Broken-backed war theory is a form of conflict that could happen after a massive nuclear exchange. Assuming that all participants have not been annihilated, there may arise a scenario unique to military strategy and theory, one in which all or some of the parties involved strive to continue fighting until the other side is completely defeated.

Origin of the phrase

Broken-backed war theory was first formally elaborated on in the 1952 British '' Defence White Paper'', to describe what would presumably happen after a major nuclear exchange. The American "New Look Strategy of 1953/54" utterly rejected the notion of broken-backed war. They dropped the term from the 1955 white paper, and the phrase has since faded from common usage.

Commentary

Klaus Knorr purported that in a broken-backed war scenario, only military weapons and vehicles on hand prior to the sustained hostilities would be of use, as the economic potential of both sides would be, at least in theory, utterly shattered: Herman Kahn, in his tome ''

On Thermonuclear War ''On Thermonuclear War'' is a book by Herman Kahn, a military strategist at the RAND Corporation, although it was written only a year before he left RAND to form the Hudson Institute. It is a controversial treatise on the nature and theory of war i ...

'', posited that a broken-backed war is implausible, because one side would likely absorb vastly more damage than its opposition. As he was writing in the late 1950s, when the nuclear arsenals of the

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...

and the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

numbered in the tens of thousands, the validity of this statement in the modern war can be called into question. The nuclear strategist Bernard Brodie argued that this form of conflict may be impractical simply because it is almost impossible to plan for. His writings on the subject came before the advent of counter-force doctrine, and during a time of nuclear plenty, when it was safe to assume that a nuclear exchange would render a nation's industry useless. During the

Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because t ...

, Colonel Virgil Ney hypothesized that a nuclear exchange alone would not be enough to defeat the Soviet Union, and he argued for a modest construction of underground facilities and infrastructure.

In popular culture

In the novel, ''

Final Blackout ''Final Blackout'' is a dystopic science fiction novel by American writer L. Ron Hubbard. The novel is set in the future and follows a man known as "the Lieutenant" as he restores order to England after a world war. First published in serialized ...

'' by

L. Ron Hubbard Lafayette Ronald Hubbard (March 13, 1911 – January 24, 1986) was an American author, primarily of science fiction and fantasy stories, who is best known for having founded the Church of Scientology. In 1950, Hubbard authored '' Dianetic ...

, the conflict between the survivors of London and the United States has been characterized as a broken-backed war by some critics. The table-top

role-playing game A role-playing game (sometimes spelled roleplaying game, RPG) is a game in which players assume the roles of characters in a fictional setting. Players take responsibility for acting out these roles within a narrative, either through literal ac ...

Twilight: 2000 released by

Game Designers' Workshop Game Designers' Workshop (GDW) was a wargame and role-playing game publisher from 1973 to 1996. Many of their games are now carried by other publishers. History Game Designers' Workshop was originally established June 22, 1973. The founding m ...

in 1984 entails a broken-backed war; in the aftermath of a nuclear exchange in 1997, by 2000,

Warsaw Pact The Warsaw Pact (WP) or Treaty of Warsaw, formally the Treaty of Friendship, Cooperation and Mutual Assistance, was a collective defense treaty signed in Warsaw, Poland, between the Soviet Union and seven other Eastern Bloc socialist republi ...

and

NATO The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO, ; french: Organisation du traité de l'Atlantique nord, ), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance between 30 member states – 28 European and two N ...

forces are still fighting for a decisive victory in Europe and elsewhere with dwindling conventional arms and munitions.

References

{{reflist Nuclear warfare