Between Assured Destruction and Nuclear Victory: The Case for the "Mad-Plus" Posture

Nuclear strategy and nuclear war are neither pleasant nor easy to contemplate. They require thinking about the possibility of a horrendous loss of life, planning for an eventuality for which we have had no experience, and confronting a sequence of events that could destroy humanity. Over the years, contemplation of such matters has led many citizens to condemn nuclear deterrence as immoral and to call for the abolition of nuclear weapons. Modern day strategists have rejected nuclear abolition as both naive and dangerous. The knowledge of how to construct nuclear weapons, they have argued, cannot be uninvented even if their physical presence could be abolished; nor do the international political conditions exist that would permit their abolition. Unilateral nuclear disarmament could too easily subject the disarming nation to the political sway of another nuclear power. And even if each nation that had them were to abolish its nuclear weapons, all would still have to worry about the ever-present possibility of a covert attempt by others to rearm with them. This continuous danger would necessitate an international institution to police a nuclear disarmament pact, but historically the nations of the world have not proved capable of devising viable international political institutions of control. Rather than reject nuclear weapons, strategists since World War II have divided into two distinct camps in their attempts to wrestle with nuclear strategy-the finite deterrers and the flexible responders.' The former are commonly associated with assured destruction, countervalue or countercity targeting, and small nuclear forces; the latter, with war waging, limited nuclear options, counterforce targeting, and large nuclear forces. Finite deterrers have held to the position that what makes nuclear deterrence stable is the threat to destroy the cities of an adversary in a