In 1961, a group of American officials decided to play a game of war. Sitting around a table, they tried imagining a nuclear crisis - and how it could be resolved. The outcome of their thought experiment surprised them all, raising far reaching questions about the strength of America’s nuclear strategy.

Once nuclear weapons were unleashed into our world in the 1940s, it was obvious that a completely new set of rules of war had to be designed to prevent nuclear annihilation. In this episode, Matthew travels back to 1940s Santa Monica Beach to explore the origins of an idea that would become the guiding principle of nuclear strategy - deterrence. The threat posed by these new weapons had to be used to avoid war, not to start it.

Matthew learns about the original think tank - the RAND corporation - where nuclear strategists first gave shape to nuclear deterrence and came up with ways to strengthen the credibility of the US government’s deterrence strategy. The most bombastic thinker amongst them was Herman Kahn - the inspiration for Stanley Kubrick’s Doctor Strangelove. Kahn’s ideas were provocative in the way they urged leaders to consider just how many people they would be willing to kill in a nuclear war in order to make their nuclear threats appear credible.

And as the 1960s progressed, the nuclear stockpile grew and tensions ratcheted up. The strategists gained more ground with successive US administrations, wargaming out scenarios in order to test the validity of deterrence. The ‘godfather of nuclear deterrence’ and Nobel prize winning economist, Thomas Schelling, enters the frame just at the right time. Through Schelling’s innovative work on nuclear deterrence, Matthew reflects on the importance of communication in nuclear crises.

But in the 1980s, the Reagan administration played a new game. With a shocking outcome. Perhaps nuclear deterrence wouldn’t always prevent war.

Guests:

Presenter: Matthew Syed

A Novel production for BBC Radio 4.