Abstract
In 1975 Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger noted the inability of either side in the foreseeable future to acquire the means for either a disarming first strike or effective damage limitation, because of the demise of ABM systems confirmed by the 1972 SALT Treaty. ‘In these circumstances’, he continued, ‘one may ask, has nuclear strategy not reached a dead end?’ He answered that this might well be the case ‘as far as the massive attacks that preoccupied us in the 1960s’, but went on to claim that ‘unfortunately’, there remained ‘a number of more limited contingencies that could arise and that we should be prepared to deter’.1
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Notes
Laurence Martin, ‘The utility of military force’, in Francois Duchene (ed.), Force in Modem Societies: Its Place in International Politics (London: IISS, 1973), p. 16. For an early discussion of the issue,
see Klaus Knorr, On the Uses of Military Power in the Nuclear Age (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1966).
J. I. Coffey, Strategic Power and National Security (Pittsburgh: University of Pittsburgh Press, 1971).
McGeorge Bundy, ‘To cap the volcano’, Foreign Affairs, XLVIII:1 (October 1969), pp. 9–10. (Emphasis in original.)
See Walter Slocombe, The Political Implications of Strategic Parity (London: IISS, 1971), Appendix ii;
Benjamin Lambeth, ‘Deterrence in the MIRV era’, World Politics (January 1972), pp. 230–3.
The most important book, blending theory with research, was Alexander George and Richard Smoke, Deterrence in American Foreign Policy: Theory and Practice (New York: Columbia University Press, 1974).
George and Smoke, op. cit., pp. 560–1. For similar observations see Patrick Morgan, Deterrence: A Conceptual Analysis, Chapter 6; Stephen Maxwell, Rationality in Deterrence (London: IISS, 1968), p. 19. The ‘third wave’ of deterrence theory is discussed
by Robert Jervis in ‘Deterrence theory revisited’, World Politics, xxxv.2 (January 1979), pp. 289–324.
Edward N. Luttwak, ‘The missing dimension of US defense policy: force, perceptions and power’, in Donald C. Daniel (ed.), International Perceptions of the Superpower Military Balance (New York: Praeger, 1978), pp. 21–3.
Henry Kissinger, Press Conference of 3 July 1974, reprinted in Survival, xvi:5 (September/October 1974).
In Senate Foreign Relations Committee, Strategic Arms Limitation Talks (Washington, DC: USGPO, 1972), pp. 394–5.
Jeremy Stone, Strategic Persuasion: Arms Limitations Through Dialogue (New York: Columbia University Press, 1967), pp. 8–9, 169.
For support for this view of Soviet perception of military power see Lawrence L. Whetten (ed.), The Future of Soviet Military Power (New York: Crane Russak, 1976). Whetten noted in the Introduction: ‘The Soviets expect to use this new strategic posture as a back-drop for the conduct of a more flexible foreign policy that may, when appropriate, include an increase in their willingness to accept risk in the face of challenge or to be more assertive under favourable circumstances’ (p. 14). In the same volume William Van Cleave wrote of ‘the Soviet concept that military force confers meaningful political power, and thus that inferiority is a political liability and superiority an important political asset’. ‘Soviet doctrine and strategy’, p. 48.
Joseph Douglass and Amoretta Hoeber, Soviet Strategy for Nuclear War (Stanford, Calif.: Hoover Institution Press, 1979).
Quoted in John Vincent, Military Power and Political Influence: The Soviet Union and Western Europe (London: IISS, 1975), p. 15.
See Jervis, Perception and Misperception in International Politics (Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976);
also Irving Janis, Victims of Group-Think (Boston: Houghton Mifflin, 1972).
John Steinbruner, ‘Beyond rational deterrence: the struggle for new conceptions’, World Politics, xxviii:2 (January 1976), p. 237.
One of the better examples of this sort of analysis is Fred A. Payne, ‘The strategic nuclear balance: a new measure’, Survival, xx:3 (May/June 1977).
See Lawrence Freedman, ‘Balancing acts’, Millennium, vii:2 (Autumn 1978).
Gabriel A. Almond, ‘Public opinion and the development of space technology: 1957–60’. In Joseph M. Goldsen (ed.), Outer Space in World Politics (London: Pall Mall Press, 1963), pp. 71–96.
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© 2003 Lawrence Freedman
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Freedman, L. (2003). Parity. In: The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/9780230379435_24
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