The Persistence of Technological Enthusiasm: The Technological Input into U.S. Strategic Arms Policy

Robert Art , "Restructuring the Military-Industrial Complex ," Public Policy. Fall 1974.

Robert S. McNamara , " The Dynamics of Nuclear Strategy," The Department of State Bulletin, 9 October 1967, p. 450. An early recognition of this phenomenon came from David Tarr: "More often than not weapons grow out of what is technically possible," "Military Technology and the Policy Process." Western Political Quarterly, March 1965, p. 140. For books on the technological imperative see Herbert York , Race to Oblivion: A Participant's View of the Arms Race (New York: Simon and Schuster, 1970); Ralph Lapp , The Weapons Culture (New York: W. W. Norton. 1968).

Harry G. Gelber , " Technical Innovation and Arms Control ," World Politics, July 1974, p. 540.

See for example some of the guidelines for the proper conduct of operations research, produced by the Operations Research Society of America: " In dealing with a problem posed by an operating organization, an operations analyst should: * Apply the scientific spirit (open, explicit and objective) in his work. * Take a broad and disinterested view, free of parochialism, inflexibility or prior prejudice, that includes a lively sense of the public interest as well as of the narrower interests of the organization involved." These are only the first two items. Many of a similar nature then follow. Operations Research, September 1971, p. 1128.

For discussions of the problems of hidden values creeping in under the guise of expert advice see Warner Schilling. " Scientists, Foreign Policy and Politics " in Robert Gilpin and Christopher Wright (eds.). Scientists and National Policy-Making (New York: Columbia University Press, 1964); Don Price, The Scientific Estate (London: Oxford University Press, 1965).

C.P. Snow. The Two Cultures and the Scientific Revolution ( Cambridge : Cambridge University Press, 1959 ). For a critique along the lines that this leads scientists to stray into areas beyond their competence and into the proper preserve of other specialists, sec Albert Wohlsetter, "Strategy and the Natural Scientists" in the Gilpin and Wright Collection.

Frank von Hippel and Joel Primack , The Politics of Technology (Stanford Workshop on Social and Political Issues, 1970).

S. McGeorge Bundy. "The Scientist and National Policy," in Sanford Lakoff (ed.). Knowledge and Power ( New York: The Free Press, 1966).

Jonathan Allen (ed.), March 4; Scientists. Students and Society (Cambridge. Mass.: MIT Press. 1970).

This is not presented as a startling new discovery: it is a blatant feature of American scientific life. McGeorge Bundy has observed: " It is a simple but important fact of American life that in this whole great field of the exploitation of nuclear energy for mititary purposes there are schools of thought, among scientists as others, which are essentially political." Op. cit. p. 429.

James B. Conant , Modern Science and Modern Man (New York: Columbia University Press, 1952), p. 116.

U.S. Congress , Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Hearings on the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty (August 1963), pp. 274-275.

U.S. Congress , Senate Armed Services Committee, Military Implications of the Treaty on the Limitations of Anti-Ballistic Missile Systems and the Interim Agreement on the Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (June/July 1972), p. 146.

Ted Greenwood , Making the MIRV: A Study of Defense Decision Making (Cambridge: Ballinger, 1975), p. 13. Chapter Two of this book provides an excellent analysis of the organisational environment in which weapons innovations are conceived and developed.

Murray L. Weidenbaum , " Problems of Adjustment for Defense Industries," in Emile Benoit and Kenneth Boulding (eds.), Disarmament and the Economy (New York: Harper & Row, 1963), p. 75. The following paragraphs are based on this and other articles by Weidenbaum-" Defense Spending and the Domestic Economy" in Edwin Mansfield (ed.), Defense, Science and Public Policy (New York: W. W. Norton, 1968); " Arms and the American Economy: A Domestic Convergence Hypothesis," American Economic Review, May 1968-as well as James L. Clayton (ed.), The Economic Impact of the Cold War (New York: Harcourt Brace, 1970); Merton J. Peck and Frederic M. Scherer , The Weapons Acquisition Process: An Economie Analysis (Cambridge: Harvard Business School Division of Research, 1962); H.L. Nieburg , In the Name of Science (New York: Quadrangle , 1970).

" Defense Spending and the Domestic Economy," op. cit p. 22.

Robert Gilpin divides the two schools into advocates of "infinite containment " (enthusiasts) and " finite containment " (sceptics). Gilpin makes the distinction by reference to scientists' beliefs as to the possibility of ending the arms race. Thus the first school believes: "Modern science and technology create novelties which cannot be anticipated, and there is no guarantee that a control system developed on the basis of an existing body of knowledge will be able to detect covert developments made possible by the new knowledge." The second believes that the arms race can be controlled at some finite point prior to a political settlement. So at the core of Gilpin's distinction is a disagreement over the potentialities of technology. American Scientists and Nuclear Weapons Policy (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1962), pp. 83-94.

" The Trial of Dr. Oppenheimer," in the Lakoff collection , p. 81.

In the Matter of Robert J. Oppenheimer : Transcript of Hearing before the Personnel Security Board (Washington, D.C., April-May 1954), p. 716.

Ibid. p. 637. Oppenheimer himself recognised the force of enthusiasm: " It is my judgment in these things that when you see something that is technically sweet, you go ahead, and you do it and you argue what to do about it only after you have had your technical success " (Ibid. p. 80). For an informed account of the debate over the H-bomb see Herbert York , The Advisors: Oppenheimer, Teller & the Superbomb (San Francisco: W. H. Freeman, 1976).

Cecil H. Uyehara , " Scientific Advice and the Nuclear Test Ban Treaty " in the Lakoff collection, pp. 158-159.

York , op. cit p. 64. The term laissez innover comes from John McDcrmott , "Technology: The Opiate of the Intellectuals ," New York Review of Books, 31 July 1969.

Ann Cahn, Eggheads and Warheads : Scientists and the ABM (MIT Center for International Studies, 1971), pp. 29, 117, 119, 120 and 55. A number of questions were asked during the survey that might have been used to form an index of technological enthusiasm. Unfortunately they were framed in a rather unsubtle manner (i.e. "Do scientists fall in love with the things they develop?") and the results were not tabulated.

David Z. Beekler , " The Precarious Life of Science in the White House," Daedalus (Summer 1974), pp. 211-212.

Quoted in Nieburg , op. cit p. 159.

On the PSAC see Hippel and Primack , op. cit pp. 55-56; Nieburg , op. cit p. 60; Carlo William Fischer , "Scientists and Statesmen: A Profile of the President's Science Advisory Committee," in the Lakoff collection and Harvey Brooks, " The Science Advisor " in the Gilpin and Wright collection.

York , Race to Oblivion , pp. 114-115.

Ibid. p. 26.

York sees this as a consequence of the development of " better means for controlling inter-service rivalry in this area" (Ibid. p. 117). Nieburg sees it as a victory for the Air Force and a weakening of APRA (op. cit. p. 251).

Greenwood , op. cit p. 261.

Nieburg , op. cit p. 251. A recent article spoke of ODDR & E as an " R and D cartel," with the director Malcolm Currie, a business man, and the " roster of deputy directors ... filled with men who used to work in industry and plan to return to it...." John Finney , "The Military Industrial Complex Grows More So," New York Times, April 12, 1976.

York himself was not an obvious " sceptic." He had come from the Liver-more Laboratories of the AEC. These laboratories had been set up with the help of the Air Force to produce the H-bomb, away from the Los Alamos laboratories, which were still felt to be pro-Oppenheimer strongholds.

Sanford Lakoff , " Vicissitudes of American Science at Home and Abroad," Minerva, 1973, p. 176.

Herbert York and Jerome Wiesner , "National Security and the Nuclear Test Ban ," Scientific American, October 1964.

Quoted in Hanson Baldwin, "Slow-Down in the Pentagon," Foreign Affairs, January 1965.

Nieburg , op. cit, p. 34; Air Force Magazine, May 1965; The Reporter, August 12, 1965.

Baldwin , op. cit

New York Times, October 10, 1964.

Quoted in Congressional Quarterly, December 6, 1968.

Bcckler , op. cit pp. 122-123; Nieburg , op. cit p. 83; Von Hippel and Primack , op. cit p. 56

For example, in an important speech of September 1967. McNamara explained why he did not favour the deployment of a " thick " anti-Soviet ABM system:

The four prominent scientists—men who have served with distinction as the Science Advisors to Presidents Eisenhower, Kennedy and Johnson, and the three outstanding men who have served as Directors of Research and Engineering to three Secretaries of Defense—have unanimously recommended against the deployment of an ABM system designed to protect our population against a Soviet attack.

McNamara then went on to say that he did favour the deployment of a limited " light " anti-China ABM. Many of the scientists cited were unhappy that McNamara had impiied that they endorsed this system, which they did not. The strategic weapons panel of PSAC had not been asked for advice on this decision. See Cahn , op. cit p. 34.

John Newhouse , Cold Dawn : The Story of SALT ( New York: Holt. Rhine-hart & Winslon. 1973) , p. 46.

Newhouse , op. cit p. 37.

Nixon first offered, and then withdrew, the nomination of Dr. Franklin Long for directorship of the National Science Foundation because of Dr. Long's opposition to the decision to move towards an anti-Soviet ABM system.

Beckler. op. cit p. 124.

Alton Frye , A. Responsible Congress: The Politics of National Security (New York: McGraw-Hill, 1975), pp. 29-33.

Aviation Week and Space Technology. October 7, 1974. He did however note that the Pentagon " can no longer afford to procure weapons simply because they work."

Philip L. Gianos , " Scientists as Policy Advisers: The Context of Influence, " Western Political Quarterly. September 1974, p. 446.