Declassified documents from 1980 show how US planned to fight a nuclear war and SURVIVE

Declassified documents from 1980 show how US planned to fight a nuclear war and SURVIVE

Declassified documents have revealed for the first time how the Carter administration planned to fight a nuclear war.

Presidential
Decision Directive 59, signed by President Jimmy Carter on July 25,
1980, was one of the most controversial nuclear policy documents of the
Cold War and aimed to give presidents more discretion in planning for
and executing a nuclear war.
But the creators of the document thought the use of nuclear weapons to defeat conventional troops wouldn't necessarily result in apocalypse.






Nuclear friendship: U.S. President Jimmy Carter,
left, and Soviet President Leonid Brezhnev smile and shake hands while
Soviet Foreign Minister Andrej Gromyko, center, applauds in 1979

Sections of the policy were leaked at
the time, and plastered across the front pages of The New York Times
and The Wall Street Journal, but the National Security Archive made the
entire document public for the first time this week on its website.

PD-59 reveals that the United
States was indeed preparing to fight a nuclear war, and that the Carter
administration sought nuclear capabilities that ensured a 'high degree
of flexibility, enduring survivability, and adequate performance in the
face of enemy actions.'

If
deterrence failed, the US 'must be capable of fighting successfully so
that the adversary would not achieve his war aims and would suffer costs
that are unacceptable.'

According to Foreignpolicy.com, a major element of PD-59 was the 'look-shoot-look' capability.
This involved using sophisticated intelligence to find nuclear weapons
targets in battlefield situations, strike the targets, and then assess
the damage.





Testing: A U.S. Navy Tomahawk Cruise Missile gains altitude after breaking the surface of the water following its launch in 1979

A memorandum from NSC military aide
William Odom depicted Secretary of Defense Harold Brown doing exactly
that in a recent military exercise where he was 'chasing (enemy) general
purpose forces in East Europe and Korea with strategic weapons,' the
website reports.

In other words, he was planning how to use large nuclear weapons to attack conventional troops.

But
Odom and others behind the document did not believe the use of nuclear
weapons to defeat traditional troops would necessarily lead to
apocalypse.

PD-59,
which was highly classified for years, was signed during a period of
heightened Cold War tensions due to the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan,
and greater instability in the Middle East among other concerns.

Media
coverage at the time suggested the changes to US strategy the policy
enacted lowered the threshold of a decision to launch a nuclear attack,
with some arguing that the directive would only exacerbate Cold War
tensions.




Presidential Decision Directive 59






Presidential Decision Directive 59






Presidential Decision Directive 59








Presidential Decision Directive 59


Presidential Decision Directive 59






Presidential Decision Directive 59






Source:-
http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-2204151/Declassified-documents-1980-US-planned-fight-nuclear-war.html