Our historical documentary series on the history of the Cold War continues with a video examining the basis of deterrence theory that developed in the 1950s, the bedrock of how nuclear weapons were to be used, and not used.
How the RAND Corporation created American strategy: https://youtu.be/J1mH_O7MzJk
The Nuclear Wannabes: Sweden, Brazil and Argentina: https://youtu.be/1LpL6Q1s7TA
Israel: the Officially Unofficial Nuclear State: https://youtu.be/dcXSkpRDp2k
Taiwan Under the Kuomintang Dictatorship: https://youtu.be/nGYzXNpQclo
What Happened to the German and Japanese POWs?: https://youtu.be/JLK1xQV9B84
Operation Paperclip: https://youtu.be/17cNgMpBiWw
German Expulsions: https://youtu.be/zyWx4p4hiaY
Soviet Education System: https://youtu.be/AD_JwbivtMA
How Khrushchev Fed the Soviet People: https://youtu.be/qIZDa7ZcUhE
Novocherkassk Massacre 1962: https://youtu.be/b06Gfm2QVxY
Soviet Tourism: https://youtu.be/t9KrH-xG20Q
Soviet Passport System: New Serfdom or Reform?: https://youtu.be/Dgr9F3WFsbo
Kaliningrad: How Russia Got a Stronghold in Europe: https://youtu.be/QD6IWHFkYpc
How the Soviets Won the Early Space Race: https://youtu.be/skyrA0l9erI
Soviet Television and Radio: https://youtu.be/YcBKRMJI7Ck
Top-5 Myths About the Soviet Union: https://youtu.be/eMBh5zbN3K4
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#ColdWar #ColdWarHistory #Nuclear #Deterrence #DeterrenceTheory #Brodie #Wohlstetter #rand
SOURCES:
Bernard Brodie “The Absolute Weapon”, 1946
Bernard Brodie, “Strategy in the Missile Age”, 1959
Albert Wohlstetter and Roweena Wohlstetter, “Nuclear Heuristics: Selected writings of Albert Wohlstetter and Roweena Wohlstetter”, 2009
Marc Trachtenberg, “History and Strategy”, 1991
Alex Abella, “Soldiers of Reason”, 2008
Fred Kaplan, “Wizards of Armageddon”, 1983
Lawrence Freedman, “The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy”, 1983
Barry Zellen, “Bernard Brodie and the Bomb”, 2015
source
Love the video first time watching this channel
Now NATO be like "let's prepare to win a nuclear war" 🤡
The videos are always an edifying experience, thank you.
I served on three submarines that were in the 41 for freedom.
Really good stuff…it is a topic that is very hard to summarize due to its complexity and theoretical nature, but you folks did a pretty damned good job of covering up to the advent of the missile age. I am really glad that you brought it back to the foundations of US air power strategy and Douhet, since so many folks do not know about him and his impact.
I wonder…do you maybe plan a 2nd chapter of this to cover Kahn and other 1960s and later theorists and analysts? I know I would click to watch that in a heartbeat. 👍💯
It’s an assumption that nobody would be insane enough to accept total annihilation.
That is an assumption………
For me, what helped bring Deterrence Theory to my attention was Metal Gear Solid. The oneupmanship occurring in that game, where the US government discreetly develops a mobile nuclear launch platform based off stolen Soviet blueprints, is for the sake of maintaining nuclear dominance in a post Cold War world of 2005 (in-universe, when the game itself released in 1998).
A minor after-effect in the story is that because the plans are leaked to other countries, Solid Snake and Hal 'Otacon' Emmerich go on a Metal Gear elimination tour until the events of MGS2.
Great episode.
Deterrence policy scares me at all times! It's not enough we developed beyond destructive ways to kill eachother several times just by brute force, but we also developed an entire phylosophy on how to "use" in the most efficient ways!
Great episode, congrats!
Though a highly uncomfortable subject!
What was the doctrine like in the Soviet Union?
The Soviets seems to think first strike is such a huge advantage that any actor, including their adversaries in NATO, will seek to surprise the other. Readiness in the strategic rocket forces must therefore be permanent.
To David and the entire Cold War crew, please make videos on these following topics:
– Argentina during the rule of Juan Peron. That way, all your viewers and subscribers will learn about the unique ideology of Peronism, Peron's cult of personality, his economic policies, and how they all affect Argentina's politics, economy and society to this day.
– The history of Thailand during the Cold War. That way, all your viewers and subscribers will learn about the return of Phibun (who governed Thailand during WW2) as well as the numerous on-and-off military governments that governed Thailand during the Cold War.
– Gastarbeiters (foreign migrant workers) in both West and East Germany. That way, all your viewers and subscribers will learn about how Germany's Turkish diaspora came into existence.
– Indonesia's Chinese diaspora population. That way, all your viewers and subscribers will learn about how this influential community was affected by the governments of both Sukarno and Suharto.
Thank you very much.
Basically MAD: Mutual Assured Destruction. Once your country has a nuclear weapon, you “win” because then the world can’t easily tell you what to do because you can inflict horrible casualties to them as they can to you. Look at NK. They are a militarily and economically weak country but oh boy, do their nukes scare the living crap out of the US, Japan, and South Korea as our nukes scare the north koreans as we can do the same but at a much larger scale but one bomb is indeed one too many
Essential history. Thanks for providing it in clear language. Liked and shared.
Very well done! This is a great explainer of the thinking that went into developing nuclear use philosphy.
He goes out of his way to say AGEEEN and AGEEEENSTT with that accent just to piss us off
Thanks for this. It was and remains a hard concept to get one's head around. As a Cold Warrior who served in W. Germany 77-80 as a Dustoff flight medic, I would appreciate future exploration of REFORGER exercises, NBC, Pershing 1a tactical nukes, Fulda Gap, etc. Lots of missions flown during REFORGER.
Nuclear deterrence theory and all its sub theories ( advanced opinions) were abolished after the first cold war . Nowadays, we see 👀 Ukranian drones threatening Moscow Sky and Moscow urbanization. While Russian nuclear arsenals sleep in their's storages.
Ronald Reagan didn't believe in Capitalism and Democracy.
Throughout the Cold War, the ideology of The West was that Communism and Socialism were unworkable and utopian systems that would fail under its own weight. Whereas, the philosophy held, Democratic Capitalism, for all its flaws, was the best system humanity had so far developed, and would remain stable and even attractive. Therefore, as long as The West maintained enough military strength so that it could not be overrun by Soviet military might, there was no need to defeat Communism militarily. Eventually, their own system would fail them, and their people would demand to adopt our system instead.
Now, Reagan was not the first US President in the Cold War to not totally believe in this idea. The Vietnam Presidents, Kennedy through Nixon, all struggled with the idea. But Reagan was, I would argue, the only President who genuinely didn't believe that Capitalistic Democracy could eventually triumph over Communism without warfare. That is why he wanted to throw deterrence theory out the window with "Star Wars", because he didn't think we could win without the ability to fight a conventional war.
In this situation it would never of just been America against the soviets as in this scenario it would of involved the whole of nato & the Eastern block countries!!!
Yeah, show Putin! Don't show Nuttyyahoo, no no no not allowed to show any nuclear armed genocider. Putim made my butter expensive, because the politicians I vote for boycott him. Yeah, that's how things go together in censored media. Censored to to protect YOU from hearing anything that makes you go MAD by learning something. Reality is a secret.
Thank you for mentioning Khan he's so overlooked when it comes to the field of how to use nukes
By far, the best and most informative video this channel has produced! Thanks for sharing!
The centrality of nuclear weapons to the Cold War cannot be overstated, and I look forward to more episodes about this.
Awesome video, looking forward to more on this topic, thanks! One of the best channels on YouTube
MAD, or mutually assured destruction is the very definition of insanity.
How does one not get crippling anxiety with this knowledge?
That last quote hits hard
Interesting ❤
Im compelled to ask, was one of your sources the New York Times?