{"id":42303,"date":"2021-07-12T13:55:00","date_gmt":"2021-07-12T17:55:00","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/?p=42303"},"modified":"2021-07-19T15:19:01","modified_gmt":"2021-07-19T19:19:01","slug":"missile-defense","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/missile-defense\/","title":{"rendered":"Missile Defense and the Merchants of Doubt"},"content":{"rendered":"\n<p>What was the truth regarding missile defense during the Cold War? How did doubt-mongering impact the debate?<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>In <em>Merchants of Doubt<\/em>, historians Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway look at doubt-mongering in several contexts, including strategic missile defense. They discuss the science and how certain merchants of doubt entered the arena and affected public awareness and policy.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Read more to learn how merchants of doubt impacted the missile defense narrative.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<!--more-->\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Science and Doubts Surrounding Missile Defense<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>The <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/tobacco-industry\/\">tobacco industry<\/a> pioneered techniques for manufacturing doubt when scientists discovered that smoking caused cancer. <strong>Unlike tobacco, where there was a lot of evidence that it caused health problems<em>,<\/em> the science around strategic missile defense was all projection<\/strong> (the only way to get evidence would be to start a nuclear war).<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The 1975 CIA National Intelligence Estimate<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>In 1975, <strong><a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/the-cia-operations-technology-langley\/\">the CIA<\/a> and other U.S. intelligence agencies published a National Intelligence Estimate (NIE) that concluded that the U.S. was stronger than the Soviets<\/strong> in three key areas:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ol class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><strong>Intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).<\/strong> The CIA thought that the Soviet ICBMs weren\u2019t very accurate, so if the Soviets fired first, their missile would miss most of the U.S., leaving enough weaponry undamaged to retaliate.<\/li><li><strong>Air defense system. <\/strong>The CIA didn\u2019t think the Soviet defense system could keep out low-flying U.S. bombers.<\/li><li><strong>Submarine location.<\/strong> The CIA believed that the Soviets couldn\u2019t locate or defend against U.S. submarines. They also didn\u2019t think the Soviets would figure out how to do this for at least a decade.<\/li><\/ol>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The MOD\u2019s Response<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Edward Teller, a hawkish physicist, was a member of the President&#8217;s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board, one of the agencies that reviewed the 1975 NIE. <strong>Teller didn\u2019t agree with the CIA\u2019s assessment of the Soviets and thought their capabilities were beside the point anyway\u2014what the U.S. needed was to prepare for the worst-case scenario.<\/strong><\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>In 1976, Teller got his chance to push for a new <\/strong>(and hopefully more favorable) <strong>assessment when the CIA and Defense Intelligence Agency disagreed about Soviet <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/us-defense-spending\/\">military spending<\/a>.<\/strong> Both agencies agreed on the <em>amount <\/em>of weaponry and soldiers that the Soviets had, but they didn\u2019t agree on how much it <em>cost<\/em>. The CIA thought it cost the Soviets around 7.5% of their gross national product (GNP), while the Defense agency thought it cost 15%. (The U.S. spent&nbsp; 6-8% of the GNP on military expenditures.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>The right-wing media also picked up on the discrepancy and cited the higher percentage to misleadingly imply that the Soviets were expanding their military and the U.S. was falling behind. (In reality, the Defense Intelligence\u2019s number suggested that the Soviets were less efficient and weaker\u2014they had to spend more money to get the same amount of weaponry.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The combined pressure from all these detente (disarmament) opponents citing uncertainty prompted the CIA\u2019s director, George H.W. Bush, to allow an \u201cindependent\u201d analysis by panelists. <\/strong>All the panel members already thought the CIA had underestimated the Soviet threat, and as a result, they came to the following conclusions:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>The Soviets only supported detente because it would give them a chance to get ahead\u2014if the U.S. stopped and they didn\u2019t, they could reach superiority.<\/li><li>The Soviet\u2019s goal wasn\u2019t mutual deterrence; it was to win, and they\u2019d attack as soon as they thought they had enough firepower. (In 1995, CIA interviews found that the Soviet leaders had never thought they\u2019d win, or even that it was possible to win a nuclear war.)<\/li><li>The Soviets were building a new, sophisticated missile defense system. (Further study later would prove that they weren\u2019t.)<\/li><li>The Soviets had been developing antiballistic missile systems, so the U.S. should start their own development. (Both countries had adopted the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, which gave each of them permission to build only one system. Nobody\u2019s worked well and the U.S. shut theirs down within a year of building it.)<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>The panelists didn\u2019t have much evidence to support these conclusions, <\/strong>so they<strong> <\/strong>exaggerated, selectively interpreted, or made up evidence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li>For example, the panel discovered that the Soviets had spent a lot of money on a new submarine detection system but didn\u2019t find any evidence that the Soviets had actually <em>deployed <\/em>the system. They decided this lack of evidence meant that the Soviets were covering up the system, not that it had failed.&nbsp;<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Just before the 1976 election<\/strong> (Gerald Ford vs. Jimmy Carter), <strong>one of the panelists leaked the report to the media, and the panelists\u2019 views went public.<\/strong> Shortly after Carter won the election, he resurrected the Committee on Present Danger (an organization that had been created during the \u201cred scare\u201d in the 1950s), and four panelists became members.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>For the next four years, the panelists and other merchants of doubt kept sharing unsupported conclusions with the public and pushing far-right foreign policy. <\/strong>Some MODs advised Ronald Reagan during his presidential campaign in 1980. When he won, the MODs gained even more power and influence.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The Nuclear Freeze Movement<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>In 1981-82, the nuclear freeze movement took off. <strong>The movement asked both superpowers to agree to stop building and modifying nuclear weapons.<\/strong> (This would essentially be an agreement to disarm because nuclear weapons degrade over time, and if new ones weren\u2019t built, eventually all the old ones would be useless.) The freeze was supported by the public, religious organizations, and state and local governments.&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Plenty of physicists also held antiwar opinions. <\/strong>While many American physicists were involved with weaponry during World War II\u2014and almost everyone who worked on the atomic bomb thought their work was justified\u2014the arms race of the \u201850s and <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/tim-obrien-vietnam\/\">Vietnam War<\/a> in the \u201860s had changed many physicists\u2019 opinions on weaponry.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The MOD&#8217;s Response<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Freezing was exactly the opposite of what Reagan and the MODs wanted. In 1983, <strong>Reagan proposed the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI).<\/strong> The goal of the program was to create a shield in space that would destroy incoming missiles before they hit the U.S. This would create world peace because it would make nuclear weapons pointless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h2 class=\"wp-block-heading\">Further Exploration of the Science<\/h2>\n\n\n\n<p>SDI had many opponents, including some of Reagan\u2019s advisors and many of the scientists Reagan would need to build it. People thought the project was faulty for several reasons:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><strong>It might be impossible to build. <\/strong>Scientists Richard Garwin and Hans Bethe thought the program would require 2,400 laser battle stations and a fantastically strong computer to control them all. (There was a disagreement about how many battle stations would be required\u2014Los Alamos said 90, an Office of Technology Assessment consultant thought hundreds.)<\/li><li><strong>It would be very expensive. <\/strong>Each of the laser battle stations would cost approximately $1 billion.<\/li><li><strong>It might violate the Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty.<\/strong> The treaty limited the creation of anti-ballistic missile defenses. (According to detente supporters, SDI was just research at this stage, and the treaty didn\u2019t prohibit research, so there was no conflict.)<\/li><li><strong>It might provoke Reagan\u2019s opponents or the Soviets. <\/strong>The Soviets could never know exactly how effective SDI would be, so they\u2019d have to develop even more firepower to be sure they could get through it. Or, if they believed it would be <em>perfectly <\/em>effective, they might strike before it was built.<\/li><li><strong>It might start a war<\/strong>\u2014if one side was shielded from the other, the shielded side might feel safe and confident enough to strike first.<\/li><li><strong>It couldn\u2019t actually keep the U.S. safe.<\/strong> Technology is never perfect, and even 90% efficiency isn\u2019t good enough when it comes to nuclear weapons.<\/li><li><strong>It was impossible to test. <\/strong>Unlike spaceships, which could be tested on the ground, there was no way to test SDI on Earth. The only way to test it would be to put it into orbit and then shoot most of the U.S.\u2019s missiles (just a couple wouldn\u2019t accurately represent nuclear war) <em>at <\/em>the U.S.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>By 1986, 65,000 scientists pledged not to take funding for SDI research.<\/strong>&nbsp;<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p>Much of the public opposed it too. Part of this was because one of the major opponents, astronomer Carl Sagan, believed in sharing science with the public and created a TV series, <em>Cosmos<\/em>, to this end. In the last episode of the series, he talked about how nuclear weapons could <a href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/destroying-the-planet\/\">destroy the planet<\/a>.<\/p>\n\n\n\n<h3 class=\"wp-block-heading\">The MOD&#8217;s Response<\/h3>\n\n\n\n<p>Enter Robert Jastrow, a physicist who, like Carl Sagan, shared science with the public\u2014he published pop-science books, was an NBC co-host and had appeared on the <em>Today<\/em> show. Unlike Sagan, he opposed detente. (He\u2019d read an article by Daniel Patrick Moynihan, who had imagined an alternate history in which the arms race hadn\u2019t been limited and the U.S.S.R. had gone bankrupt trying to keep up with the U.S. The article finished by saying we\u2019d missed the opportunity for world peace and would regret it.)<\/p>\n\n\n\n<p><strong>Jastrow published an article in <\/strong><strong><em>Commentary<\/em><\/strong><strong>, a neoconservative magazine, building on the doubt-mongering Moynihan had started<\/strong>:<\/p>\n\n\n\n<ul class=\"wp-block-list\"><li><strong>The Soviets were building a missile defense system. <\/strong>Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) only worked as long as neither superpower could defend against weapons\u2014if the Soviets came up with a defense system, their destruction <em>wouldn\u2019t<\/em> be assured, so they had no reason not to attack the U.S.&nbsp;<\/li><li><strong>The best defense against the Soviet missiles was an accurate portable missile,<\/strong> but environmentalists would attack that. (This implied that doing anything with an environmental bent would help the Soviets.)<\/li><li><strong>Because the Soviets had strategic superiority, they could control U.S. policy. <\/strong>The U.S. would be so scared of nuclear retaliation it would have to agree to the Soviets\u2019 terms.<\/li><\/ul>\n\n\n\n<p>While these claims were exaggerated or totally false (for example, the Soviets didn\u2019t have a sophisticated missile defense system and didn\u2019t consider a nuclear war \u201cwinnable\u201d), <strong>the MODs argued so convincingly that SDI and successive nuclear projects were approved by Congress. <\/strong>Seitz became chairman of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) Advisory Board.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>What was the truth regarding missile defense during the Cold War? How did doubt-mongering impact the debate? In Merchants of Doubt, historians Naomi Oreskes and Erik Conway look at doubt-mongering in several contexts, including strategic missile defense. They discuss the science and how certain merchants of doubt entered the arena and affected public awareness and policy. Read more to learn how merchants of doubt impacted the missile defense narrative.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":9,"featured_media":42309,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":""},"categories":[39,275],"tags":[427],"class_list":["post-42303","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","hentry","category-history","category-politics","tag-merchants-of-doubt","","tg-column-two"],"yoast_head":"<!-- This site is optimized with the Yoast SEO Premium plugin v24.3 (Yoast SEO v24.3) - https:\/\/yoast.com\/wordpress\/plugins\/seo\/ -->\n<title>Missile Defense and the Merchants of Doubt - Shortform Books<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Learn how merchants of doubt entered the debate about strategic missile defense during the Cold War and affected public awareness and policy.\" \/>\n<meta name=\"robots\" content=\"index, follow, max-snippet:-1, max-image-preview:large, max-video-preview:-1\" \/>\n<link rel=\"canonical\" href=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/missile-defense\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:locale\" content=\"en_US\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:type\" content=\"article\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:title\" content=\"Missile Defense and the Merchants of Doubt\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:description\" content=\"Learn how merchants of doubt entered the debate about strategic missile defense during the Cold War and affected public awareness and policy.\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:url\" content=\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/missile-defense\/\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:site_name\" content=\"Shortform Books\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:published_time\" content=\"2021-07-12T17:55:00+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"article:modified_time\" content=\"2021-07-19T19:19:01+00:00\" \/>\n<meta property=\"og:image\" content=\"https:\/\/s3.amazonaws.com\/wordpress.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/missile-defense.jpg\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:width\" content=\"750\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:height\" content=\"356\" \/>\n\t<meta property=\"og:image:type\" content=\"image\/jpeg\" \/>\n<meta name=\"author\" content=\"Elizabeth Whitworth\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:card\" content=\"summary_large_image\" \/>\n<meta name=\"twitter:label1\" content=\"Written by\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data1\" content=\"Elizabeth Whitworth\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:label2\" content=\"Est. reading time\" \/>\n\t<meta name=\"twitter:data2\" content=\"8 minutes\" \/>\n<script type=\"application\/ld+json\" class=\"yoast-schema-graph\">{\"@context\":\"https:\/\/schema.org\",\"@graph\":[{\"@type\":\"Article\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/missile-defense\/#article\",\"isPartOf\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/missile-defense\/\"},\"author\":{\"name\":\"Elizabeth Whitworth\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#\/schema\/person\/d2928cf6c11a69ced1491d6a5b74fb13\"},\"headline\":\"Missile Defense and the Merchants of Doubt\",\"datePublished\":\"2021-07-12T17:55:00+00:00\",\"dateModified\":\"2021-07-19T19:19:01+00:00\",\"mainEntityOfPage\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/missile-defense\/\"},\"wordCount\":1668,\"commentCount\":0,\"publisher\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/#organization\"},\"image\":{\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/missile-defense\/#primaryimage\"},\"thumbnailUrl\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/wp-content\/uploads\/2021\/07\/missile-defense.jpg\",\"keywords\":[\"Merchants of Doubt\"],\"articleSection\":[\"History\",\"Politics\"],\"inLanguage\":\"en-US\",\"potentialAction\":[{\"@type\":\"CommentAction\",\"name\":\"Comment\",\"target\":[\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/missile-defense\/#respond\"]}]},{\"@type\":\"WebPage\",\"@id\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/missile-defense\/\",\"url\":\"https:\/\/www.shortform.com\/blog\/missile-defense\/\",\"name\":\"Missile Defense and the Merchants of Doubt - 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