Perspective: The lesson of Richard Nixon for interpreting Putin’s saber rattling
At the Rand Corp. on the West Coast and Harvard University on the East Coast, nuclear strategists developed notions of the potential power of all-out, “mad” intimidation. They referred to themselves as game theorists and included the likes of Daniel Ellsberg, Herman Kahn, Henry Kissinger and Thomas Schelling.The game theorists worried about leaders willing to play Russian roulette or chicken all too eagerly.
A preemptive first strike to destroy the Soviets’ entire nuclear arsenal was not an option because the Soviets had developed a capacity to retaliate with a strike of their own. Only the deterrence promised by mutually assured destruction — the idea that neither side could afford to strike with nuclear weapons because it too would end up destroyed — could prevent annihilation.
In 1968, Nixon campaigned on the idea of “peace with honor” to finally bring American troops home from the war in Vietnam. To achieve it, however, he emphasized the game theorists’ ironic reasonings: To bring peace he would ramp up the war. Nixon planned to escalate the conflict on the Indochinese Peninsula because he wanted “the North Vietnamese to believe I’ve reached the point where I might doto stop the war.” He would play the part of a bully, an ogre unrestrained.
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