Threat v. Reality

Abstract

Over the years, the American people have been subjected to dire predictions of evils to come. It's time, yet again, for a little reality check.

THREAT V. REALITY

A SOVIET ATOMIC BOMB

T On September 20,1949, a CIA analysis argued that the earliest possible date the Soviet Union might “produce an atomic bomb is mid-1950 and the most probable date is mid-1953.” 1

R The CIA analysis was actually distributed 22 days after the first Soviet atomic test, and just three days before President Harry Truman presented evidence of the test to the world.

THE SOVIET STOCKPILE

T In 1950, intelligence community analysis estimated that the Soviet Union's stockpile would consist of 10 to 20 atomic bombs by mid-1950, 25-45 by mid-1951, 45-90 by mid-1952, and 70-135 by 1953. 2

R This was a surprisingly accurate estimate. It was replaced a few months later by higher, less realistic, and unusually specific estimates, including a prediction of 165 Soviet bombs by 1953. 3

T = The “Threat”

R = The Reality

THE “BOMBER GAP”

T The intelligence community predicted in 1956 that by mid-1959 the Soviet Union would have 400 Bison and 300 Bear bombers “in operational use.” 4

R By 1958 subsequent assessments found the Soviet Union had built only about 85 heavy bombers. Meanwhile, the U.S. heavy bomber force had grown to 1,769, for a ratio of 21 to 1 in favor of the United States. 5

THE “MISSILE GAP”

The intelligence community predicted in 1957 by 1961 the Soviet Union would have 500 operation,_Q, intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). 6

In mid-1960, Corona photoreconnaissance demonstrated that the Soviet Union had four ICBMs in place; in 1962 it had 36. By 1963, the United States had 500 operational ICBMs, thanks to the efforts of John F. Kennedy, who used the threat of a “missile gap” to defeat Richard M. Nixon in the presidential election of 1960. 7

THE “WINDOW OF VULNERABILITY”

T In the late 1970s and early 1980s conservative politicians, the Committee on the Present Danger, and Ronald Reagan argued that unless a new, mobile, 10-warhead MX “Peacekeeper” missile was deployed, the Soviets would have an unanswerable first-strike capability. 8

R President Reagan's own Commission on Strategic Forces pointed out in 1983 that U.S. nuclear forces— high in number and spread across a strategic triad of ICBMs, submarine-launched missiles, and bombers— could scarcely be considered vulnerable to a first strike. In 1986, the mobility plan was abandoned and the new MX missiles were placed in the very Minute-man ICBM silos that had been described as unac-ceptably vulnerable. 9

STRATEGIC MODERNIZATION

T Throughout the 1980s, the Reagan administration insisted that without a substantial and comprehensive program of strategic weapons modernization, the United States would be unable to counter the increasing strategic threat posed by Soviet nuclear forces.

R In 1989, a CIA analysis remarked that every National Intelligence Estimate from 1974 through 1986 had a “tendency to substantially overestimate the rate of [Soviet] force modernization.” Or, as the General Accounting Office later put it, when it came to Defense' Department estimates, there were “systematic disparities” involving overstated descriptions of the threats to U.S. systems and understatem performance of those systems. 10

THE “LASER GAP”

T In 1986, the Defense Department claimed that the Soviet Union had ground-based lasers with “a limited capability to attack U.S. satellites” and that the Soviets could have “prototype anti-satellite weapons by the end of the decade.” 11

R In July 1989 a 10-member U.S. team that included three members of Congress and physicists Tom Cochran and Frank von Hippel visited the Sary Sha-gan Proving Ground, where they were shown a low-power (two-kilowatt) laser. As von Hippel said, “A two-year college in the United States could produce the same in one of its laboratories… . It's incredible to think that the Pentagon [Strategic Defense Initiative] folks probably got an extra $10 billion because of this place.” 12

SOVIET AIR INVULNERABILITY

T In 1987, the Defense Department reported that the Soviet Union's more than 9,000 surface-to-air missile launchers and nearly 5,000 tactical surface-to-air launchers “present a formidable defense barrier.” 13

R On May 27,1987, a 19-year-old West German, Math-ias Rust, flew a single-engine Cessna aircraft from Helsinki to Moscow, landing unexpectedly in front of the Kremlin in Red Square before startled onlookers. Ironically, Rust arrived in the Soviet Union on “Border Guards Day.” 14

THE “ROGUE STATE”

T In July 1998, the Rumsfeld Commission concluded that states such as North Korea “would be able to inflict major destruction on the United States within about five years of a decision to acquire [a missile] capability.” 15

R Time may be running out on this one. In August 1998, a North Korean Taepo Dong missile traveled about 800 miles (or about 4,900 miles short for an attack on Los Angeles) in an effort to place a satellite in orbit. Since then, North Korea has maintained a missile-testing moratorium, which it recently pledged to continue until at least 2003. 16

“A PEARL HARBOR IN SPACE”

T At a news conference on May 8, Defense Secretary Donald Rumsfeld introduced New Hampshire Sen. Bob Smith, who said: “There are nations out there who are hostile to us, and they are in space. They have such weapons as lasers, anti-satellite weapons, and electromagnetic pulse weapons, and we have to be ready to recognize that threat.” 17

R Oh come on, now.