Date

Jan 2, 1974

Description

One major initiative taken late in the Nixon administration was to develop plans for the limited use of nuclear weapons in crises with the Soviet Union and other adversaries. The point was to avoid major strategic attacks and massive devastation on each other’s territory. While the National Security Council Staff was developing guidance for President Nixon to sign, in late November-early December 1973 senior administration officials participated in a crisis “simulation” in which Blue and Red Teams developed political and military responses involving limited use of nuclear weapons.

In the Scylla scenario, Iran and Iraq went to war with each other during 1976 over the latter’s invasion of Kuwait, bringing in Washington and Moscow as the latter sent troops to Iran to prevent Iraq’s defeat. Because the “Blue Team” concluded that conventional responses could not protect Iran, the U.S. initiated nuclear attacks on Soviet forces in Iran with the purpose of avoiding strategic nuclear attacks that could escalate the conflict to all-out war. The projected scenarios involved the use of dozens of nuclear weapons on Soviet forces, with the latter, also refraining from strategic attacks, responding with nuclear strikes on U.S. aircraft carrier task groups, and even U.S. naval facilities in Guam. In the ensuing onslaught, thousands of Soviet and U.S. military personnel were killed and an estimated 500,000? Iranians (civilian casualties in Guam were not mentioned). Both Moscow and Washington agreed to negotiations when they had decided that they had not “lost” the conflict.

The presidential nuclear use decision is recorded on page 74. This would have been the first use of nuclear weapons in combat since 1945, but the decision and its implications were not debated, probably because the point of the exercise was to play out a nuclear use decision. Significantly, the after-action critique involved some retrospection on that very point. Some Blue Team players wondered whether nuclear use was “warranted” (PDF p. 254) and observed that when the U.S. made its first use, “we zipped up the ladder awfully fast” (PDF p. 259). Moreover “in reality” not as many weapons should have been used against Soviet troops. As for the Soviets, one of the Red Team players suggested that their use of nuclear weapons might have been a mistake because the Soviet side would have looked better otherwise and also would have been in a more politically advantageous position [PDF p. 262].

Source

Digital National Security Archive by ProQuest.

Document published in following posting(s):

Long-Classified U.S. Estimates of Nuclear War Casualties During the Cold War Regularly Underestimated Deaths and Destruction

Jul 14, 2022

Memorandum to the Secretary of Defense, “Scylla-III-73 Quick Look,” n.d. [January 1974], attached to “Politico-Military Simulation: Scylla-III-73 Final Report,” Joint Chiefs of Staff Studies, Analysis, and Gaming Agency, 2 January 1974, Top Secret, Excised copy