Washington Rules_ America's Path to Permanent War - Andrew J. Bacevich [22]
Like Dulles, LeMay loved his country and made considerable sacrifices on its behalf. Yet as with Dulles, LeMay’s concern for the well-being of the United States blended seamlessly with his devotion to the well-being of the institution he led. LeMay was blind to the possibility that the infatuation with nuclear weapons he had done so much to encourage and that, during the 1950s, raised SAC (and himself) to such prominence might produce adverse consequences for the United States, particularly as other nations acquired or sought their own nuclear capabilities. That the production, testing, and use of nuclear weapons might have negative political, strategic, or environmental implications lay beyond his ability (or willingness) to consider. Short-term interests swept aside longer-term considerations. Thus were the true costs of a strategic paradigm that relied so heavily on such weapons concealed.
Henry Adams once observed that “men invariably follow interests in deciding morals.”47 This maxim applies to LeMay as much as it does to Allen Dulles. His interests (and those of SAC) required the removal of any moral impediment to waging a war of annihilation. To accomplish this, LeMay, like Dulles, declared in effect that the ends justified the means. As LeMay saw it, once war had begun the supreme imperative was to end that war as expeditiously as possible. As a staunch advocate of strategic bombing, he believed that the quickest way to do so was by inflicting the greatest amount of destruction possible, until the enemy lost either the will or the ability to continue the fight. Viewed from this perspective, it made little sense to discriminate between combatants and noncombatants. To bow to the sensibilities of the “writers, clergymen, savants, . . . self-appointed philosophers, and . . . beatniks” who sought to make such distinctions—LeMay dismissed them all as “mooncalves”—would simply prolong conflict.48 This in his eyes violated a fundamental obligation.
LeMay and Dulles resembled each other in one other way as well. Even as each testified to his hopes of averting a showdown with the Soviet Union, each promoted patterns of behavior that increased the risks of such a confrontation. Just as Dulles relied on covert action to discomfit and harass, so LeMay employed SAC to poke, probe, prod, and remind the Soviet leadership of just how vulnerable they were to nuclear assault. SAC reconnaissance aircraft regularly penetrated Soviet airspace. SAC bombers made passes over Soviet coastal cities, such as Vladivostok.49
Strategic Air Command’s nominal mission was one of deterrence. “Peace is our profession” read its official motto. Yet LeMay’s conception of deterrence implied an element of outright intimidation. Whereas the CIA was all about accepting risk—pushing the envelope, the bolder and more unconventional the better—SAC was all about the pursuit of absolute certainty, providing an iron-clad guarantee of unleashing the furies of nuclear destruction whenever and wherever required. Unlike Dulles, who indulged mistakes—Agency attempts to infiltrate agents behind the Iron and Bamboo Curtains repeatedly failed at great human cost—LeMay refused to tolerate free thinking, sloppiness, or lapses in judgment. Dulles valued daring. LeMay demanded conformity—strict adherence to procedures that SAC spelled out in great detail.
LeMay’s aim was to secure the peace by demonstrating SAC’s unquestioned and overwhelming dominance, creating, in the jargon of nuclear strategy, a first-strike capability. “The main thing,” LeMay later reflected, “was that this force was not built