America waged a Cold War against a nuclear-armed Marxist-Leninist state for four decades. The US government took a number of civil defense measures to protect the American people. These included: the Eisenhower interstate system, duck and cover drills, public fallout shelters, and periodic tests of the Emergency Broadcasting System. Then, as now, these measures caused individual freedoms to sometimes come into conflict with mass conformity. There is precedent for mandatory compliance in extreme cases, such as Hurricane Sandy or the wildfires in the Western United States.
These early civil defense measures were eventually neglected and then forgotten after the Berlin Wall came down in 1989 and the Soviet Union ended in 1991. Such measures were mirrored in the USSR under General Secretary Nikita Khrushchev, but by no means neglected afterward.
Civil defense is, by nature, a community-wide activity. The more people participate and help, the better the results for the entire citizenry. This includes improved morale and will to resist, fewer combat casualties, and prolonged lifespans in case of conventional or nuclear war.
The organization of processes, the laying down and buildout of infrastructure, the first-responder rehearsals, and pervasive homefront readiness drills all require group dedication in the face of natural popular skepticism, even active resistance by a vocal few.
Although there is ample room for volunteerism, and for more formalized national service (especially for those well above military draft age), governments at different levels do need to take overall charge. This ensures efficient coordination, direction of available funding into the most pressing needs, and arranging for efficient communication and reasonable compliance.
With Vladimir Putin’s many nuclear threats, it is once again time to ensure the nation has effective civil defenses against nuclear employment. It may not be the 1950s and 1960s, but civil defense matters.
This is perhaps a prime case where today’s financial-industrial and high-tech oligarchs (billionaires) can work with and/or under contract to the federal government, or even on their own initiative, to assure that, for example, America is hardened against electromagnetic pulse attack, cyber assaults, and nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction attacks. These may not be traditional civil defense measures, but they are civil defense for the modern era.
This collaboration is already happening in the space domain where President Putin’s “Sputnuke” threatens to totally disrupt space operations, and where President Xi Jinping’s growing space-dominance capabilities threaten to disrupt current civil society.
Effective civil defense measures are as central to effective nuclear deterrence and ally assurance as is nuclear modernization. Effective civil defense also includes ensuring the societal supporting infrastructure, such as housing, hospitals, and food stocks, are secure and survivable under even the most highly stressed circumstances.
In fact, an essential component of a truly superb American deterrence strategy must be a comprehensive program of being able to absorb an attack and nevertheless survive. Only in this way can the United States make it clear to adversaries, as President Richard Nixon said, “Not today, Comrades. Not ever.”
Church and synagogue groups, nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), such as the Red Cross or Doctors without Borders, and fraternal organizations, such as the Shriners or the Boy Scouts can also play a significant role in providing the ultimate in community civil defense. Examples of such efforts abound from the current conflict in Ukraine and Israel.
Exactly how much civil defense is the right amount? Nuclear strategists Thomas Schelling and Herman Kahn were never able to agree. Such agreement is even less likely today.
The right answer to civil defense is likely a programmatic solution that is affordable and optimizes the strengths of local communities. The right amount of civil defense should be a discussion between the federal, state, and local governments. The challenge for any civil defense effort is that more than two-thirds of all federal spending and about half of all state spending are dedicated to mandatory social programs. This leaves very little room for civil defense programs, which must compete with all other government functions for an ever-dwindling percentage of federal and state budgets.
For most Americans, the threat of nuclear strikes on the homeland is an abstract threat. Thus, they would rather have immediate government services than look to an event that may never happen. This leaves the prospects for improving civil defenses low. Much as in the Cold War, it may be up to Americans to look to their survival in the event of the unthinkable.
Joe Buff is a Senior Fellow at the National Institute for Deterrence Studies. The views expressed are his own.
About the Author
Joe Buff
Joe buff has long experience researching practical applications in math and actuarial science, management consulting, and national defense. His award-winning publications include six best-selling submarine technothrillers (the Captain Jeffrey Fuller series), and numerous articles and op-eds about undersea warfare, geostrategy, and nuclear deterrence in The Submarine Review, American Submariner, the U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, The Day (New London) and on Military.com’s DefenseTech blog. Joe has presented to the Naval Submarine League, the U.S. Submarine Veterans, the U.S. Submarine Museum (Groton) and the New York State Military Museum (Albany). In early 2024 Joe was a guest on ANWA’s NucleCast, hosted by Dr. Adam Lowther, and he has begun authoring and coauthoring articles for the National Institute for Deterrence Studies' Global Security Review.
