Nukes and Men

The Cold War officially ended in 1989. This makes me incredibly proud to say, as an 88 baby, that I lived through and survived part of the Cold War. Seriously, I want to make shirts. But, moving along, the Cold War ended, and this sorta made all those nuclear deterrence theorists a little pissed. Firstly, because suddenly all these nuclear tension dissipated without any clear indication of if nuclear deterrence actually worked. Crash course in nuclear deterrence: when both nations have nukes, you gotta make sure the other nation knows you have them, and that you will use them if you are attacked. This is called "mutual assured destruction" - you must assume that the enemy is a rational actor and that your enemy is not willing to sacrifice their population. So, knowing the consequences of a total nuclear war. This leads to internalized deterrence, where an actor deters themself even when no threat is present, because this actor fears for the consequences of starting a nuclear war. So, even if we knew the Soviets didn't have Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles, or nukes that could make it the states, and we did, we still self-deterred because we feared the consequences, nuclear or not.

When it comes to nuclear war, you need to have ride-out capability, or the ability to take an attack, recover, and attack the enemy in a short amount of time, you have to have second-strike capability, or you have no deterrence at all. If you cannot launch a second attack, than there is nothing deterring the enemy. The conservatives of the time wanted to take it further. They thought we should be able to fight and prevail (they didn't like the word "win") in a nuclear war. These conservatives thought that we were falling into this sense of internalized deterrence, and that the Soviets were not, and this was dangerous. To the conservatives of the time, nuclear weapons were ensconced in the ideal of masculinity at the time. They feared that the Soviets wouldn't even have to threaten us in the future, and they saw this as weakness. General MacArthur of WWII fame, the pinnacle of manhood at the time, said "do not take counsel with your fear" in reference to the liberals hesitance to want to wage nuclear war. So, liberals got labeled as "girly men" (because the worst insult you can make to a man is to call him a girl, because being a girl is the worst thing you can be.)

Europe saw the lack of ICBM's as bad for them. Because if it came to nuclear war at this time, that war would be fought in Europe, and neither the US nor the USSR would have to suffer any lasting damage, they would just have to clean up the military bases they had in Europe. Europe really championed "broad deterrence" which is where you use the threat of nukes to prevent ALL types of war, not just nuclear war. Europe really didn't want a war, of any kind, fought on their soil. And what did America do? We called them girls! A bunch of sissies! At this time, masculinity was represented by willingness to use nuclear weapons. You weren't a man unless you were willing to launch a nuclear weapon and kill thousands if not hundreds of thousands of people in the most brutal way possible. That is what made men men. So, Europe was made up of girly men. Until Europe said "You know what. I don't trust either the US or the Soviets with their nukes, so we are going to make our own. That way, if they launch a nuke on our soil, we can launch one back, and take the war to their homelands, where this conflict belongs." The Europeans wanted what is called "power of escalation." They did not want a limited regional war fought on their soil, they wanted the power then to expand the war. So, then they became men.

I find it fascinating that to this day conservatives still think that being a man must involve the willingness to kill thousands of people. I wonder if they are trying to compensate for something. Like the author of this article critiquing a scientific study linking masculinity to conservative values. The author of this article himself had his own masculinity threatened by a study, and came to a very "traditional masculinity" defense of his behavior. Hmmm.