War and Peace in the Nuclear Age; Interview with Kenneth Hunt, 1986
Description:
Kenneth Hunt was a British military planner for NATO. In the interview he describes NATO nuclear strategy and the role of American nuclear weapons. He begins by describing scenarios for the use of atomic artillery weapons on the battlefield, noting the uncertainty over whether higher authorities would ever approve their use, given the numbers of weapons contemplated and the devastation they could bring to allied territory. He describes the alliance's changing nuclear strategy based on the growing Soviet threat since the mid-1950s. Once Moscow developed the capability to fire back, in his words, NATO did not know what to do - a problem that he argues still has not been solved. Among the concepts that has taken hold is that Europe should maintain "conventional insufficiency" in order to convince the Soviet Union of its willingness to use nuclear weapons to compensate. A fascinating part of the interview deals with the relationship between the United States and other NATO countries, especially in terms of controlling the use of nuclear weapons. The Europeans, he asserts, have favored a nuclear deterrent while the Americans have been wary about having to defend the continent because of the risk of being drawn into a nuclear conflict themselves. Mr. Hunt describes the U.S. flexible response doctrine, and the European reaction to it, which resulted in the adoption of an altered version. Parenthetically, he criticizes the Kennedy administration's "whiz kids" for being "intolerably arrogant intellectually." Among other topics, he describes the British government's relationship with the nuclear disarmament movement, and notes that British and French nuclear forces are too small to be an important part of NATO strategy, which relies on American weapons; in fact, their real purpose has been to deter attacks on their own countries.
