Selective Options

William R. Van Cleave and Roger W. Barnett, ‘Strategic adaptability’, Orbis, xviii:3 (Autumn 1974), pp. 655–76.Google Scholar

Albert Wohlstetter, ‘Threats and promises of peace: Europe and America in the new era’, Orbis, xvii:4 (Winter 1974), p. 1126. This point had been made forcefully in the 1950s by Kahn, see earlier, pp. 133–4.Google Scholar

Michael May, ‘Some advantages of a counterforce deterrent’, Orbis, xiv (Summer 1970), p. 274.Google Scholar

Phil Williams, Crisis Management: Confrontation and Diplomacy in the Nuclear Age (London: Martin Robertson, 1976).Google Scholar

Richard M. Nixon, United States Foreign Policy for the 1970s (18 February 1970), pp. 54–5.Google Scholar

The main sources on the development of these options are found in Lynn Etheridge Davis, Limited Nuclear Options: Deterrence and the New American Doctrine (London: IISS, 1976) and Desmond Ball, Dèja Vu. These accounts have been supplemented with some interviews of the author’s.Google Scholar

J. R. Schlesinger, ‘Quantitative analysis and national security’, World Politics, xv (1963), pp. 295–315.CrossRefGoogle Scholar

Such a debate as there was, which embraced the general questioning of assured destruction and the concern over perceptions is well covered in Ted Greenwood and Michael Nacht, ‘The new nuclear debate: sense or nonsense’, Foreign Affairs, LII:4 (July 1974). Among critiques of the Schlesinger doctrine see Herbert Scoville Jr., ‘Flexible madness’, Foreign Policy, No. 14 (Spring 1974) and Barry Carter, ‘Nuclear strategy and nuclear weapons’, Scientific American, 230:5 (May 1974).Google Scholar

A useful compilation of relevant articles and documents is Robert J. Pranger and Roger P. Labrie (eds.), Nuclear Strategy and National Security: Points of View (Washington, DC: American Enterprise Institute, 1977).Google Scholar

Bernard Brodie, ‘The development of nuclear strategy’, International Security, ii:4 (Spring 1978), pp. 78–83.Google Scholar

Benjamin S. Lambeth, ‘Selective nuclear options and Soviet strategy’, in Johan Hoist and Uwe Nerlich, Beyond Nuclear Deterrence (London: Macdonald & Janes, 1978).Google Scholar

Quoted in Richard Burt, New Weapons and Technologies: Debate and Directions (London: IISS, 1976), p. 21. This is an excellent survey of these issues.Google Scholar

See also Christoph Bertram (ed.), New Conventional Weapons and East-West Security (Two Parts) (London: IISS, 1978).Google Scholar

Michael J. Brenner, ‘Tactical nuclear strategy and European defence: a critical reappraisal’, International Affairs, LI:1 (January 1975).Google Scholar

S. T. Cohen, ‘Enhanced radiation weapons: setting the record straight’, Strategic Review (Winter 1978);Google Scholar

Fred M. Kaplan. ‘Enhanced radiation weapons’, Scientific American, 238:5 (May 1978).Google Scholar

On this set of issues see Richard Burt, ‘The SS-20 and the Euro-strategic balance’, World Today (February 1977);Google Scholar

Greg Treverton, ‘Nuclear weapons and the gray area’, Foreign Affairs, LVII (Summer 1979); Freedman, Britain and Nuclear Weapons; G. Philip Hughes, ‘Cutting the Gordian knot: a theatre nuclear force for deterrence in Europe’, Orbis, XXII (Summer 1978).Google Scholar

Henry Kissinger, ‘NATO: the next thirty years’, Survival (November/December 1979), p. 265.Google Scholar

Colin Gray, The Future of Land-Based Missile Forces (London: IISS, 1978), p. 1. This is a useful analysis of the problem and ways of ‘solving it’.Google Scholar

Lynn Etheridge Davis and Warner Schilling, ‘All you ever wanted to know about MIRV and ICBM calculations but were not cleared to ask’, Journal of Conflict Resolution, 17:2 (June 1973).Google Scholar

John Steinbruner and Thomas Garwin, ‘Strategic vulnerability: the balance between prudence and paranoia’, International Security, L:1 (Summer 1976).Google Scholar

Senate Armed Services Committee, Hearings on Military Implications of the Treaty on the Limitation of Anti-Ballistic Missile Systems and the Interim Agreement on Limitation of Strategic Offensive Arms (Washington, DC: USGPO, 1972), p. 145.Google Scholar

Colin Gray, ‘The strategic force triad: end of the road?’, Foreign Affairs, LVI (July 1978), p. 775.Google Scholar

United States Congress, Office of Technology Assessment, The Effects of Nuclear War (Washington, DC: USGPO, 1979);Google Scholar

Kevin N. Lewis, ‘The prompt and delayed effects of nuclear war’, Scientific American (July 1979).Google Scholar

Jan Lodai, ‘Assuring strategic stability: an alternative view’, Foreign Affairs, LIV (April 1976). In a reply Paul Nitze argued that this would only be true if such retaliation as the US could muster was directed deliberately against counter-value rather than counter-force targets ‘despite the desperate consequences to us and the world of doing so’. Paul Nitze, ‘Strategic stability’, Foreign Affairs, LIV (July 1976). Colin Gray suggested that, in the 1980s, the USSR ‘might possibly be able to hold down its civilian casualties to a level below that suffered in the Great Patriotic War of 1941–5 — even if the United States should proceed all the way up the escalation ladder’, as if the risk of losing 20 million people and probably more was in the realm of acceptability. op. cit., p. 778. On an earlier version of this argument see p. 142. The sort of analysis of the military balance that presented a picture of comparative capabilities after the first volleys was known as a dynamic measure as opposed to a static measure. Such measures are somewhat misleading because they inevitably require a large set of arbitrary assumptions on areas of massive uncertainty.Google Scholar

Harold Brown, Department of Defense Annual Report Fiscal Year 1980 (25 January 1979), p. 76.Google Scholar

Desmond Ball, Developments in US Strategic Nuclear Policy under the Carter Administration (California: Seminar on Arms Control and Foreign Policy, 1980).Google Scholar

Richard Burt, ‘US stresses limited nuclear war in sharp shift on military strategy’, International Herald Tribune (7 August 1980).Google Scholar

Colin S. Gray and Keith Payne, ‘Victory is possible’, Foreign Policy, No. 39 (Summer 1980), p. 21.Google Scholar