Animal Weapons

by Douglas J. Emlen

  Like crabs, states have mandatory expenses that they must pay first, before they can shunt resources into weapons. Crabs are made from millions of cells, which need to be fed and protected. If the cells die, the crab dies, and most of its mandatory expenditures revolve around keeping these cells alive. States are made up of people, and necessary expenses protect and nurture these people—things such as education and welfare, police forces and highways. Only when funds are left over after mandatory expenses are accounted for can states invest in militaries, weapons, and other luxury items.29

  The richest few states have vast sums of discretionary resources that they can pour into weapons development, technological development, ships, planes, munitions, training, and personnel. Most states have much smaller discretionary pools. Many have no discretionary funds at all, and any spending they devote to militaries erodes dangerously the funds they need to survive.30 States invest in militaries to the extent that they are able, but the sizes of militaries vary widely from country to country. As with beetle horns, caribou antlers, and fiddler crab claws, the relative size of a state’s military provides an honest signal of its fighting strength: a perfect tool for deterrence.

  But the parallels with animals run even deeper. States posture just like crabs, waving their weapons and advertising military strength for all to see. They challenge each other incessantly, pushing and shoving, rubbing claw to claw, probing for weakness. And, as with crabs, most encounters end before they really begin. When one side is stronger than the other, the weaker state either stands down or is overtaken; either way, the conflict ends before it has a chance to escalate.

  Huge militaries are effective deterrents, and a tiny state would no more attack a superpower outright than a tiny crab would escalate a fight with a leviathan. Instead, tiny states challenge other tiny states. Midsized states confront midsized states, and only big states face off with big states. Despite a political landscape littered with countries of all sizes, contests tend to coalesce around clusters of equally matched opponents. Occasionally, when a confrontation settles into a true duel with matched rivals squaring off face-to-face, and when both sides have discretionary resource pools large enough to sustain it, a state-versus-state contest can spiral into an arms race.

  * * *

  It was apparent the moment the United States dropped atomic bombs on Hiroshima and Nagasaki that a game-changing new weapon had arrived. The Hiroshima bomb contained 140 pounds of uranium 235, exploding with the destructive equivalent of 16,000 tons of TNT (16 kilotons). In a single flash of light an entire city vanished, along with 150,000 people.31

  After the war, countries scrambled to develop nuclear weapons, but for most the technology and cost were prohibitive. As the costs climbed higher, fewer and fewer countries could stay in the game, and a complex post-WWII political landscape began to coalesce around just two opposing superpowers. As the Warsaw Pact and NATO each pulled member states into their respective folds, the world stage aligned into a one-on-one showdown between the United States and the Soviet Union, perfect preconditions for an arms race. For almost forty years both powers poured their discretionary budgets into weapons development, building incomprehensibly excessive arsenals.

  Weapon after weapon got swept into the race, as the Soviet Union and the United States each ratcheted up technology on all fronts simultaneously. Early in the Cold War the Soviets amassed a tremendous fleet of submarines, more than 450 boats. Their fleet outnumbered ours several times over, but in 1955 we upped the ante by launching the first nuclear-powered submarine. The USS Nautilus was for all intents and purposes invisible. It could stay submerged for months at a time, crossing oceans without ever breaking the surface. In one step we’d rendered their massive fleet obsolete, and the Soviets began developing a whole new fleet of nuclear submarines of their own.32

  U.S. fighter planes fared poorly in Korea when they first faced off against the faster and more maneuverable Soviet-made MiG-15s,33 so the United States rushed to develop new airplanes, a technological surge that led to a string of supersonic fighters—the “century series”—including the F-100 and the F-106. Our planes, in turn, prompted the Soviets to develop their own supersonic fighters, resulting in the MiG-21, the MiG-23, and the Su-15.34

  Back and forth each side went. Tanks on both sides got bigger and stronger—thicker armor, faster engines, and much bigger guns, but in the 1960s the United States added a much better vehicle to the mix. The Sheridan tank could be dropped by parachute from airplanes, and it could work as an amphibious vehicle in water; best of all, it could fire a guided antitank missile from its main gun instead of artillery shells.35 Although the Sheridan never did perform as promised, it was a game-changing advance in technology, and the Soviets promptly embarked on a research program to design a tank like this of their own. Soviet tank developments surged, as the T-34 turned into the T-54, the T-55, and then the T-62, -64, -72, and the T-80. They built tanks with antitank missiles, tanks with antiaircraft missiles, and all sorts of antimine and bridging vehicles. By 1980, the Soviets had amassed an armada of more than 120,000 armored vehicles.36

  Naval fleets mushroomed in size; bomber fleets expanded in capability and numbers; fighters grew faster and deadlier, and each side built more and more of them. But the fastest evolving weapons by far were the nuclear warheads and the vehicles needed to deliver them. Early on, nuclear warheads had to be dropped from the air by bombers, but by the 1950s both sides were experimenting with placing warheads into the nose cones of missiles, and the idea of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) was born.37

  In 1957 the Soviets launched a satellite into space, triggering the “space race” between the two powers. On the surface, the space race was civil and nonmilitary. Beneath the surface, it was yet another facet to the arms race. With Sputnik the Soviets proved beyond any doubt that they possessed missile technologies capable of delivering nuclear warheads anywhere in the world, catapulting the United States into full-speed missile development.38 Rocket technologies whirled forward, as each side experimented with propulsion, fuels, and guidance systems. At the same time, advances in the warheads made them both deadlier and smaller—all the better to pack into the tops of rockets.

  By the 1960s both countries were already reeling from the escalating cost, but they surged forward nevertheless, and the numbers of warheads and missiles climbed.39 Emphasis shifted from first strikes to retaliatory strikes, as both states considered how best to defend themselves against a first strike from the other. The most obvious solution was more missiles. The best way to be sure that some missiles survive is to have more missiles than the other side.40 Missiles massed in one place were too easy to hit, so both sides scattered their arsenals across the landscape in dispersed belowground silos.

  Even better, keep your missiles moving. The Soviets mounted launchers onto railcars so they could be shuttled from place to place, and both countries began putting missiles on submarines. Submarines all but guaranteed a retaliatory strike capability, since they were always moving and invisible, and therefore impossible to target. Bombers flew rotating shifts, so that some were airborne all the time, and by the late 1970s the United States was developing “stealth” bombers that would be just as invisible as submarines. Railcars, hidden silos, submarines, and bombers all combined to form a swirling maze of missile platforms, making them very difficult to hit.41

  New and better rockets replaced older rockets; single warhead missiles were replaced by multiple independent reentry vehicles (MIRVs), with three or more separate, independently targetable warheads per rocket; guidance systems began to incorporate terrain-matching positioning systems, improving accuracy; and both countries developed extensive electronics and radar detection systems for monitoring the missiles of the other side, poised and ready to detect launches seconds after they took place. By the 1980s each side had more than ten thousand warheads, and the warheads themselves had expanded in killing power from kilotons to megatons—all while fitting into smaller
and smaller packages, enabling them to be mounted on a larger variety of delivery platforms.42 Weapons of this arms race could now exterminate civilization on a planetary scale; in principle, they could do this many thousands of times over.

  Pershing II missiles ran on solid fuel with active radar guidance. Deployed to Europe in the mid-1980s, these “bunker busters” upped the ante in the Cold War, heightening tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union to critical levels.

  In 1983, the United States upped the ante once again, with a solid-fueled nuclear missile that had state-of-the-art guidance systems, allowing it to match radar video signals with internal maps to achieve “pinpoint” accuracy.43 Light and portable, Pershing IIs contained an adjustable-yield warhead that could be set to detonate between five and fifty kilotons, depending on the need, and their placement in Europe—much closer to the Soviet Union than the continental United States—meant drastically reduced warning times. Finally, the Pershing II was earth penetrating. It was designed to be a “bunker buster.”

  The Soviets saw this new missile as an overt attempt to incapacitate their command and control structure, since it could be on top of them in as little as six minutes, and it penetrated hardened belowground bunkers. But the Soviets, meanwhile, were building a new weapon of their own—an automated launch system that could fire retaliatory missiles even after the command center was destroyed. The “dead hand,” as it was called, was a satellite-based network of sensors that, once activated, could automatically fire Soviet ICBMs to previously targeted coordinates without a human having to push a button.44

  * * *

  The Cold War trumped all other arms races in history. Every major weapons system got sucked into this race, as each side poured more and more of its budget into military growth, and the costs of each weapon soared. A submarine in the 1960s cost $110 million; by the 1980s it cost $1.5 billion—more than a ten-fold increase in price. Bombers went from $8 million to $250 million over the same period.45 All of the weapons exploded in cost simultaneously—guidance systems, missiles, fighters, tanks, cruisers, aircraft carriers, warheads—the list goes on. The cost of Cold War arsenals climbed so high that a typical year’s military spending for either superpower exceeded the entire GDP of dozens and dozens of countries.46

  Only the United States and the Soviet Union could afford to play this game, and during that time nuclear weapons were the ultimate deterrent. Deterrence during the Cold War worked just like it does in animals, with each side using early low-risk stages of confrontation to size each other up. Political scuffles on the world stage coalesced into polarized conflicts between the two superpowers, one side backed by NATO and the other by the Warsaw Pact. Like crabs pushing against the claw of a rival, conflagrations in Korea, Vietnam, Afghanistan, and the Middle East—the so-called proxy wars—provided low-risk conventional means for the superpowers to flex their muscles.47 Aggression by one side was matched by pushback from the other, and each conflict dissipated before escalating into a full-fledged nuclear war. Although it’s no consolation to the hundreds of thousands who lost family members or friends in these proxy wars, compared with the planetary annihilation that could have been unleashed had either side pushed their buttons, deterrence during the Cold War actually brought relative peace.

  Many authors have tried to estimate the economic cost of the Cold War arms race, and it’s proven to be a difficult thing to measure.48 All agree the price was staggering. The United States, for example, spent trillions of dollars on defense during this period, as much as 10 percent of its GDP each year, and up to 70 percent of its discretionary budget.49 Funds allocated to the military had to come from somewhere, and inevitably these monies were diverted away from other uses; social welfare programs, education, health care, and housing all suffered during the Cold War as a direct result of military spending.50 The Soviets paid even more, easily 15–17 percent of their GDP and, by some estimates, as much as 40 percent—devastating levels of military spending.51 In order to stay in the race, the Soviets were exceeding their discretionary resource pools. Like Irish elk leaching calcium and phosphorus from their skeletons to pay for massive antlers, the Soviets were dipping into the resources they needed to stay alive. So severely were social programs depleted that nearly every aspect of Soviet society suffered.52 This pattern of spending was not sustainable, and in December 1991, the Soviet Union collapsed. Latvia, Estonia, Belarus, and Ukraine declared independence from Russia; the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics officially dissolved; and Gorbachev resigned as president, declaring the office extinct. The most dangerous arms race in the history of the world ended without a nuclear war.

  It very nearly didn’t.

  14. Mass Destruction

  November 8, 1983. Panic shot through the Soviet high command. Tensions between the United States and the Soviet Union had been climbing for weeks, and the Soviets were now on the highest state of alert since the 1962 Cuban missile crisis. In May, they had activated intelligence operatives throughout Europe who monitored the daily activities of critical NATO personnel so that they could pick up subtle changes in behavior that might indicate an impending attack. Now, reports were flooding in from all directions at once. NATO bases had sprung to full alert, and the joint chiefs and heads of state were being sequestered in war rooms. Intercepted NATO communications had switched to unfamiliar formats, possibly disguising hidden messages, and now they’d all gone “radio silent.” More alarming still, it appeared NATO forces might be at DEFCON 1—their most dire state of nuclear alert. The worst fears of the Soviets were materializing; nuclear first strike was imminent.1

  As terrifying as this was, it wasn’t unexpected. For the past year the United States had steadily dialed up the intensity of its actions, sneaking submarines in close to Soviet shorelines, listening and testing just how close they could get. Aircraft carriers launched fighters that soared straight at Soviet airspace, tripping all the sensors and sending local bases into frenzied panic, only to veer away at the last possible moment. It would soon be possible for NATO forces to launch Pershing II missiles from Europe; the first were supposed to arrive later that year, but a few might have been smuggled in early. Even one of these bunker busters would be enough to incapacitate Soviet leadership, so every confrontation from this point forward had to be considered a possible first strike.

  Again and again the United States charged, sometimes with fighters, other times with bombers, always choosing flight paths designed to take them straight into Soviet airspace, always flying close enough to trip alarms and place the military on high alert, and always turning away at the last possible second.

  On April 6, six U.S. Navy aircraft crossed the line, buzzing over Zeleny Island, one of the Kuril Islands controlled by the Soviets. The Soviets were furious and, to save face, they promptly retaliated with fighter flights over the Aleutian Islands. Each false alarm fed the tension within the Soviet high command, and base commanders got jumpier and jumpier. Nerves were frayed to the breaking point.

  On September 1 an aircraft flew straight into Soviet airspace without turning back, crossing directly over an ICBM testing range on the Kamchatka Peninsula, and on toward their Pacific Fleet headquarters at Vladivostok. The Soviets, already on edge, shot it down—a bad decision. Korean Air Lines Flight 007 plummeted into a frigid sea, killing all 269 passengers and enraging the world, pouring gasoline onto an already out-of-control political fire.

  Then, on September 26, a ballistic missile alarm flashed. The Soviets’ state-of-the-art early warning detection system signaled a Minuteman ICBM launch from within the continental United States. All systems at the base went into instant overdrive, but Lieutenant Colonel Stanislav Petrov, on call during that shift, made the executive decision to stand down. The ground radars had not confirmed the launch, and it made no sense that we would fire only a single missile (it was later determined to be a computer error).

  One month later, six thousand U.S. combat troops, with fourteen thousand more held in supp
ort, deployed to Grenada. With the whole world watching, the United States ousted Soviet-supported forces in just nine days, a stinging loss of political face reminiscent of the Cuban missile crisis. Given the “anticommunist” rhetoric surrounding the invasion, the Soviets feared it might be the first in a string of imminent NATO attacks on Warsaw Pact holdings. Nicaragua or Cuba could be next.

  Then, on November 4, two days after Grenada, Soviet attack submarine K-324 tangled in a sonar array cable towed behind the U.S. Navy frigate USS McCloy. The sub was forced to surface off the South Carolina coast and be towed, in full view of the U.S. Navy, for the next four days toward Cuba—another shocking humiliation for Soviet leaders. More important, K-324 had been tracking activities of several U.S. ballistic missile submarines. Because of this mishap, the U.S. subs had vanished. Four days passed, and still they were missing. With that much time they could be anywhere—within strike distance of Mother Russia, for example. Now, November 8, intelligence reports were pouring in: NATO bases on alert, heads of state sequestered in war rooms, military communications gone dark. Was this it? The moment everyone dreaded—was it happening?

  Soviet forces sprang to full readiness, and air units in Poland and East Germany mobilized for immediate takeoff. Some thought it was the beginning of an attack; others thought it was just a military practice operation; still others thought it was a military exercise designed deliberately as a trick—a cover for an actual first strike. Soviet plans for a first strike incorporated just such a ruse, a military “exercise” used to masquerade an actual attack, so why should U.S. strategy be any different? The problem was, the “dead hand” was not yet operational, so the only way the Soviets could guarantee a retaliatory counterstrike was to launch their missiles first—a preemptive launch—but if they were to do this there wasn’t a moment to spare; they had to launch now. Should they? No NATO missiles had yet been fired; what if it wasn’t an actual attack? To make matters worse, the Soviets were at that moment facing a dangerous leadership vacuum—General Secretary Yuri Andropov was on his deathbed, and for the past two months he had not attended Politburo meetings. Now, in this stunning moment of crisis, political rivalries and leadership uncertainty added to the chaos. The fate of the world hung in the balance as the Soviet command debated whether to push the button.