Reddit reviews The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy, Third Edition

So the argument that the Soviet invasion was more important than the bombs originally comes from another scholar, Tsuyoshi Hasegawa, whose book, _Racing the Enemy: Stalin, Truman, and the Surrender of Japan_, was published in 2005. So it's new but not so new. I'm kind of perplexed that Wilson doesn't give Hasegawa at least a name-drop in this article; even if he did come to this conclusion completely independently, Hasegawa's work is not obscure amongst historians of the bomb, even if this particular historical argument (like so many) has not penetrated much into the general public.

Hasegawa's book is very well done. He has managed for the first time to really put together a cohesive, persuasive argument about the end-game machinations in Japan, the United States, and Soviet Union. The other historians of the bomb I know are pretty convinced at least to the point that the Soviet invasion was more influential on the Japanese than the bombs. Not all of them think the bomb was of no influence, or that it would have ended without using them, though Hasegawa himself is apparently convinced of this, from what I've read.

(Personally, I am on the fence to the degree that I just don't see how we can disentangle the atomic bombs from the Soviet invasion as fully as would be necessary to say this with authority, but I am convinced that the Soviet invasion mattered at least as much, if not more, than the atomic bombs.)

So that's your place to look for facts and sources. Hasegawa bases his work on Soviet, Japanese, and American sources, including American intercepts regarding Japanese communications to their ambassador in Moscow. It is thoroughly cited and carefully done.

Note that the question of whether the bombs "worked" or not is a completely separate one from whether the people who used them were justified in doing so according to what they knew at the time. People tend to think that the former implies a moral argument about the latter, but it is an entirely separate issue regarding motivation and "the decision." (Note that even characterizing the use of the bomb as being the result of some large moral deliberation, or some sort of invasion vs. bombing tradeoff, is kind of anachronistic.)

As for the question of whether Japan thinking we had more matters — I'm not sure there's any reason to suspect that was a major role. They had already had similar damage done to 67 other cities due to firebombing. Having big chunks tore out of their cities was not a new thing; they already could not depend against fleets of B-29s so the "only one plane" aspect is, if anything, just a psychological aspect rather than a practical one. Note also that the US probably would have kept atomic bombing, and firebombing, up until a possible invasion of the Japanese mainland (scheduled for November 1945); it was a bluff, of a sort, to claim they had more, but not so much of a bluff (they'd have had another by the end of August 1945, and a production system that was slated to produce three more bombs per month).

As for the rest of it, I need to go over it more closely than I have so far. I think the argument at the end and in the subhead, that US nuclear policy is based on a misunderstanding about Hiroshima and Nagasaki is sort of silly. And I'm not sure what it gets you — is the argument that people should have thought nuclear weapons were less important than they were? How does that not increase the chance of their use? American nuclear strategy and nuclear thinking has always been more complicated than the legacy of WWII, and the weapons themselves rapidly evolved since then. (Consider that in less than a decade after the end of World War II, the US was testing weapons that were 750 times more explosive than the Nagasaki bomb, and capable of radiologically contaminating many thousands of square miles of land in one go.)

(For the history of nuclear strategic thinking in the US, the standard text is Lawrence Freedman's The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy.)

I feel a little compelled to point out, as an edit, that the argument was also made very early on by the Strategic Bombing Survey in 1946 ("Based on a detailed investigation of all the facts, and supported by the testimony of the surviving Japanese leaders involved, it is the Survey's opinion that certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated."). However their argument has been more or less discounted by historians; there was a lot of politics behind their making it. Hasegawa is the first person to put it on very strong grounds.

3. China's nuclear doctrine is entirely defensive, and it really relies more on tactical strikes along the Russian border to delay their advance while the massive Chinese army mobilized. The Chinese had (and still dont have) any real interest in ICBMs or strategic weapons. Actually, during the Cold War, Russian and China were the two states who adopted a no-first-use policy (Russia abandoned this position in the 90s). The United States, and especially NATO, has repeatedly declared that the possibility of a preemptive nuclear strike is integral to an effective deterrent. The US also continues to reserve the right to utilize nuclear weapons in an offensive role against WMD stockpiles. This includes chemical, biological, and nuclear stockpiles. Here is a brief summary of the Obama administration's stance on First Use, and here is where it was under Bush. For a longer historical perspective, you could look into [First Strike!: The Pentagon's Strategy for Nuclear War By Robert Aldridge](he Pentagon's Strategy for Nuclear War). That book explores in some detail the shift in American policy during the 1980s from an overwhelming second strike, to a potent first strike capability. I would argue that the "Reagan Doctrine" of nuclear weapon usage still dominates nuclear war planning between America and another nuclear armed state, see: Russia.
   
   
4. ICMBs are located in strategic locations in the interior of the United States. They are in isolated and sparsely populated areas (make sabotage harder, as well as limits collateral damage). Since ICMBs are orbital weapons, range isnt much of an issue, for the ICBMs. A major consideration was the prospect of Soviet SLBMs, or Submarine missiles. These weapons had a range of a few hundred nautical miles, but could be launched stealthily and hit within a few minutes of their initial detection. Thus, the major CnC bunkers, as well as the ICBM silos themselves, were located as far into the American interior as was possible. Here is an image that shows where the major SAC bases were in 1988. Some of these bases have been decommissioned, especially as America has signed multiple reduction treaties with Russia.
   
   
5. Russia's plans are a bit more ambiguous than American plans, which are themselves still pretty well buried (understandably, the Air Forces doesnt like to talk about the details of its nuclear strategy, especially when it comes to ICBMs and their specific targets). But generally, Russia's forces were designed for an overwhelming second strike against industrial and population centers (see: cities). Russian ICBMs were notoriously inaccurate when compared with their NATO counterparts, and were thus unsuitable for anti-silo work. Instead, Russia planned to destroy the major population centers of NATO and the US in retaliation for NATO's preemptive strike (this is the basic premise of MAD). Also, depending on the situation on the intra-German border, the Russians would have also likely used tactical, theatre, and strategic weapons on the European continent to disrupt NATO's conventional forces, destroy their material reserves and air bases, destroy political and strategic headquarters, and generally prevent NATO from engaging in an effective defense of West Germany. Thus, in addition to most of the cultural and social centers of western Europe, most of the German and BeNeLux countryside would have been attacked an irradiated during the strike.
   
   A good overview of the planning for strategic nuclear war is Lawrence Freedman's The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy. It is currently one of the only books (that I am aware of) that analyzes nuclear strategy from 1945-modern using any sort of historical method. Unfortunately, many of the books Ive read tend to be more positional, and recommend policy as its ultimate goal (First Strike! does this).

Currently: The Twilight War: The Secret History of America's Thirty-Year Conflict with Iran

After this I will probably read

The Bear Went Over the Mountain: Soviet Combat Tactics in Afghanistan

On War

Black Flags: The Rise of ISIS

The Looming Tower: Al-Qaeda and the Road to 9/11

Illusions of Victory: The Anbar Awakening and the Rise of the Islamic State

On Grand Strategy

A fellow on the combined defense discord layed out his recommendations for books on nukes, so I'll list them here.

On Thermonuclear War By Herman Kahn

On Limited Nuclear War in the 21st Century by Jeffrey Larsen and Kerry Kartchner

The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy, Third Edition by Lawrence Freedman

Russian Strategic Nuclear Forces by Pavel Podvig

Nuclear Statecraft: History and Strategy in America's Atomic Age by Francis J. Gavin

Eating Grass: The Making of the Pakistani Bomb by Feroz Khan

Prevention, Pre-emption and the Nuclear Option: From Bush to Obama by Aiden Warren

Nuclear Deterrence in the 21st Century: Lessons from the Cold War for a New Era of Strategic Piracy by Thérèse Delpech

Analyzing Strategic Nuclear Policy by Charles L. Glaser

Making of the Atomic Bomb by Richard Rhodes

Dark Sun: The Making of the Hydrogen Bomb by Richard Rhodes

Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era: Regional Powers and International Conflict by Vipin Narang

Building the H Bomb: A Personal History By Kenneth W Ford

The Logic of American Nuclear Strategy by Matthew Kroenig

Paper Tigers: china's Nuclear Posture by Jeffery Lewis

Arms and Influence by Thomas Schelling

The Evoution of Nuclear Strategy by Lawrence Freedman is the best book I've read on that subject. It's fascinating read about the journey to stability.

>I'm just guessing, but I imagine it is being downvoted by people who think it doesn't really add much to the conversation

Pointing out that I studied a piece of Sagan's work, which is widely critiqued as bad, doesn't add to a conversation about why he was denied membership in a scientific organization that considers your work?

>He responded to someone talking about the quality of some of Sagan's work to mention that he has read only one thing, isn't familiar with his work and "imagines" that the rest of his work was erroeneous. It isn't particularly logical and doesn't add much to the conversation.

Nothing in my post claims that the rest of his work must have been as erroneous. I point out that this particular bit of his work was dogshit, and any work he produced with problems of this caliber probably factored into his denial.

If you every want to know how bad the paper was, read The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy, then read his paper, and then read the peer reviews. The peer reviews do a good job pointing out the flaws from the perspective of their scientific field, and the book will give you a grasp of how nuclear war actually works, so when you read through his paper you'll understand how flawed Sagan's assumptions are. Survival guides such as this one serve as a good cheat sheet if you don't want to read a 550 page book, and they also touch on the physics involved, such as the effects of a nuclear weapon's thermal pulse, which Sagan also made incorrect assumptions about.

>I could see people, especially those that like Sagan not caring for such a post.

They don't care for the post because they have a weird pop-science fetish and want to believe Sagan is infallible. That the only explanation for why he was denied membership must have been spite, and had nothing to do with glaring problems with his actual work.