize they not only planned to but actually had occupied most of eastern Europe before that time. Stopping this planning during the 1960ies might be related to - Stalins death a decade before or - to realizing NATO was getting too strong or - to the enthusiasm for global c…

It is difficult to observe the belligerence from both sides, properly. You may not have as solid a grasp on how the Russians feel about American aggression, as one might allow would give a balance to the issue.

Fortunately, others were able to find that balance, in a culture of distrust and hate.

Re: Seeing the Pentagon Papers in a New Light

#53

Post by tehjoker »

rafael09ed wrote: post #42
tehjoker wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well there's a reason there are safeguards agreements and inspections. The idea is a slow mutual drawdown and then eventually a rapid final disarmament once a critical low threshold is reached. You can maintain the safeguards and inspections indefinitely via the IAEA. https://www.ctbto.org/verification-regime/

But then it becomes a race to create the technology that can build nuclear weapons the fastest creating a more volatile equilibrium.

That's a good point but I suspect the feasibility of this approach depends on having large facilities and uranium procurement operations. These are things that can be regulated. You can see this in the Iran situation where their "breakout time" is measurable. With nations willing to negotiate, this could be brought under control. However, tbh I think they probably should have a deterrent as they are facing a serious invasion threat by nuclear armed powers. The world needs to scale down in tandem, not weaker parties first and stronger parties later.

Re: Seeing the Pentagon Papers in a New Light

#54

Post by coolgeek »

simonebrunozzi wrote: post #5
DennisP wrote: post #4

Ellsberg's recent book The Doomsday Machine says the Pentagon Papers were his less-important material. His job at the Pentagon was nuclear policy, and he also had thousands of pages detailing that policy, which at the time was horrific. (The book goes into detail on just how horrific; much of it has been declassified now so he can source his claims.) He decided to release the Vietnam papers first because he felt that…

So, is anything from the nuclear documents in the book you mentioned? Or is it really all lost forever?

There seems to be a bit of confusion here.

I surmise that what was "lost forever" was only a copy of the documents. I base that on common sense, as well as this from the linked article (about the Pentagon Papers):

> So Mr. Sheehan smuggled the papers out of the apartment in Cambridge, Mass., where Mr. Ellsberg had stashed them; then he copied them illicitly, just as Mr. Ellsberg had done, and took them to The Times.

(Of course, I could be the one that is confused here, misreading this discussion. But I don't think that is the case)

Re: Seeing the Pentagon Papers in a New Light

#55

Post by smegger001 »

cycomanic wrote: post #40
smegger001 wrote: post #28

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The problem from game theoretical prospective is if you disarm and the other side doesn't your screwed. If the other side disarms it and you don't you win. Neither of you disarm and you maintain the status quo. And as you cant compel the other side to disarm there is no way to get to the mutual disarmament mutual win condition. Disarmament is just a prisoner's dilemma with WMD's and thanks to John Nash we all know ma…

The problem with that argument is that at some point acting insane to keep up pretenses and actually being insane becomes indistinguishable and you end up with the situation that only a young Russian nuclear officer disobeying orders is saving the world from nuclear Armageddon [1] [1] https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanislav_Petrov

you only want the leadership to act insane not the people sitting in the silos. You want sober rational if possible anti nuclear war individual in the silos but again you cant advertise that or you break the keefab the whole thing rides on.

Re: Seeing the Pentagon Papers in a New Light

#56

Post by smegger001 »

rafael09ed wrote: post #42
tehjoker wrote: post #37

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Well there's a reason there are safeguards agreements and inspections. The idea is a slow mutual drawdown and then eventually a rapid final disarmament once a critical low threshold is reached. You can maintain the safeguards and inspections indefinitely via the IAEA. https://www.ctbto.org/verification-regime/

But then it becomes a race to create the technology that can build nuclear weapons the fastest creating a more volatile equilibrium.

not just fast manufacture times but replace many smaller yeild weapons but newer high yield weapons to keep the numbers in the agreed range but not actually reducing your damage potential.

Re: Seeing the Pentagon Papers in a New Light

#57

Post by DennisP »

coolgeek wrote: post #54
simonebrunozzi wrote: post #5

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So, is anything from the nuclear documents in the book you mentioned? Or is it really all lost forever?

There seems to be a bit of confusion here. I surmise that what was "lost forever" was only a copy of the documents. I base that on common sense, as well as this from the linked article (about the Pentagon Papers): > So Mr. Sheehan smuggled the papers out of the apartment in Cambridge, Mass., where Mr. Ellsberg had stashed them; then he copied them illicitly, just as Mr. Ellsberg had done, and took them to The Times.…

Yes, it was Ellsberg's copies of the nuclear strategy documents that were lost. The original documents were still in a classified safe in the Pentagon. Some were later declassified, long after they were obsolete, and probably some have never seen the light of day.

Re: Seeing the Pentagon Papers in a New Light

#58

Post by redis_mlc »

lr1970 wrote: post #50
redis_mlc wrote: post #34

Earlier quoted context omitted.

You can just watch the movie "Dr. Strangelove." People thought it was SciFi, but it was actually a documentary. The nuclear silo launch code for decades was "000000" to save time to launch. Also, Reagan and Russia didn't care about some goofy MAD doctrine - they wanted actual ABM defenses. That's why there's an ABM ring allowed by treaty around Moscow, and why Reagan funded SDI (lasers weren't implemented, but anti-m…

IIRC, during the Korea war there were people at Pentagon proposing to nuke China over their support for the North.

It went far beyond merely proposing.

Nuclear-armed B-29's were flown to Guam and Japan. I think Truman even delegated the decision to drop them to Ridgeway, meaning Truman pre-authorized their use based on a common understanding it was a last resort.

Truman's public statements were that all weapons were on the table, including nuclear.

Re: Seeing the Pentagon Papers in a New Light

#59

Post by tehjoker »

smegger001 wrote: post #56
rafael09ed wrote: post #42

Earlier quoted context omitted.

But then it becomes a race to create the technology that can build nuclear weapons the fastest creating a more volatile equilibrium.

not just fast manufacture times but replace many smaller yeild weapons but newer high yield weapons to keep the numbers in the agreed range but not actually reducing your damage potential.

You can make maximum yields part of your agreements. Of note though, the US during the Obama years improved the accuracy of submarine launched missiles which greatly improved the damage potential while staying in the agreed ranges. This was because fewer nukes would be needed per a target so overall damage could be increased.

For an example of this type of thing, see slide 11 (which refers to air dropped munitions rather than SLBMs): https://fas.org/wp-content/uploads/2014/05/Brief2017_Italy2....

Re: Seeing the Pentagon Papers in a New Light

#60

Post by int_19h »

eitland wrote: post #48
int_19h wrote: post #43

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Or we could look at the internal policy discussions that took place among Soviet leadership back in the day, since now much of that is unclassified. And it turns out there was no serious threat of a large-scale conventional war in Europe initiated by the USSR - at least not since 1960s or so. If anything, the Soviets were scared that NATO would do it.

Well well. That's one way to look at it and it is an interesting way to look at it Another way to look at is that is equally important IMO is to realize they not only planned to but actually had occupied most of eastern Europe before that time. Stopping this planning during the 1960ies might be related to - Stalins death a decade before or - to realizing NATO was getting too strong or - to the enthusiasm for global c…

I didn't claim anything about the "inherent peaceful nature" of the USSR. It was an empire; empires are generally not peaceful.

However, there's a very simple and obvious reason as to why this mode of thinking prevailed after Stalin's death. The leaders who subsequently took power were those who saw the devastation of WW2 very close up, and knew full well of the true economic and social cost (to remind, Soviet losses were 20 million officially, but the real numbers were quite a bit higher).

The result was a firm commitment to "never again!" - that is, regardless of ideology and politics of the day, the axiom was that there shouldn't be another devastating war like that in the Russian heartland. And it was obvious that any major war with NATO carried a significant risk of such devastation - Soviets simply didn't have enough resources to guarantee the upper hand in a conventional engagement against the combined forces of US and Europe.

(Stalin didn't care about any of this - to his mode of thinking, sacrificing 20 million to grow his power was perfectly acceptable. That's why, as you correctly noted, the change didn't happen until some time after his death, once his political legacy waned.)

Note also that this explains some other things, such as the occupation of eastern Europe - its primary purpose was to serve as a buffer zone in any conflict with NATO, so that any territorial losses and devastation accompanied by large-scale warfare would be concentrated in those areas, as opposed to Russia proper.

Post reply on HN