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Cold War Nuclear Target Lists Declassified For First Time (gwu.edu)
HughPickens.com writes: Scott Shane writes in the NY Times that the National Archives and Records Administration has released a detailed list of the United States' potential targets for atomic bombers in the event of war with the Soviet Union, showing the number and the variety of targets on its territory, as well as in Eastern Europe and China. The Strategic Air Command study includes chilling details. According to its authors, their target priorities and nuclear bombing tactics would expose nearby civilians and "friendly forces and people" to high levels of deadly radioactive fallout. Moreover, the authors developed a plan for the "systematic destruction" of Soviet bloc urban-industrial targets that specifically and explicitly targeted "population" in all cities, including Beijing, Moscow, Leningrad, East Berlin, and Warsaw.
The target list was produced at a time before intercontinental or submarine-launched missiles, when piloted bombers were essentially the only means of delivering nuclear weapons. The United States then had a huge advantage over the Soviet Union, with a nuclear arsenal about 10 times as big. "We've known the general contours of nuclear war planning for a few decades," says Stephen I. Schwartz. "But it's great that the details are coming out. These are extraordinary weapons, capable of incredible destruction. And this document may be history, but unfortunately the weapons are not yet history."
The target list was produced at a time before intercontinental or submarine-launched missiles, when piloted bombers were essentially the only means of delivering nuclear weapons. The United States then had a huge advantage over the Soviet Union, with a nuclear arsenal about 10 times as big. "We've known the general contours of nuclear war planning for a few decades," says Stephen I. Schwartz. "But it's great that the details are coming out. These are extraordinary weapons, capable of incredible destruction. And this document may be history, but unfortunately the weapons are not yet history."
The article associates recent statements made by Republicans about carpet bombing cities with our past plans of dropping nuclear weapons on populated cities. It is all very chilling, but mostly because we no longer live in a world where modern societies are willing to wage this form of warfare. Less than 100 years ago we were, and we did carpet bomb cities and nuke cities into the ground.
Our new-found humanity prevents us from committing some horrible atrocities, but it also means complete victory like we had in World War 2 will rarely happen again. If we fought against Al Qaeda and ISIS like we fought against Germany and Japan, those organizations would not exist and new similar organizations would not take there place. But it would likely take the slaughter of tens of millions of innocents, which we are no longer able to accept.
-- All that is necessary for the triumph of evil is that good men do nothing. -- Edmund Burke