War and Peace in the Nuclear Age; Interview with Frank Camm, 1987
Description:
Gen. Frank Camm was a nuclear planner for the United States Army. In the interview, he describes the development of the Army's nuclear weapons doctrine, including that of flexible response. He starts by recalling the process of adapting the Army to the use of nuclear weapons in the 1950s, noting that at first the Army did not get its "fair share" compared to other services. Once the Soviet Union began to achieve nuclear parity in the 1960s, the U.S. military had to restructure, which resulted in the flexible response doctrine. He describes how often the decision over the deployment of nuclear weapons was governed more by its political implications than by the military aspects, which is why such a large number of nuclear weapons were deployed in Europe, even after the advent of the Kennedy administration, which did not support the use of so many nuclear weapons. Gen. Camm believes that flexible response constitutes a strong deterrent since it ensures that retaliation would happen immediately rather than waiting for clearances to be granted. He also believes that having stronger conventional forces will deter the Soviet Union from using their own conventional strength against NATO. He goes on to explain the implementation of flexible response, which occurred over time, and took longer for some branches than others; it was especially slowly implemented in the Air Force, which was outfitted almost entirely with nuclear bombs, creating a discontinuity between Army and Air Force strategies. Gen. Camm concludes the interview by describing the Kennedy administration's implementation of Permissive Action Links on nuclear weapons, which gave decision makers code-based control over those weapons.
