GETTING MAD:

NUCLEAR MUTUAL ASSURED DESTRUCTION,

ITS ORIGINS AND PRACTICE

Edited by

Henry D. Sokolski

November 2004

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CONTENTS

Preface

Henry D. Sokolski .......................................................................................... v

Introduction

Henry S. Rowen ............................................................................................ 1

Part I. The Origins of MAD Thinking ......................................................... 13

1. The Origins of MAD: A Short History of City-Busting

Richard R. Muller ....................................................................................... 15

2. Destruction Assurée: The Origins and Development of French 

 Nuclear Strategy, 1945-81

Bruno Tertrais ............................................................................................ 51

3. The U.S. Navy’s Fleet Ballistic Missile Program 

 and Finite Deterrence

Harvey M. Sapolsky .................................................................................. 123

4. MAD and U.S. Strategy

Charles H. Fairbanks, Jr. ........................................................................... 137

Part II. MAD in Practice ................................................................................ 149

5. Soviet Views of Nuclear Warfare: The Post-Cold War 

 Interviews

John A. Battilega ....................................................................................... 151

6. The Origins and Design of Presidential Decision-59: A Memoir

William E. Odom ...................................................................................... 175

7. France’s Nuclear Deterrence Strategy: Concepts and Operational 

 Implementation

David S. Yost ............................................................................................ 197

8. Chinese and Mutually Assured Destruction: 

 Is China Getting MAD?

James Mulvenon ........................................................................................ 239

9. The British Experience

Michael Quinlan ....................................................................................... 261
iv

Part III. Moving Beyond MAD ................................................................... 275

10. Small Nuclear Powers

Mark T. Clark ........................................................................................... 277

11. Nuclear and Other Retaliation after Deterrence Fails

Tod Lindberg ............................................................................................. 317

12. Taking Proliferation Seriously

Henry D. Sokolski ...................................................................................... 341

About the Authors ......................................................................................... 357
v

PREFACE

 Nearly 40 years after the concept of finite deterrence was popularized 

by the Johnson administration, nuclear Mutual Assured Destruction 

(MAD) thinking appears to be in decline. The United States has rejected 

the notion that threatening population centers with nuclear attacks is a 

legitimate way to assure deterrence. Most recently, it withdrew from the 

Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty, an agreement based on MAD. American 

opposition to MAD also is reflected in the Bush administration’s desire to 

develop smaller, more accurate nuclear weapons that would reduce the 

number of innocent civilians killed in a nuclear strike.

 Still, MAD is influential in a number of ways. First, other countries, like 

China, have not abandoned the idea that holding their adversaries’ cities at 

risk is necessary to assure their own strategic security. Nor have U.S. and 

allied security officials and experts fully abandoned the idea. At a minimum, 

acquiring nuclear weapons is still viewed as being sensible to face off a 

hostile neighbor that might strike one’s own cities. Thus, our diplomats 

have been warning China that Japan would be under tremendous pressure 

to go nuclear if North Korea persisted in acquiring a few crude weapons 

of its own. Similarly, Israeli officials have long argued, without criticism, 

that they would not be second in acquiring nuclear weapons in the Middle 

East. Indeed, given that Israel is surrounded by enemies that would not 

hesitate to destroy its population if they could, Washington finds Israel’s 

retention of a significant nuclear capability totally “understandable.” 

 Then, there is the case of India and Pakistan, two countries allied with 

the United States in its war against terror. Regarding these countries’ 

nuclear arsenals, U.S. experts argue, is to help these nations secure their 

nuclear capabilities against theft. To help “stabilize” the delicate nuclear 

balance between India and Pakistan, they argue, it might be useful for the 

United States to help enhance each country’s nuclear command and control 

systems. Yet, U.S. officials have opposed these two nations’ efforts to 

perfect their arsenals for battlefield applications and nuclear war-fighting 

use. Instead, U.S. officials have urged both India and Pakistan to keep their 

forces to the lowest possible levels and develop them only for deterrent 

purposes. This is understood to mean only targeting each others’ major 

cities.

 Implicit to all this talk is the assumption that a nation’s security is, in 

fact, enhanced by acquiring a relatively modest but secure nuclear arsenal 

(i.e., one most likely to be used only to strike large, soft targets, such as 

cities). Certainly, the underlying premise of MAD thinking―that small 
vi

nuclear states can deter aggression by large nuclear states―is still popular. 

Iraq, we are told, might have held America off in 1991 or 2001 had it 

actually possessed nuclear arms. Similarly, the contrast between U.S. and 

allied generosity toward North Korea and the harsh treatment doled out to 

Saddam is usually explained by referring to the likelihood of North Korea 

having nuclear weapons and of Iraq clearly not. 

 Why should we care about such MAD-inspired notions? They make 

U.S. and allied efforts to prevent the spread of nuclear weapons much more 

difficult. If, as MAD thinking contends, nations can deter aggression by 

having the ability to successfully launch a nuclear attack against a significant 

number of innocent civilians, acquiring a nuclear arsenal will increasingly 

be seen as the best way for states to protect themselves. Aggravating this 

inclination is the relaxation of Cold War alliance constraints. Without the 

threat of global nuclear war and the guarantees of security from blocs of 

large powerful nations, traditional security alliances are weaker. As a result, 

the desire of nations to go their own way has increased. MAD thinking has 

only egged them on. As more and more nations become nuclear-ready or 

armed, our own leaders, finally, will want to downplay such developments 

insisting that a kind of mutually deterred peace among such nations is 

actually plausible.

 The link between MAD-inspired thinking and nuclear proliferation, 

though, does not stop here. MAD assumptions are also at the root of what 

has become a nuclear technology sharing prone reading of the Nuclear 

Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). Because nuclear weapons can deter 

aggression, nations have a right to them. It follows that nations should be 

compensated for not exercising this right by giving them the freest possible 

access to nuclear technology under occasional nuclear inspections―i.e., 

access to all that nations need to come within weeks of acquiring a nuclear 

weapons arsenal of their own. 

 It is this view of the NPT that President Bush’s nuclear nonproliferation 

proposals of February 11, 2004, were intended to reverse. These proposals 

include freezing the export of controlled nuclear commodities to nations 

that have not renounced acquiring nuclear reprocessing and enrichment. 

Whether or not these proposals will succeed is still unclear. What will 

determine their fate, as much as any other factor, is whether or not the United 

States and its allies can convincingly repudiate the MAD assumptions that 

underlie the lax view of the NPT’s constraints. 

 The aim of this volume is to assure that our policymakers have the 

tools to do this. At the start of the NPEC’s work on this book, a review of 

the literature concerning nuclear planning was conducted. It highlighted 

the dearth of historical publications on either the origins or the practice of 
vii

MAD. Certainly, a clear account of the premises behind MAD’s original 

argumentation and a critical assessment of the extent to which this theory 

was applied by nuclear weapons states are needed to develop sound 

alternative policies. It is hoped that this book, which details the origins 

and practice of MAD and highlights sounder alternatives, will fill this gap 

in the literature and encourage debate about how best to supplant what’s 

MAD that remains.

HENRY D. SOKOLSKI

Executive Director

Nonproliferation Policy Education Center 

1

INTRODUCTION

Henry S. Rowen

 Nuclear weapons were introduced to the world in an era when 

cities were being massively bombed. That became their immediate, 

and has been their only, use so far. After Hiroshima and Nagasaki, 

they were still viewed as only for civilian destruction, a belief that 

was reinforced by the fact that fission weapons, with a thousand-fold 

release of energy compared with their conventional predecessors, 

were soon succeeded by thermonuclear ones capable of another 

thousand-fold-plus yield. Thermonuclear bombs were the ultimate 

in terror weapons. 

 The large-scale attacks on cities in Word War II, as Richard Mueller 

notes in Chapter 1, were accompanied by a moral numbness. There 

were objectors to mass killings, but they were neither numerous nor 

effectual. After World War II, a popular movement against nuclear 

weapons arose, but it did not deflect programs that moved the 

technology ahead, or slow weapons production in the United States 

and the Soviet Union, or prevent Britain and France from acquiring 

them.

 For the United States, assigned targets in the Soviet Union were 

industrial or military establishments. The location of many militaryindustrial targets in or near cities meant the possibility of huge 

numbers of civilian deaths. This was due to the high yields of the 

weapons combined with low delivery accuracies. As in World War 

II, collateral damage to civilians was seen as a plus, not a minus. 

 As long as the United States had a monopoly on nuclear weapons, 

all was well, at least from an American perspective. But this monopoly 

lasted only 4 years. When it ended in 1949, complications arose: the 

Russians eventually would be able to attack our cities; it made a class 

of military forces, specifically those assigned to carry these bombs, 

highly desirable as targets. The latter possibility was first clearly 

identified by the RAND Corporation in the early 1950s.1

 According 

to a recent book by Philip Taubman, it had a galvanizing effect on 

defense officials in Washington.2

 It gave a big boost to reconnaissance 

technologies to better observe Soviet programs. Actions were also 
2

taken to reduce the vulnerability of the U.S strategic bomber force, 

most obviously by immediately putting our strategic bombers on 

high alert. The Russians’ development of a nuclear bomb created 

another problem―the stability of the nuclear balance. To wit, if an 

opponent’s nuclear delivery force was vulnerable, there could be 

a large advantage in striking first rather than waiting to be struck. 

The incentives to attack preemptively increases if both sides have 

vulnerable strike forces. This was the famous “delicate balance of 

terror” first introduced to the public by Albert Wohlstetter in 1959.3

 Starting in the mid-1950s more actions to protect our longrange forces were taken: the hardening and dispersal of land 

based missiles, the building of the submarine missile force, and the 

protection of our command and control apparatus. (The protection 

of command and control was harder than one might assume, both 

because it was not designed for survival and because of the need 

for concentrated control of these dangerous weapons.) Because 

Soviet offensive capacities were also improving rapidly, there was 

a continual probing to identify our vulnerabilities. Vulnerabilities 

emerged, especially as missile accuracies got better. 

 In hindsight, perhaps the most important aspect of the nuclear 

competition in the Cold War was the Soviet Navy’s inability to 

locate our missile submarines along with the U.S. Navy’s ability 

to track Soviet ones, including those carrying missiles, a topic 

Harvey Sapolsky details in his chapter. Eventually, the Russians 

quieted their subs and restricted their operations to remote so-called 

bastions. These steps offered them better protection, but their quiet 

subs were deployed in substantial numbers only in the 1980s―late 

in the Cold War. They also built large, protected land-based forces, 

including mobile intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs). These 

actions by both countries went far in reducing the preemptive attack 

instability of the balance. 

 A widely held belief from 1949 on was that nuclear war could not 

happen, especially as both sides acquired large and protected forces. 

However, there were several arguments why it could, nevertheless, 

occur. One was the temptation to threaten use of nuclear weapons 

in support of a vulnerable position, most prominently ours in 

Western Europe. How could it be rational to adopt a strategy that 

if carried out would have resulted in vast devastation―including to 
3

its purported beneficiary, Europe? The idea was that Soviet leaders 

would recognize the dangers of invading Europe, perhaps less for 

concern of a carefully decided American nuclear response than that 

an unplanned event, perhaps in the fog of war, could somehow 

lead to nuclear weapons being launched. Thomas Schelling labeled 

this phenomenon “The threat that leaves something to chance.” 

That brinkmanship was not just an analytic artifact was illustrated 

by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles’s doctrine of “massive 

retaliation.” This doctrine called for an American nuclear response 

to a Soviet attack on Europe, and was introduced several years after 

the Soviet Union acquired nuclear weapons. 

 The situation in Europe with growing numbers of these weapons 

(ultimately thousands) in the West, and also many in the East, made 

concerns of nuclear war vivid. Conditions for a crisis were present, 

especially with respect to Berlin. Its protection depended on the 

threat of escalating violence if Western access was restricted, as it 

had been in 1948 and as was threatened again in the early 1960s. 

 We judged NATO forces to be inferior to those of the Warsaw Pact 

so the threat to use nuclear weapons first if Europe was in danger of 

being lost seemed appropriate.4

 In short, the appearance of Mutual 

Assured Destruction (MAD) doctrine in the 1960s notwithstanding, 

the United States continued to have a first-use–of-nuclear-weapons 

policy throughout the Cold War―a fact that rested uncomfortably 

alongside assertions that nuclear war was impossible. The main 

setting was Europe (with some consideration of nuclear weapon use 

in the Korean War) but the notion that such use could or should be 

limited to that region was never developed or advocated. Among 

other reasons, it would have been political poison. 

 Because the doctrine of MAD played a large role in the Cold War 

(much more on the American than on the Soviet side), it is useful 

to repeat a succinct definition of it: 1. Don’t attack weapons, aim at 

people; and, 2. Don’t defend against the adversary’s weapons. Each 

of these rules had a voluntary and an existential aspect. Justification 

for the first proposition might be, don’t attack weapons because that 

would be destabilizing and lead to an arms race; or, don’t attack 

weapons because it can’t be done successfully. Justification for the 

second might be, don’t defend because it’s a bad idea; or, don’t 
4

defend because, although it might be desirable, it isn’t feasible. 

These different justifications produced some confusion.

 Before MAD there was Assured Destruction (AD). This 

construction, detailed by Charles Fairbanks in Chapter 4, came from 

Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara’s endeavor in the early 

1960s to hold down Air Force lobbying for thousands of Minuteman 

missiles. His Systems Analysis Office developed a measure of 

population and industrial damage to the Soviet Union that was 

large and deemed sufficient. Allowing for estimated losses to our 

forces from a Soviet attack, it enabled a cap to be put on our forces 

well below the Air Force requests. However, AD was described as a 

“capability,” not as a plan for operations.5

 It was not much of an extension from AD to MAD. MAD was 

based on the observation that, since only a few nuclear weapons 

delivered on a city could produce vast damage, why buy more than 

the number needed to assure that result? As Sapolsky reports, this 

concept, dubbed “Finite Deterrence,” fitted the attributes of the early 

sea-based ballistic missile system, the Polaris: secure (presumed, 

and as it turned out, actual) and inaccurate (hence not good against 

hardened, land-based targets). 

 If the Soviets saw the nuclear competition as some Americans 

had come to see it by the mid-1960s, they would rationally decide 

that building more missiles was a mug’s game. Similarly, it was 

at best a waste―and at worst destabilizing―to make qualitative 

improvements, such as installing multiple, independent, reentry 

vehicles (MIRVs) that would enable a single missile to destroy 

many enemy silos. Increased missile accuracy was deplored. Also 

deplorable from this perspective was to try to defend against 

oncoming missiles. As John Battilega shows in Chapter 5, for a long 

time the Soviet leadership did not see things this way. 

 Arguably the biggest obstacle to the thorough embracing of MAD 

by the United States was its commitment to the defense of Europe 

and its understanding of what was required for Europe’s defense. 

The nuclear link with Europe remained crucial throughout. A huge 

controversy occurred over the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s 

(NATO) stationing of Pershing missiles in the 1980s to offset the 

Soviet SS-20s that had already been deployed. The issue was wholly 

symbolic but no less important for that fact. 
5

 Aside from the escalation of a conflict in Europe, another way 

nuclear war might come was through a subordinate in the chain of 

command launching nuclear missiles on his own. The installation of 

locks, “permissive action links” (PALs), on weapons controlled by 

higher authority first proposed by Fred Ikle, went far to eliminate 

that danger. In due course the Russians also installed them but not 

completely. Long after the event, we learned that the Russian general 

in charge of the missiles sent to Cuba in 1962 had the authority―and 

apparently the means―to launch them.

 What were we to do if nuclear weapons were used by an enemy? 

Should the United States carry out massive retaliation? Should it 

limit further damage through diplomacy or military action or both? 

Some believed that having a choice between doing nothing and 

initiating a huge, indiscriminate, nuclear response courted disaster. 

In any case, much would depend on the context and on what had 

happened. Our system, and as far as we can tell also the Soviet one, 

did not cope well with this class of situations, as explained in Tod 

Lindberg’s chapter. Such possibilities provided a strong incentive 

not to rely on a quick nuclear response to signals of an attack and to 

have a robust command and control system. 

 Another response to these dangers was to negotiate limitations 

on types of weapons or their numbers. The treaty limiting the 

deployment of defenses of ballistic missiles was the most important 

example of a limit on types and it fitted MAD doctrine. Nonetheless, 

in 1967, McNamara came out in favor of a thin ballistic missile 

defense oriented against the small and unsophisticated Chinese 

ICBM force and any small, accidental missile attack. There were 

also advocates of building a large shield. Opponents argued the 

merits of not defending oneself. On the one hand, they held that 

ballistic missile defenses would not be technically feasible because 

of Russian countermeasures. So they would be a waste. On the other, 

if they worked, they would fuel the arms race and foster preemptive 

instability. The upshot was the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty in 

1972 which severely restricted deployment of defenses and a long 

period of relatively low spending on research and development 

(R&D). It was disrupted by President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic 

Defense Initiative in 1983 which expanded R&D on missile defenses. 

In 2001, President George Bush announced American withdrawal 

from the treaty. 
6

 The ABM treaty came out of a sequence of negotiations that 

included ones on offensive forces (Strategic Arms Limitation Talks 

[SALT] and Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty [START]). These 

symbolized a mutual recognition of the virtue of limiting the size 

of the nuclear forces, but they had little practical effect on nuclear 

capabilities. 

 Central to the MAD way of thinking was the concept of the arms 

race. The model was a game in which each party tried to out do the 

other by developing new technologies or fielding more forces. Both 

parties ratcheted up their capabilities but achieved nothing. If one 

side deceived itself by thinking it had gained a decisive advantage, 

it could end in a nuclear war. 

 Although arms race worries did involve an aspect of reality 

because there were always reactions and counter-reactions by the 

players, the model had serious limitations. As Battilega’s chapter on 

Soviet nuclear doctrine describes it, it took a long time for the Soviet 

side to conclude that nuclear war was unwinnable. They went on 

developing new types of missiles and fielding them, making nuclear 

weapons and building air and civil defenses long after our way of 

thinking said they should not have. To our dismay, they built a 

missile defense system for Moscow. Although they came to see that 

it was not sensible to add more nuclear forces, they never accepted 

that it was a good thing to be vulnerable. In short, they rejected MAD 

as policy. 

 The second main defect of arms race thinking was the asymmetry 

in resources between the two sides. Without endorsing the view that 

President Reagan’s arms buildup in the early 1980s and his support 

for “Star Wars” missile defenses decisively tipped the Soviet Union 

into collapse (because there are too many good candidates for this 

award), in fact the United States was much better able to run the 

“race” than the Soviet Union was. 

 Over time, changes in technology invalidated the original 

assumptions about nuclear weapons causing vast and indiscriminate 

damage. At first such damage was thought to be a necessary attribute 

of thermonuclear weapons but, as it turned out, they could be (and 

were) made small, light, and with low yields. Also, missiles came 

to be deliverable with great precision (as demonstrated in two 

Gulf wars). This combination created the possibility of a nuclear 
7

conflict with low collateral damage to civilians, but it still left the 

considerable worry that actions taken in a conflict would cause huge 

civilian damage. 

 One might ask about the connection between the doctrinal debate 

over MAD and operational plans. There was little direct connection. 

The case for having something other than a huge Single, Integrated, 

Operational Plan (SIOP)―what Herman Kahn called a “Wargasm”―

began to be made in the 1950s. Not much was done about it until the 

1960s. In 1961, McNamara directed the Joint Strategic Targeting Staff 

to prepare plans that included options limited to strategic offensive 

forces and related air defenses and to other military targets. However, 

the planned attacks remained massive, not selective. McNamara also 

called for the study of “controlled and deliberate” use of weapons. 

Not much came of these initiatives. Secretary of Defense James 

Schlesinger tried again in the mid-1970s to create “limited” and 

“regional” nuclear options, but the theory and planning for them 

remained unsatisfactory. 

 The lack of American seriousness about the possibility of 

nuclear war is vividly described in Bill Odom’s chapter on President 

Carter’s inquiries into emergency procedures: “No president before 

him, it turned out, had ever practiced these emergency procedures, 

and therefore, no president had ever given the J-3 in the Pentagon 

guidance as to what the president desired.” 

 The British and French faced many of the same problems as the 

two larger nuclear powers. They needed (1) to acquire long range 

delivery systems; (2) to be secure from nuclear attack; (3) to decide 

how much to invest in this category of arms; (4) to develop targeting 

doctrines and plans; (5) to have a public explanation for what they 

were doing; and (6) to work out relations with the United States on 

some of these matters. Bruno Tetrais, David S. Yost, and Michael 

Quinlan (chapters 2, 7, and 9, respectively) give excellent accounts of 

these programs and their rationales.

 The British and French situations differed from the American by 

being closer to the Soviet Union and having fewer resources available. 

And they were far less willing than was the Soviet leadership to 

spend large amounts of money on resources. This, together with 

technical limitations, led them to adopt “counter value” targets, i.e., 

cities. 
8

 The British effort differed from the French in having been started 

as a joint effort during World War II and with much U.S.-United 

Kingdom (UK) cooperation. Quinlan discusses the dual nature of 

British planning: for a UK-only case (formulated as a “Second Centre” 

of decision making within the Alliance) and for participation with 

the United States as the other case. The “Second Centre” argument 

was that if the United States held back from responding in a conflict, 

Britain was capable of doing so independently. He also addresses 

British use of American weapons, notably the Polaris submarine 

missile system, and later the Trident. 

 Tetrais labels the French nuclear enterprise, “a program without 

a strategy.” That situation, as this volume shows, was not unusual. 

The French motivation was to protect its sovereignty, its security, 

and its great power status. Nuclear weapons were seen as essential 

to these purposes in which history played a large role (as it also 

did in the Russian case). The trauma from the defeat by Germany 

left France determined to protect its security. Moreover, the United 

States was not seen as reliable. 

 The doctrine that emerged was essentially one of “minimum 

deterrence.” This was the idea that a country with a small nuclear 

force could deter a large one from a wide range of threatening 

actions. The logic was no different from that of Britain or, for that 

matter, China. France saw minimum deterrence as requiring a 

mass destruction single strike; there was no room for flexibility or 

selectivity.

 The role of the French nuclear program in the Alliance was 

fraught with ambiguity. While intended to protect France, it did 

not preclude a role in the defense of others, especially Germany, 

which formed a buffer between France and the Red Army. Nor did 

it preclude cooperation with the United States on certain nuclear 

contingencies. 

 A curiosity was the adoption of the tous azimuts formulation, one 

that could be construed as including the United States as a target. 

Tetrais interprets it as an expression of global ambition that was not 

followed up with corresponding military programs. It seems to have 

had no political consequences at least during the Cold War. More 

troubling was the notion of French actions “triggering” the use of 

U.S. forces in the defense of Europe. This was not argued explicitly 
9

but was, quite naturally, met with American hostility. Again, its 

practical consequences were small. 

 Yost, in his chapter on France’s nuclear strategy, emphasizes 

the shift to a dual approach after the collapse of the Soviet Union. 

One approach preserves a nuclear capability against the possibility 

of a new great power threat emerging at some point in the future. 

The other is addressed to smaller, regional countries that possess 

weapons of mass destruction. With regard to the latter there has 

been more emphasis on selectivity and discrimination in recent 

years along with associated military capabilities. However, the 

overarching rhetoric emphasizes the expected “non-use” of such 

weapons. 

 From an American perspective, the British and French nuclear 

forces were a complication, but not a huge one. Each was determined 

to have nuclear forces independent of American control. Each was 

faced with a formidable Soviet nuclear force and neither had the 

option of defending itself on the battlefield by using these weapons. 

In the end such defense was not seen as feasible by the Americans 

or the Soviets either. The main complication was the possibility 

of either government independently using nuclear weapons and 

thereby triggering a wider conflagration or disrupting an ongoing 

conflict. It hardly needs to be said that the likelihood of such actions 

was seen as quite small by everyone. 

 China’s program under Mao, as presented by James Mulvenon 

in Chapter 8, was distinctive in publicly disparaging the importance 

of nuclear weapons. Its public face notwithstanding, the urgency 

with which the regime pursued their acquisition, including the 

prominence of nuclear weapons in the tension and ultimate break 

between Beijing and Moscow, shows the high importance that was 

attached to getting them. In any case, once possessed, Beijing’s rhetoric 

evolved in an implicitly MAD direction. Mulvenon argues that it 

did not stop there and points to the growth of a stockpile of tactical 

weapons that look designed to be used in local conflicts. China, after 

all, borders on more nuclear weapon-possessing countries than any 

other (India, Pakistan, Russia, and presumably North Korea). Plus, 

it faces U.S. forces in its neighborhood. The evidence that China is 

investing in a full, intercontinental counterforce posture is scant; it 

is much more likely that it is building a nuclear war-fighting force at 

the regional level. 
10

 Mark T. Clark, in Chapter 10, challenges the widespread 

assumption that the Small Nuclear Powers will adopt mini-MAD 

operational doctrines. He discusses four of them: India, Pakistan, 

Israel, and South Africa and sees all as having considered or adopted 

nuclear war-fighting doctrines. But this is a heterogeneous set about 

which generalizations are suspect. 

 South Africa is a curious case because it has always been difficult 

for outsiders to understand the threats that pushed the regime over 

the brink to getting nuclear weapons. Clark offers some explanations 

that have varying degrees of plausibility. MAD was not one of them. 

Anyway, in due course South Africa disposed of its weapons.

 Israel is a much more serious case. Its technologies are advanced, 

it has real enemies with whom it has fought three wars since 1948, 

and its doctrines are shrouded in secrecy and ambiguity. Clark says, 

plausibly, that Israeli nuclear forces were vulnerable to a Soviet 

nuclear attack, and that Israel wanted, and perhaps acquired, the 

ability to deliver nuclear weapons against it. 

 According to Clark, there is disagreement about Israeli concepts 

for use. Is use for counter value (i.e., cities) or for battlefield use? Is it 

to deter a large conventional attack or chemical, biological or nuclear 

attacks? Or should they be used to preempt enemy nuclear attack? 

Or is it intended to provoke U.S. intervention to prevent its use of 

these weapons? Perhaps it is all of the above, and more. 

 India, Pakistan, and China (along with China, Russia and 

presumably North Korea) share the distinction of having three-way 

nuclear-weapon borders. This pattern makes for complications that 

are poorly understood, certainly for outsiders and perhaps also for 

the participants. 

 Clark observes that India’s public nuclear doctrine is unclear, 

including who is the main enemy: China, Pakistan, or the United 

States? Its National Security Advisory Board calls for forces designed 

for “punitive retaliation,” a triad of aircraft, mobile land-based 

missiles and sea-based assets; a robust command and control system 

controlled by the prime minister, a no-first-use pledge, and a strong 

conventional force. The operational implication of these words is 

not clear. The development of short-range weapons also suggests a 

desire to be able to use them on the battlefield. This is a capability 

that suggests a focus on Pakistan rather than China. 
11

 For many years, the low level Indian-Pakistani conflict over 

Kashmir has had the potential to escalate to much higher levels of 

violence. Does the possession of nuclear weapons by both sides 

lower the odds of this, perhaps to nearly zero? It is too soon to know. 

What is clear is the need for protected and controlled nuclear forces 

on both sides.

 Although there is a question about the primary orientation of 

India’s nuclear program, this is not true of Pakistan’s. It is designed 

to deter or defend against a stronger India. Unsurprisingly, Pakistan 

has not adopted a no-first-use pledge. Its doctrine might involve 

stages of escalation from a purely demonstrative use of nuclear 

weapons to battlefield use to counterforce to, as a last resort, counter 

value targets. If this is true, it decidedly is not a MAD one. 

 There are many important questions about Pakistan’s nuclear 

program, including the control of the weapons. The military are 

evidently in charge of them, not prime ministers. There are also 

questions about the political stability of the country and who might 

in a period of turmoil get a hold of these weapons. 

 These considerations give rise to this book’s last chapter by 

Henry Sokolski (Chapter 12). In it, Sokolski argues that any sound 

approach to controlling nuclear nonproliferation must eschew MADinspired assumptions, especially the notion that nations have a right 

to acquire nuclear weapons, and, therefore, should be compensated 

for not exercising this right. This thinking dominates the current 

popular reading of the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). 

Sokolski argues that a new interpretation needs to be given to the 

NPT, or that the original l958 Irish proposal for such a treaty should 

be revived. The Irish proposal gave no nation the “right” to atomic 

explosives or to be compensated for restraint with unrestricted 

access to so-called “peaceful” technologies (that in reality has 

brought many countries close to having bombs). 

 As part of an overall, bolder strategy for dealing with the spread 

of these weapons, he urges actively contesting the notion that anyone 

has a natural right to these weapons; i.e., no longer saying that 

possession is “understandable.” Sokolski also suggests being much 

more rigorous in enforcing rules on nuclear-technology transfers, 

and for a larger reduction than planned in the nuclear stockpiles of 

the United States and its allies. He also proposes nontechnological 
12

carrots as well as sticks for those countries that will be reluctant to 

go along with this strategy. He suggests, for example, in the case of 

Russia, that Washington remove U.S. nuclear weapons from Europe 

as a sweetener. He argues that the alternative for not taking such 

action is to continue to let the NPT be implemented in a manner that 

facilitates more states becoming nuclear weapons ready as North 

Korea has become. 

 That we averted disaster during the Cold War is considerable 

evidence in support of Mark Twain’s saying that God protects fools, 

drunkards, and the United States of America. We―and others as 

well―will have to be much more serious than we have been about 

the dangers from nuclear weapons being in the hands of those 

prepared to use them. 

ENDNOTES - INTRODUCTION

1. A. J. Wohlstetter, F. S. Hoffman, R. J. Lutz, and H. S. Rowen, “Selection and 

Use of Strategic Air Bases,” RAND, R-266, April 2, 1954.

2. Philip Taubman, Secret Empire, New York: Simon & Schuster, 2003, p. 12.

3. Albert Wohlstetter, “The Delicate Balance of Terror,” Foreign Affairs, January 

1959. 

4. This was despite work in the Pentagon in the early 1960s making the 

case that we either did not or need not have conventional inferiority at NATO’s 

spending level. Army Lieutenant Colonel Jack Rogers, then in the Office of the 

Secretary of Defense (ISA), observed that NATO, having more soldiers and armor 

than the Warsaw Pact, ought to win a conventional war, contrary to the standard 

view. If the standard view were correct, it must be because of a defect in NATO 

organization. But the standard view might be wrong. The Systems Analysis 

Office, under the direction of Alain Enthoven, developed this insight and gave it 

prominence. It turned out to be convenient to various interests in the United States 

and Europe to stay with the position that NATO was conventionally inferior. The 

doctrine of first use of nuclear weapons remained.

5. As Charles Fairbanks explains in his chapter, in Ann Arbor in 1962, 

McNamara said, 

. . . to the extent feasible, basic military strategy in a possible general war 

should be approached in much the same way that more conventional 

military operations have been regarded in the past. That is to say, 

principal military objectives, in the event of a major military attack on 

the Alliance, should be the destruction of the enemy’s military forces not 

of his civilian population.

Robert McNamara, speech to NATO, Athens, Greece, May 5, 1962. Many European 

officials found this disturbing because it seemed to make nuclear war thinkable. 
PART I

THE ORIGINS OF MAD THINKING

15

CHAPTER 1

THE ORIGINS OF MAD:

A SHORT HISTORY OF CITY-BUSTING

Richard R. Muller

INTRODUCTION

 The 20th century was the age of total war, and nothing 

symbolized that dreadful era more than the bombardment of civilian 

populations from the air. From its halting beginnings in the First 

World War, in which 1,141 Britons lost their lives, strategic bombing 

evolved into the mass air raids of the Second World War, in which 

some 52,000 British, 330,000 Japanese, and anywhere from 300,000 to 

1,000,000 German civilians perished. Nations poured scarce blood 

and treasure into the development and manning of vast bomber 

fleets capable of carrying the war directly to enemy economic and 

population centers in the hope that this investment would prove 

decisive in modern warfare.1

 The underlying rationale for strategic air warfare predates the 

reality of manned powered flight. Before the arrival of the machine 

age, wars were fought primarily between the armed forces of the 

belligerents. The 19th century Prussian military theorist Carl von 

Clausewitz noted that, while the “center of gravity . . . the hub 

of all power and movement” of an enemy state was normally 

its army, it could also be the capital, a key ally, or even public 

opinion.2 National power, therefore, could not be measured solely 

in terms of traditional military capability. Political will, economic 

productivity, transportation, commerce, and communications 

became increasingly important factors in struggles between the 

great powers. The advent of the commercial, financial, and industrial 

revolutions brought with it the rise of the modern urban center, in 

which many of these elements were concentrated. The onset of 

total war, and improvements in the technical means of waging it, 

brought about a blurring of the distinction between combatants and 

noncombatants, and placed hitherto protected aspects of a nation’s 
16

civil and economic life in the firing line. Steam-powered warships 

and submarines made a sustained blockade of an enemy nation 

practicable. Its victims would be the entire population, not just the 

enemy’s military force. The development of the long-range bomber 

meant that the vitals of an enemy nation would come under direct 

attack in a manner even the most sanguine 19th century statesmen 

and soldiers could scarcely have imagined. In the process, war 

against civilians returned to a level not seen since the Thirty Years’ 

War. 

 This chapter will examine the evolution of the concept of aerial 

attacks against cities―the intellectual underpinnings of Mutual 

Assured Destruction (MAD). It will trace in broad outline the 

evolution of the theory and practice of attacking cities from the air. 

While a complete history of the development of air power is outside 

the scope of this project, this historical survey will examine the major 

“milestones” on the road to MAD. Included will be an examination 

of technology, theory, and changing military and civilian beliefs in 

the efficacy of targeting economic and population centers.

 “Strategic bombing” is a much-used term, but in its 20th century 

context it generally refers to air attacks on the vital centers of an 

enemy state―its industries, ports, transportation networks, and other 

key targets often far removed from the fighting fronts. The central 

idea―and much of the allure―stemmed from air power’s putative 

ability to bypass the enemy’s military forces and strike directly at the 

sources of national power. Obviously, this new method of waging 

war would have a profound effect upon the civilian population. 

In some cases, even heavy civilian casualties were the indirect and 

largely unintended result of attacks on installations―or collections 

of targets―located in metropolitan areas. Yet there also have been 

direct attacks on civilians to shatter their morale, to remove skilled 

labor from the work force, and to compel their leaders to capitulate. 

These have been carried out as part of a deliberate policy. In practice, 

motive and effect have been very difficult to disentangle.

THE FIRST WORLD WAR, 1914-18

 Any examination of the development of aerial warfare against 

cities must begin with the First World War. That conflict set the 
17

pattern for industrialized total war between the great powers. 

Universal conscription put millions of soldiers into mass armies. 

Civilian economies were mobilized for war production, and 

national propaganda campaigns stressed that the workers (both 

male and female) in the factories stood shoulder to shoulder with 

the combat troops. War extended to the high seas as the German 

navy launched a U-boat campaign against British supply lines, and 

the British enacted a “distant blockade” of the Central Powers that 

ultimately caused the deaths of over one million German civilians. 

The 1914-18 war also extended to the third dimension. By 1918, the 

primitive air fleets of the great powers had evolved into modern air 

organizations, capable of conducting a wide range of combat roles. 

Airpower’s unique contribution to the maturation of total war was 

the first strategic bombing campaigns against cities. 

 The first tiny step on the road to MAD occurred in August 1914, 

when a lone German plane (the “six o’clock Taube [dove]”) made a 

series of evening visits to Paris, dropping a handful of light bombs 

on the City of Light. This quixotic method of attack soon gave way 

to a more serious and sustained campaign of deliberate attacks on 

urban areas, designed to shatter enemy morale and disrupt the 

orderly functioning of modern states. 

THE ZEPPELIN RAIDS

Even prior to the First World War, the German High Command 

recognized the potential striking power and the morale impact of the 

Zeppelin airship, a remarkable and uniquely German technological 

innovation. There is no doubt that at the beginning of the war, 

the Zeppelin was the super weapon of its day, and most prewar 

“death from the skies” scenarios centered around fleets of airships 

wreaking havoc on helpless populations, sowing panic, death, and 

destruction.3 These visions were not the sole property of novelists, 

journalists or politicians. Even expert military opinion believed that 

a force of as few as 20 Zeppelins could ignite thousands of fires in 

London. Both the Imperial Army and Navy embraced the airship, 

although it was to be the German Naval Airship Division that 

pioneered sustained strategic attack against population centers. In 

1912, Grand Admiral Alfred von Tirpitz mused, “The indiscriminate 
18

dropping of bombs is . . . repulsive when they hit and kill an old 

woman . . . but if one could set fire to London in thirty places, then 

the repulsiveness would be lost in the enormity of the effect.”4

 Tirpitz’s prognostications aside, the initial use of the Zeppelin 

force over Britain was severely restricted on the order of the Kaiser, 

who had close ties with the British royal family and was sensitive 

to charges of unleashing “frightfulness.” Under pressure from his 

military advisors, he gradually eased these restrictions, so that by 

spring 1915 the Zeppelins were free to attack targets in greater 

London, although the specific aiming points were to be military 

in nature. This was fine in theory. In practice, the Zeppelins were 

incapable of precision attack and carried out virtually indiscriminate 

raids on the British capital. This was especially the case when, in the 

hope of causing major fires, Zeppelin commanders augmented their 

high explosive bombloads with incendiaries. British reaction was 

predictable. There was dramatic and widely reported initial panic, 

followed by outrage. One British tabloid featured a lurid two-page 

graphic decrying the “Massacre of the Innocents by Herod, otherwise 

Wilhelm II, King of the Huns.” British defenses soon improved, and 

losses among the vulnerable hydrogen-filled airships mounted. 

Ultimately, casualty rates in the Zeppelin division exceeded those 

of the U-boat arm; the Navy lost 53 of its 73 operational airships. 

Official German historians noted that the casualties were out of all 

proportion to any potential benefit, but also observed that the British 

were forced to retain first-line fighter squadrons, antiaircraft artillery 

units, and personnel to combat the Zeppelin menace, resources that 

were sorely needed on the Western Front.

 The Zeppelin campaign was by most measures a failure, yet 

it established some precedents that recurred throughout the 

“prehistory” of MAD. Through advanced (and highly costly) 

technical means, a nation sought to strike directly at an enemy’s 

commercial and population centers. What began as an attempt to 

strike specific military and economic objectives slowly devolved into 

a campaign aimed directly at the morale of the civilian population. 

This change was the result of a combination of technical limitations 

and operational realities. Results fell far short of expectations, 

although some ancillary benefits did accrue. All of this took place in 

the context of a modern total war, in which sea blockades attempted 
19

to do much the same thing through more indirect means, and in 

which the actual fighting fronts were stalemated, in some cases for 

years. During the year of the heaviest Zeppelin attacks, the British 

army sustained 60,000 casualties on the first day of the Battle of the 

Somme, July 1, 1916, and the German and French armies were bled 

white at Verdun. Attempts to break the stalemate through indirect 

or technological means would therefore continue. 

THE GOTHA AND GIANT RAIDS, 1917-18

 Except for a few diehards within the Naval Airship Service, most 

analysts, both British and German, recognized the limitations of the 

Zeppelin as a strategic bomber. However, when the Germans began 

attacking London―by day and by night―with large heavier than air 

bombers, the concept of attacking cities gained new life. During the 

first 2 years of the war, the rigid airship had considerable advantages 

over conventional aircraft in terms of range, payload, and endurance. 

Spurred by the pressures of war, tremendous advances in aircraft 

design changed this situation. By 1917, multi-engined, long-range 

aircraft began entering service, and the isolated nuisance raids gave 

way to sustained attacks on population centers by formations of 

heavy bombers. 

 In May 1917, a special heavy bomber unit, equipped with the latest 

Gotha bombers and directly subordinated to the High Command, 

began conducting brazen daylight attacks against British cities. On 

June 13, 1917, a formation of 20 Gothas soared over central London 

and prepared to attack the Liverpool Street station. Three bombs 

hit the target, and the remainder fell within a one-mile radius.5

One scored a direct hit on a school, killing or wounding 46 young 

children.6 During the opening raids of the campaign, the bomber 

crews were assigned targets such as individual railway stations and 

communication centers. But, as with the Zeppelin campaign, such 

a level of precision was a dream. As the raids progressed, German 

targeting instructions became less and less specific. Ultimately the 

crews “were told that they were making war on ‘the morale of the 

English people,’ sapping their will to fight by showering them with 

high explosives.”7

 As British defenses grew in effectiveness, the 

Germans switched to night attacks, further degrading accuracy. The 
20

Gothas were joined by four and six-engine “Giant” bombers, some of 

which carried over two tons of bombs.

 Actual physical damage from the series of 27 major raids was 

slight. Historian Robin Higham famously noted that while the 

German air raids destroyed some £3,000,000 worth of property, 

gnawing rats during the same period were accounting for £70,000,000 

per year in property damage.8 The raids did have a considerable effect 

on British national and political will. At the height of the raids, there 

were isolated instances of panic in the streets, and British authorities 

noted a general pattern of absenteeism and economic dislocation. A 

committee headed by General Jan Christian Smuts was charged with 

assessing the situation, and on August 17, 1917, issued the “Report 

on Air Organization.” The Smuts committee concluded, “The day 

may not be far off when aerial operations with their devastation of 

enemy lands and destruction of industrial and population centers 

on a vast scale may become the principal operations of war, to which 

the older forms of military operations may become subordinate.” 

The report contained a number of recommendations; chief among 

them was the amalgamation of the Royal Flying Corps and Royal 

Naval Air Service into a single Royal Air Force (RAF). This occurred 

on April 1, 1918. This combined force could deal with the German 

aerial threat in a concerted fashion, organizing an efficient home 

defense organization while conducting independent air operations 

against German targets. 

THE INDEPENDENT FORCE, 1918

 Even prior to the recommendations of the Smuts Committee, 

the Allies had conducted strategic bombardment operations against 

enemy targets. Efforts by the French to attack “sensitive points” 

such as blast furnaces in Germany began in 1916, and British naval 

aircraft successfully attacked Zeppelin sheds well behind the lines. 

Yet it was the creation of the “Independent Force” under General 

Hugh Trenchard in early 1918 that established the postwar model of 

a large, independent bombing force used to deter or attack an enemy. 

The Independent Force was created in part to fulfill Prime Minister 

David Lloyd George’s promise to “bomb Germany with compound 

interest.” Trenchard initially viewed the concept of “reprisal” raids 
21

against German civilian targets to be counterproductive. In any case, 

forces for this purpose were not immediately available. Nevertheless, 

Trenchard bent to his task with a will, and soon became one of the 

pioneers of “morale bombing.”

 By mid-June 1918, the Independent Force was ready for action. 

Although the force was mainly equipped with single engine light 

bombers that were unsuitable for a systematic strategic campaign, 

it was receiving increasing numbers of huge Handley-Page 0/400 

heavy bombers. These were developed under a Navy contract to 

produce a “bloody paralyser of an aeroplane.” During the last 6 

months of the war, the Force conducted scattered raids on cities 

in western Germany. Trenchard was fully aware that he lacked 

the forces to strike a truly concentrated blow, and therefore aimed 

for a morale effect. His civilian masters supported and encouraged 

this strategy. Sir William Weir, the Air Minister, told Trenchard, “I 

would like it very much if you were to start a really big fire in one 

of the German towns. The German is susceptible to bloodiness, 

and I would not mind a few casualties due to inaccuracy.”9

 Yet the 

limited numbers of aircraft available, mechanical difficulty, combat 

attrition and bad weather all conspired to limit the effectiveness of 

Trenchard’s offensive.

The Independent Force’s actual accomplishments were meager 

enough, but several factors saved it from obscurity. For one thing, 

far more ambitious plans were in the works for 1919, including 

“devastating” attacks on Berlin. For another, the British Air Staff 

was willing to manipulate the data of the postwar bombing survey 

to tell a much more optimistic story of significant physical damage 

and even greater psychological impact. The newly formed RAF 

therefore could base its postwar organization on a promise of future 

greatness, buttressed by empirical evidence. In addition, contacts 

with Trenchard’s officers had greatly impressed members of the 

fledgling U.S. Army Air Service, including General William “Billy” 

Mitchell and Colonel Edgar S. Gorrell. The latter heavily borrowed 

from British concepts in formulating an early proposal entitled 

“Strategical Bombardment.” Gorrell argued that the armies of an 

enemy nation were similar to a tempered steel drill, and that air 

power could and should bypass the “point” and strike directly at 

the vulnerable “shank”―the key industries sustaining the combat 
22

forces in the field.10 As were the ambitious plans of the Independent 

Force, the so-called “Gorrell Plan” was rendered unnecessary by the 

November 11, 1918, Armistice.

Strategic airpower and the bombing of cities had certainly not 

proved decisive in the First World War, but the conflict established 

the future importance of air arms. No army, no matter how 

conservative, contemplated future operations without air superiority, 

tactical aviation, and aerial observation. These capabilities would 

continue to evolve and played a much more vital role in World War 

II. Yet to many airmen, the potential for war-winning independent 

air operations suggested by the Zeppelin and Gotha raids and 

the mounting campaign of the Independent Force were the most 

significant lessons. Air power offered the promise of the creation 

and survival of an independent service and an alternative to the 

bloodletting in the trenches of Flanders. It was a compelling vision. 

YEARS OF FERMENT: THE INTERWAR ERA, 1919-39

 The interwar period was a golden age of airpower writing, 

thought, and debate. Airmen attempted to discern the lessons 

of the First World War, while at the same time maintaining the 

position and prestige of the nascent air arms in the face of massive 

demobilization. The civilian leadership sought to devise effective and 

affordable defense policies, while at the same time yearning to avoid 

a repetition of the 1914-18 debacle. Proposals to “ban the bomber,” 

or at least mitigate the effects of air warfare against civilian targets 

through international agreements such as the Hague Convention, 

briefly flourished. Alternatively, there were proposals (originating 

with the French, but also endorsed by Winston Churchill) to 

hand over all strategic bombers to the League of Nations or some 

other international body, which would then use them to punish 

transgressors.11 These visions of international disarmament or 

regulation foundered over issues of nationalism, verification, and 

mistrust. At the same time, broad theoretical arguments concerning 

the likely employment of air power in some future war began to 

solidify. 

 It was Italian General Giulio Douhet who penned the most 

famous and most systematic vision of a future aerial war. Douhet was 
23

an outspoken critic of the traditional military establishment, and his 

fertile and acerbic pen earned him house arrest for his intemperate 

criticisms.12 Although not a pilot and ignorant of the intricacies of 

aviation technology, he believed that aircraft were the solution to 

the dilemma of positional warfare. He was profoundly affected by 

the futility of industrialized ground warfare and had studied, albeit 

selectively, the historical lessons of the Great War. The aspects he 

found particularly striking were the German and Italian air raids on 

London and Vienna, the collapse of the “home front” in both Tsarist 

Russia and Wilhemine Germany, and the ability of modern states to 

sustain “Total War” at the front lines for years. He observed:

The outcome of the last war was only apparently brought about by 

military operations. In actual fact, it was decided by the breakdown of 

morale among the defeated peoples―a moral collapse caused by the 

long attrition of the people involved in the struggle. The air arm makes 

it possible to reach the civilian population behind the line of battle, and 

thus to attack their moral resistance directly. And there is nothing to 

prevent our thinking that some day that direct action may be on a scale 

to break the moral resistance of the people even while leaving intact their 

respective armies and navies. Was not the German Army still able to go 

on fighting at the time when it laid down its arms? Was not the German 

fleet turned over intact to the enemy when the German people felt their 

power of resistance weakening?13

Douhet reasoned that advances in aviation technology made it 

possible to contemplate launching massive attacks against enemy 

cities from the air, in the first hours of a war. His theory, laid out 

in a series of articles and books, including The Command of the Air, 

called for a preemptive strike against the enemy’s air force. Once 

“the command of the air” had been achieved, fleets of self-defending 

“battleplanes” would launch a punishing attack on the enemy’s 

capital and other population and commercial centers with a mixture 

of high explosive, incendiary, and chemical weapons. Douhet left no 

doubt as to the likely effect:

At this point I want to stress one aspect of the problem―namely, that 

the effect of such aerial offensives upon morale may well have more 

influence upon the conduct of the war than their material effects. For 

example, take the center of a large city and imagine what would happen 

among the civilian population during a single attack by a single bombing 
24

unit . . . Here is what would be likely to happen to the center of the city 

within a radius of about 250 meters: Within a few minutes some 20 tons 

of high explosive, incendiary, and gas bombs would rain down. First 

would come explosions, then fires, the deadly gases floating on the 

surface and preventing any approach to the stricken area. As the hours 

passed and night advanced, the fires would spread while the poison 

gas paralyzed all life. By the following day the life of the city would be 

suspended; and if it happened to be a junction on some important artery 

of communication traffic would be suspended.

What could happen to a single city in a single day could also happen to 

ten, twenty, fifty cities . . . 14

Paradoxically, Douhet believed that such a war, however horrible 

for the crazed and demoralized civilian population, would actually 

be more humane than the last war. Douhet’s wars of the future were 

over in days or weeks, while the First World War had dragged on 

for 4 years. 

 Douhet’s later critics pointed out that the Second World War 

proved him wrong on virtually every count. His absolute belief in 

the invulnerable “battleplane,” the ineffectiveness of air defenses 

and auxiliary aviation, and the physical and moral effects of air 

attack, all proved misplaced. His bombers unerringly found their 

targets, regardless of weather conditions, and destroyed them with 

geometric precision. Yet his forceful advocacy of independent air 

power and its potential role in future war resonated with airmen 

worldwide. “Douhetian” became synonymous with “terror” or 

“morale” bombing, and first generation nuclear theorist Bernard 

Brodie cited Douhet as the intellectual forebear of strategic thinking 

in the atomic age.15

 While there is some debate as to Douhet’s precise impact on 

individual air forces in the interwar period, there is no doubt 

regarding Air Marshal Sir Hugh Trenchard’s role in the formation 

and evolution of the Royal Air Force. Unlike Douhet, who in the 

years after World War I was a semi-retired pundit, Trenchard served 

10 years as Chief of Air Staff. He was thus in a position to leave 

his mark on the thinking, doctrine, and force structure of the RAF. 

Trenchard emphasized the “moral” (psychological) effect of air attack 

over the potential for actual physical destruction. This emphasis 

was a consequence of both the limited destruction actually inflicted 
25

by air attack in World War I and a belief in its ability to terrorize 

the industrial work force. “At present the moral effect of bombing 

stands undoubtedly to the material effect in a proportion of 20 to 1,” 

was Trenchard’s oft-cited formula. This earned him the title “master 

of the unfounded statistic” from one historian.16 Trenchard firmly 

believed that attacks on the “vital centers” of enemy war industry 

would cause a wholly disproportionate psychological impact upon 

the working population, greatly undermining the military power 

of a nation. While it is clear that Trenchard had objectives in large 

urban areas in mind when he spoke of these “vital centers,” his 

actual targeting prescriptions, in the words of one historian, were 

“frustratingly vague.”17 What is evident is that Trenchard’s goal was 

to undermine the morale of the work force. The means to achieve 

that goal was the destruction of the physical means of production. 

 Trenchard spelled out the relationship between attacks on 

civilians and the overall objectives of a future war. He argued in 

1928, with a touch of class elitism: 

We shall attack the vital centers of transportation and seriously impede 

those arms and munitions reaching the battlefield and, therefore, more 

successfully assist the Army in its direct attack upon the enemy’s Army. 

We shall attack the communications without which the national effort 

cannot be co-ordinated or directed.

These are the points at which the enemy is weakest. The rifleman or the 

sailor is protected, armed, and disciplined, and will stand under fire. The 

great centers of manufacture, transport, and communications cannot be 

wholly protected. The personnel again who man them are not armed and 

cannot shoot back. They are not disciplined, and it cannot be expected of 

them, that they will stick stolidly to their lathes and benches under the 

recurring threat of air bombardment.18

Trenchard thereby offered a rationale for affecting the morale of an 

enemy population through attacks on key industrial centers. When 

the RAF began its second air war against Germany, these ideas faced 

the test of battle.

 The final great strategic airpower theorist of the interwar period 

was Brigadier General William H. “Billy” Mitchell. Mitchell was 

a diligent student of the evolution of aerial combat in World War 

I, and was heavily influenced not only by the theories of Douhet 
26

and Trenchard, but also by the combat experiences of the French, 

British, and German air services. His immediate postwar writings 

focused on the many ways aviation could contribute to success 

in battle. Accordingly, he emphasized a wide range of airpower 

missions, including tactical bombing, air superiority, interdiction, 

and observation.

 Mitchell’s thinking in mid-and late 1920s was inextricably 

bound up in his battle for the independence of the U.S. air arm. 

Consequently, his emphasis on airpower’s potential to strike a 

decisive war-winning blow loomed ever larger in his writings. 

Mitchell clearly recognized the increased importance of cities to the 

functioning of a modern state. He believed, as did Trenchard, that 

they contained “vital centers” susceptible to destruction from the 

air. In one of his later works he painted a terrifying, and undeniably 

Douhetian, picture for a general audience:

What will future war hold for us? Undoubtedly an attack on the great 

centers of population. New York, Chicago, Detroit, Pittsburgh, and 

Washington will be the first targets. It is unnecessary that these cities be 

destroyed in the sense that every house is leveled to the ground. It will 

be sufficient to have the civilian population driven out of them so they 

cannot carry on their usual vocations. A few gas bombs will do that.19

 With the exception of Trenchard, who personally shaped the 

RAF for a decade, the impact of these theorists on the future of 

aerial warfare was indirect. Collectively, these visions of future war 

contributed to a belief within many of the world’s air arms in the 

offensive potential of the bomber, and its ability to strike at the “soft 

underbelly” of an enemy nation. Such visions fit in nicely with most 

air forces’ conceptions of themselves as being on the cutting edge 

of technology. These theories also found a measure of acceptance 

among civilian policymakers of the day, even as many recoiled from 

the implications. The air weapon seemed to offer an alternative to 

maintaining a massive and costly land force, a concept appealing to 

financially strapped governments of the Depression era. 

 In the military balance in Europe during the 1930s we also 

see a clear foreshadowing of a “deterrence regime.” Dealing with 

minuscule interwar budgets and an uncertain national security 

environment, the RAF sought to create a bomber force that might 
27

function, in concert with the Royal Navy, as a powerful deterrent to 

any potential adversary. This was a clear legacy of Trenchard’s belief 

in the primacy of “attack as the best defense.”20 As many historians 

have noted, the interwar RAF favored building impressive numbers 

of aircraft, while the necessary technological supporting capabilities 

(target finding, long-range navigation, bad weather instrument 

flying, etc.) went begging. Trenchard’s offensive orientation also 

caused a general neglect of homeland air defense. It was only the 

intervention of the Cabinet, aided by some farsighted officers within 

the Air Staff, who insisted on the creation of a workable air defense 

system. Their insistance was just in time for the Battle of Britain in 

1940.

 The German Luftwaffe also pursued a deterrent strategy, 

based upon an air force’s putative capability to devastate enemy 

population centers in the first days of a war. Shortly after the Nazi 

seizure of power in January 1933, officers in the still-camouflaged 

Luftwaffe recommended the creation of a “Risk Air Force,” a 

powerful deterrent fleet of strategic bombers. This force was 

intended to forestall attack on Germany while more extensive and 

broadly based armament proceeded apace. While the German 

aircraft industry proved unequal to the task of constructing the 

necessary strategic bombers in the mid-1930s, the medium-range, 

operationally oriented Luftwaffe functioned as a deterrent “shield” 

to Adolf Hitler’s aggressive foreign policy in the late 1930s.21

Although official German air force doctrine maintained that terror 

attacks on enemy civilians were to be undertaken only as a last 

resort, or as reprisal for similar attacks on Germany, Nazi leaders 

were keenly aware of the fear inspired by the Luftwaffe’s putative 

ability to strike European population centers. Studies of AngloFrench appeasement note that inflated perceptions of German air 

strength played a considerable role in Allied decisionmaking during 

the Sudeten crisis of 1938, when the Western allies shrank from the 

prospect of war over Czechoslovakia.22

 Although interwar air power theorists and practitioners did 

not have the experience of a full-scale war between the great 

industrialized air powers to validate their theorizing, there was 

plenty of air action, some of which seemed to confirm the beliefs 

of strategic airpower advocates. This included the bombing of 
28

population centers in China and Spain, and the use of poison gas 

by Mussolini’s Regia Aeronautica in Ethiopia. The effect of these 

experiences is difficult to assess. On one hand, horrific events, such 

as the Japanese terror bombing of Chinese cities or the promiscuous 

bombing of the Basque town of Guernica by the Condor Legion in 

1937, sharpened public fears of the coming aerial apocalypse. The 

views of professional airmen, however, were less certain. Many 

pointed out that Spain, Ethiopia, and China lacked “modern” cities 

and fully developed air arms. This made it difficult for the RAF, 

Luftwaffe, or U.S. Army Air Corps to extract meaningful conclusions 

about the next general war from these “little wars” of the 1930s. 

 The U.S. Army Air Corps Tactical School at Maxwell Field, 

Alabama, took the general principles and assumptions of the early 

theorists and, through an analysis of the U.S. economy, developed 

a targeting philosophy that identified “key nodes” or “choke 

points” within modern industrial nations, known as the “Industrial 

Web.” The idea was to develop the means (High Altitude Daylight 

Precision Bombing) to attack and neutralize these nodes, thereby 

causing cascading effects throughout the society. Attacks on civilian 

populations for their own sake were to be avoided, although ACTS 

left the door open to attacks on the “will” of an enemy populace as a 

last resort.23

 Although justifiably pilloried for their “mechanistic” thinking 

and rejection of Clausewitzian friction,24 the ACTS thinkers did 

manage to formalize the nascent “science” of attacking cities from 

the air. Instead of a vague belief that cities served as vital centers of 

industrial, political, and moral power, ACTS faculty and students 

identified specific key industries to be targeted by air attack. The 

ACTS planners had a unique opportunity to directly translate this 

theory into practice in the summer of 1941. Asked to develop a 

“requirements plan” for the looming war against Germany, four 

ACTS faculty members devised an ambitious air strategy embodied 

in Air War Plans Division (AWPD)-1, that identified the 154 key 

industrial targets making up Germany’s industrial web. Although 

the bulk of the plan addressed the likely effects of destroying these 

precision targets, there was at least an echo of Douhetian attitude 

embedded within it: 
29

Morale. Timeliness of attack is most important in the conduct of air 

operations directly against civilian morale. If the morale of the people is 

already low because of sustained suffering and because the people are 

losing faith in the ability of the armed force to win a favorable decision, 

then heavy and sustained bombing of cities may crush that morale 

entirely. However, if these conditions do not exist, then area bombing of 

cities may actually stiffen the resistance of the population, especially if 

the attacks are weak and sporadic. Hence, no specific number of targets 

is set up for this task. Rather, it is believed that the entire bombing effort 

might be applied towards this purpose when it becomes apparent that 

the proper psychological conditions exist.25

 ACTS bombardment doctrine, then, emphasized systematic 

precision attacks against carefully selected industrial targets. The 

USAAF, by and large, adhered to this belief in precisely targeting 

the “industrial web” of an enemy nation during its campaign against 

Germany. Yet the theory left the door open for contemplating 

attacking cities to strike a “knock-out blow” against enemy morale. 

Both of these aspects would be evident in operations against 

Germany, and especially in the Pacific, in 1944-45. It is also worth 

noting that ACTS “industrial web” targeting principles drove the 

first generation of nuclear strike plans against the Union of Soviet 

Socialist Republics (USSR) in the post-World War II period.

THE TEST OF COMBAT: THE SECOND WORLD WAR, 1939-45

THE EARLY CAMPAIGNS

 To the surprise of many military and political leaders, World 

War II did not begin with a series of devastating aerial attacks 

upon the capitals of Europe. Nevertheless, the early campaigns of 

the war quickly established that attacks on cities with attendant 

civilian casualties would be a part of it. Often air attacks were part 

of a combined-arms operation, and were accordingly dismissed 

by strategic bombing purists as mere “tactical bombing.” Yet the 

opening rounds of the conflict accelerated the blurring of the line 

between combatants and civilians.

 The German blitzkrieg into Poland on September 1, 1939, saw 

the Luftwaffe operate in near textbook fashion. Its bomber and 
30

fighter units struck at the Polish air force, removing it as a factor 

in the campaign in a few short days. The Luftwaffe then turned its 

attention to supporting the mechanized spearheads of the German 

army with close air support and interdiction strikes. Yet as Warsaw 

continued to resist, the Luftwaffe’s commanders showed themselves 

quite capable of advocating direct attacks upon population centers. 

General Wolfram von Richthofen, commanding one of the air corps 

in that campaign, called for “exploitation of last opportunity for 

large scale experiment as devastation and terror raid . . . every effort 

will be made to completely eradicate Warsaw, especially since it will 

only be a customs office at the border in the future . . . ”26 Heavy 

Luftwaffe raids on Warsaw, as well as artillery shelling and the 

advance of the German army, all helped precipitate the surrender 

of the Polish capital. In similar fashion, a heavy raid on Rotterdam, 

although part of “an attack on a defended part of the city within the 

front line area,”27 killed 900 civilians, speeding the collapse of the 

Netherlands the following May. 

 In the air assault against Great Britain, the Luftwaffe was 

compelled to wage independent air warfare. For the first months 

of the Battle of Britain, the German air fleets concentrated on 

attacking coastal convoys, radar stations, and airfields supporting 

RAF Fighter Command. London and other population centers 

remained a prohibited zone. The battle against the RAF failed to 

produce decisive results, and, with good weather necessary for any 

invasion attempt receding, some Luftwaffe commanders argued for 

a massive attack against greater London as a means of drawing the 

remnants of the RAF up to fight. Small groups of German bombers, 

lost and low on fuel, had already inadvertently bombed central 

London, and the RAF had launched several raids against Berlin in 

response. Hitler lifted the prohibition against attacking London, 

and on September 7, 1940, the full weight of the Luftwaffe’s bomber 

force pounded London’s East End. The German success proved 

transitory. The shift to London removed the pressure on the RAF’s 

airfields and the Germans now operated at a tactical disadvantage. 

By late September, the German assault slackened, and the Luftwaffe 

high command chose to execute a vague strategy of “continued 

military and economic pressure against Britain.” While the German 

U-boat force increased raids on commerce, the Luftwaffe conducted 
31

a series of night area raids against London and the industrial cities 

of south and central Britain, most notably Coventry, in November 

1940. Although these raids were aimed at destroying military and 

economic targets writ large, the campaign, known to the British as 

the “Blitz,” seemed aimed directly at civilian morale. 

 While the Battle of Britain and the “Blitz” of 1940-41 may 

justifiably be seen as a slow evolution from an air superiority strategy 

through “economic warfare” to a campaign of largely indiscriminate 

night bombing, the later German raids on Great Britain were clearly 

reprisal raids aimed directly at civilian morale. The 1942 “Baedeker 

Raids,” named after the famous tourist guides, targeted British 

cultural centers in response to British attacks on quaint Hanseatic 

seaside towns in March and April of that year. Renewed and very 

costly attacks on London in 1943 and 1944 were a direct reply to the 

escalating RAF Bomber Command area attacks, in line with Hitler’s 

policy that “Terror can only be smashed with counterterror.”28 And 

the V-weapons attacks of 1944 and 1945 were undoubtedly intended 

as pure reprisal or terror campaigns.

 In the campaigns in the Balkans and the Soviet Union, the 

Luftwaffe was stretched thin supporting the German army, and 

attacks on major urban areas were few. A notable exception was 

the bombing of Belgrade in April 1941, aptly named “Operation 

PUNISHMENT,” which killed 17,000 civilians. During the campaign 

against the USSR, the Luftwaffe diverted scarce resources from army 

support tasks to striking targets in greater Moscow. Although very 

few of the Luftwaffe’s grandiose plans for strategic bombing of 

Soviet industry and population centers ever came to pass, proposals 

for “terror attacks”’ against Soviet cities were frequently made by 

Luftwaffe commanders. The air force leadership also acquiesced to 

a 1941 proposal to “level Moscow and Leningrad and make them 

uninhabitable, so as to relieve us of the necessity of having to feed 

the population through the winter.”29

 The relative German lack of success in city destruction should not 

obscure a more fundamental point. As a recent German commentator 

on the Allied bombing of German cities concluded: 

Scarcely anyone can now doubt that Air Marshal Göring would have 

wiped out London if his technical resources had allowed him to do 

so. Speer describes Hitler at a dinner in the Reich Chancellery in 1940 
32

imagining the total destruction of the capital of the British Empire: 

“Have you ever seen a map of London? It is so densely built that one 

fire alone would be enough to destroy the whole city, just as it did over 

two hundred years ago. Göring will start fires all over London, fires 

everywhere, with countless incendiary bombs of an entirely new type. 

Thousands of fires. They will unite in one huge blaze over the whole area. 

Göring has the right idea: high explosives don’t work, but we can do it 

with incendiaries; we can destroy London completely. What will their 

firemen be able to do once it’s really burning?” This intoxicating vision of 

destruction coincides with the fact that the real pioneering achievements 

in bomb warfare―Guernica, Warsaw, Belgrade, Rotterdam―were the 

work of the Germans.30

Lack of means, not lack of political will, was the limiting factor in 

the Luftwaffe’s offensives in the early part of the war. The Allied 

bomber fleets of 1943-45 would not be so constrained.

THE STRATEGIC AIR OFFENSIVE AGAINST GERMANY

 The most sustained “laboratory” for studying the practice 

and effects of air warfare against cities took place during the air 

war in Europe, 1939-45.31 Many historians maintain that only two 

“campaigns” lasted the entire duration of the war: the Battle of the 

Atlantic and the strategic air offensive. Both were indispensable 

contributors to Allied victory. The bombing war encompassed much 

more than attacks on cities―yet it was these attacks on the civilian 

populations of Germany (and later Japan) that have raised the 

strongest emotions and passions. The deaths of nearly one million 

enemy civilians, the wounding or displacement of millions more, 

and the devastation of cultural centers such as Nuremberg, Cologne, 

Dresden, and Tokyo have led many critics to question the bombing 

campaign’s morality, while others debate its military effectiveness. 

This section of the chapter addresses the course, conduct, and impact 

of the war on the cities. 

“THE BRITISH BY NIGHT . . . ”

 Often caricatured as a case of simple “terror bombing,” in contrast 

to the more humane (and more effective) USAAF precision bombing 

effort, the Night Area Offensive of RAF Bomber Command stands 
33

as one of the clear pre-nuclear antecedents of the concept of MAD. 

Recent analyses of the campaign reveal a far more complex story of 

political pressures, technical limitations, and increasing effectiveness 

and flexibility, as well as the more traditional explanations focusing 

on the desire to shatter the morale of German workers through a 

systematic “de-housing” campaign.32 Many accounts focus on the 

personality and motivations of Bomber Command’s controversial 

commander, Air Chief Marshal Sir Arthur “Bomber” Harris, 

although the essential elements of the “morale-busting” campaign 

predated his tenure. 

 As noted earlier, Bomber Command was built up during the 1930s 

as a deterrent force. It possessed a considerable number of aircraft, 

but soon proved ill-equipped to carry out a sustained air offensive 

against Germany. Although the Air Staff had produced a detailed 

series of contingency bombing plans aimed at attacking German 

industry, known as the “Western Air Plans,” the Command’s ability 

to carry them out proved meager. Bomber Command at the time was 

equipped with mediocre twin-engine medium bombers, described 

by one airman as “not the sort of vehicle in which to go pursue 

the King’s enemies.”33 Unescorted daylight bombing resulted in 

prohibitive losses during the first months of the war, and the force 

was compelled to begin operating at night. Its forays into Germany 

proved woefully incapable of deterring or delaying the German 

blitzkrieg in Scandinavia and the West, and the commitment of 

bomber squadrons to desperate daylight attacks on the Meuse River 

crossings in May 1940 led to crippling losses. 

 The German conquest of France in June 1940, left Britain alone 

and virtually incapable of conducting offensive warfare against the 

Third Reich. Britain’s leadership had little choice but to look to the 

air weapon as the means of carrying on the war. Domestic political, 

diplomatic and military arguments all supported launching a 

powerful strategic air offensive. As early as July 1940, Winston 

Churchill wrote to Britain’s Minster of Aircraft Production: 

We have no Continental Army which can defeat German military power. 

The blockade is broken, and Hitler has Asia and probably Africa to draw 

from . . . But there is one thing that will bring him back and bring him 

down, and that is an absolutely devastating, exterminating attack by 
34

very heavy bombers from this country upon the Nazi homeland. We 

must be able to overwhelm him by this means; without it I do not see a 

way through.34

 Throughout late 1940 and 1941, Bomber Command gamely 

attempted to carry the war to the German heartland, attacking key 

industrial and military targets. But attacking at night also greatly 

limited bombing accuracy, and the failure of the Command to invest 

in target finding capabilities prior to the war was now making itself 

felt. Things came to a head with the release of the Butt Report in 

August 1941. This report was a statistical analysis of raids into 

Germany during June and July of that year. Of the crews who had 

claimed to have actually hit their targets, it concluded that only one 

in three got within five miles of the aiming point. In attacks against 

the vital Ruhr industrial region, the ratio was closer to one in ten.35

 Reaction within the government, the Air Staff, and Bomber 

Command itself was mixed. Some chose to disregard the gloomy 

tidings, while Churchill began to temper his earlier enthusiastic 

advocacy of aerial bombardment. Also evident was a gradual shift 

within the RAF leadership away from precision raids on specific 

objectives and towards more general “area” attacks on cities. In the 

process, there was a discernible return to Trenchardian formulas 

about the “morale” effect of bombing the civilian workforce. An Air 

Staff memorandum of September 1941 bluntly maintained, 

The ultimate aim of the attack on a town area is to break the morale of the 

population which occupies it. To ensure this we must achieve two things; 

first, we must make the town physically uninhabitable and, secondly, 

we must make the people conscious of constant personal danger. The 

immediate aim, is therefore, twofold, namely, to produce (i) destruction, 

and (ii) the fear of death.36

 Other official memoranda, as well as analysis conducted by 

Churchill’s scientific advisor, reflected and fueled this shift from 

an industrial targeting campaign to an area “de-housing” strategy. 

There is little doubt that the Command was at low ebb in early 1942, 

although quantitative and qualitative improvements in its training 

and equipment were beginning to make themselves felt. In late 

February, the hard-driving Harris took over RAF Bomber Command. 
35

Harris may not have devised the area offensive, but there is no doubt 

that he worked to make it a reality with singleminded persistence. 

He set about improving the status of his command by launching 

heavy attacks on several German targets―including Lübeck and 

Rostock―while building up his forces for the “Thousand Plan,” an 

attempt to put 1,000 heavy bombers over a target in a single night. 

He accomplished this over Cologne in May 1942 by stripping the 

training establishments of every operational aircraft. The prestige 

of his command rebuilt, Harris patiently modernized and built up 

his forces with large numbers of the new Halifax and Lancaster 

bombers (the latter capable of carrying some 10 tons of bombs). In 

March 1943, Harris launched the 4-month Battle of the Ruhr against 

Germany’s industrial heartland. His philosophy was consistent 

with that of the Air Staff and the civilian leadership. The Ruhr cities 

housed many industries vital to the Third Reich’s war effort. The 

attacks were aimed not at the specific factories, however, but at the 

city centers and workers’ housing.

 Harris’s policy peaked in effectiveness with a 3-day series of 

attacks in Hamburg in July 1943. Operation GOMORRAH was 

unusually successful due to a combination of factors. The British 

neutralized the usually efficient German defenses by swamping 

their radar with tinfoil strips, largely blinding German night fighter 

and antiaircraft batteries. A severe drought in the summer of 1943 

lowered water levels and rendered the old city tinderbox-dry. The 

city was easy to locate and Harris’s bombers achieved unprecedented 

concentration over the target. The attacks culminated on July 27, 

1943, when the already heavily damaged city endured the first 

“firestorm” in human history, with winds of over 150 miles per hour 

and temperatures of 1000 degrees Centigrade. Hamburg’s police 

chief offered this description of the effect:

In a built-up area the suction could not follow its shortest course, but the 

overhead air stormed through the streets with immense force taking with 

it not only sparks but burning timber and roof beams, so spreading the 

fire further and further, developing in a short time a fire typhoon such as 

was never before witnessed, against which every human resistance was 

quite useless.37
36

 Some 40-50,000 civilians perished, although accurately estimating 

the total proved difficult. Rescue personnel found concrete air raid 

shelters filled only with fine grey ash. A stunned Luftwaffe bomber 

commander, noting the effectiveness of the RAF’s incendiaries, 

noted, “For half a year we bombed London, and still London is 

not in ruins. For 3 days they bombed Hamburg―and Hamburg is 

kaputt!”38 German political leaders were equally grim. Armaments 

Minister Albert Speer later asserted, “Hamburg put the fear of God 

into me,” and maintained that six additional raids on that scale 

would “bring Germany’s armaments production to a total halt.”39

Other Nazi leaders referred to the event simply as “die Katastrophe.” 

 Fresh from his triumph in the Hamburg raids, Harris now turned 

his force against the Reich capital. He predicted, “We can wreck 

Berlin from end to end if the USAAF will come in on it. It will cost us 

between 400-500 aircraft. It will cost Germany the war.” Throughout 

the winter of 1943-44, Bomber Command attempted to make 

Harris’ss prediction a reality. Yet the so-called “Battle of Berlin” 

proved a defeat for Harris and RAF Bomber Command. Berlin, 

although undoubtedly a vital target, proved difficult to damage 

sufficiently, and the rejuvenated German night defenses exacted a 

fearsome toll on Harris’s squadrons. 

 Throughout it all, Harris’s faith in the area offensive never 

wavered. Even as his command acquired the technical ability to 

hit precision targets, Harris refused to budge from his conviction 

that area attacks were the most effective means of breaking German 

powers of resistance. In October 1943, Harris, in a message to his 

superior, stated his position with absolute clarity:

The aim of the Combined Bomber Offensive . . . should be unambiguously 

and publicly stated. That aim is the destruction of German cities, the 

killing of German workers and the disruption of civilised community life 

throughout Germany. 

It should be emphasized that the destruction of houses, public utilities, 

transport and lives, the creation of a refugee problem on an unprecedented 

scale, and the breakdown of morale both at home and at the battle fronts 

by fear of extended and intensified bombing , are accepted and intended 

aims of our bombing policy. They are not by-products of attempts to hit 

factories.40
37

 He even argued, somewhat disingenuously, that his bombers 

were incapable of hitting small targets, which he in any case derided 

as “panaceas.” Harris came perilously close to insubordination in 

his fixation on the area offensive, although it must be noted that 

his command did ably execute the 1944-45 campaigns against 

transportation and oil targets which supported the OVERLORD 

invasion and the Allied drive across western Europe. Yet, whenever 

possible, Harris continued to conduct area attacks against German 

cities, and would do so until the very last months of the war. 

 By that time Harris’s Bomber Command had evolved into a very 

effective instrument of war. Anxious both to assist the Red Army 

in its advance against the tottering German army on the eastern 

front and to speed the German collapse, Churchill pressed the Air 

Staff to strike major urban targets in eastern Germany, including 

Berlin, Leipzig, and Dresden.41 On the night of February 11-12, 1945, 

Dresden suffered one of the worst air attacks in history. Though often 

described as an “open” or “undefended” city, Dresden was neither. 

Its status, however, as an industrial target was minimal. The human 

cost of the raid was ghastly, and the fact that the city was filled with 

refugees fleeing the Red Army added to the horror. Particularly in 

hindsight, the raid seemed a case of promiscuous overkill, coming so 

close to the eventual German surrender less than three months later. 

It should remembered, however, that the supposedly “finished” 

Germans had recently shocked the Allies by launching the Ardennes 

offensive, and that RAF Bomber Command lost hundreds of aircraft 

in action after the Dresden raid. Nevertheless, Dresden was a turning 

point in popular perceptions about the bombing offensive.

 With considerable understatement, one of the RAF Official 

Historians noted, “At the end of the war public opinion turned 

away from bombing which, especially in Britain, it had once so 

strongly supported.”42 Churchill was already distancing himself 

from the attack on Dresden within days of the raid. Harris’s aircrews 

were denied a special campaign medal, although by most objective 

assessments, they certainly deserved one. Harris himself was 

conspicuously snubbed in the postwar Honours List. The postwar 

government preferred to view the area offensive as the product of 

an overzealous commander afflicted with tunnel vision, instead 

of a carefully considered, albeit harsh, wartime policy which had 

enjoyed broad support in government and public circles.
38

 Assessing the effectiveness of the campaign remains a very 

complex task. Critics of the bombing campaign fall into two broad 

categories: those who believed it inefficient and ineffective, and those 

who saw it as immoral. It is certainly true that German morale did 

not “collapse” under the assault. The German civilian population 

suffered tremendous hardships, but “stuck stolidly to their lathes 

and benches.” The German war economy proved robust enough 

to absorb even the catastrophic damage to cities such as Hamburg, 

while Berlin, although battered, continued to function as a center of 

industry and government. The investment in the bomber offensive 

was staggering. Estimates range as high as one-third of the entire 

British war effort went, directly or indirectly, to Bomber Command. 

The campaign cost the lives of some 50,000 Bomber Command aircrew. 

Some wartime critics, mostly clerics and intellectuals, criticized the 

offensive as brutal and lawless. One military commentator called it 

“the most barbaric, and unskilled, way of winning a war that the 

modern world has seen.”43 Max Hastings, one of the most eloquent 

critics of the bomber offensive, summed it up thusly: “The cost of 

the bomber offensive in life, treasure and moral superiority over the 

enemy tragically outstripped the results that it achieved.”44

 Recent analysis has focused on the tremendous indirect benefits 

of the bomber offensive to the Allied war effort. Dispersal of German 

industry sacrificed economies of scale, and millions of able-bodied 

Germans were engaged in air defense or rebuilding projects. By 

1943-44, the combined bomber offensive seriously distorted German 

strategic planning, industrial production, and military force structure 

and deployments. For example, the need to defend German cities 

displaced desires to renew the offensive in the USSR or carry the 

fight to the enemy on the high seas.45 The city-busting campaign 

sparked an almost irrational desire on the part of the Nazi leadership 

for revenge. The Luftwaffe squandered much of its bomber force in 

reprisal attacks against London, while German industrial production, 

scientific and technological resources were wastefully diverted to 

the V-weapons. The Germans manufactured an estimated 24,000 

fighter aircraft. One historian concluded, “Thus, just in terms of Vweapons alone, ‘area’ bombing achieved an enormous dislocation of 

the German war effort of real consequence to the war’s outcome.”46

 The RAF’s bomber forces were built up in the 1930s in hopes 
39

of deterring a future adversary. This they failed to do, and their 

subsequent attempt to win the ensuing war through air attacks on 

cities remains bedeviled by controversy. 

“ . . . AND THE AMERICANS BY DAY”

The U.S. Army Air Forces entered the European war with a 

strong belief in the efficacy of the strategic bombing concepts crafted 

at Maxwell Field and “operationalized” as AWPD-1, the so-called 

“Air Plan that Defeated Hitler.” As discussed earlier, this plan called 

for a force of four-engined bombers sufficient to destroy 154 key 

targets in the German war economy. The targets would not be the 

large urban areas, but specific factory complexes. The American air 

planners believed that, once the 8th Air Force was built up in Great 

Britain, it would exert a significant and perhaps decisive impact 

on the German ability to wage war.47 Yet the necessity of diverting 

resources to the Mediterranean in the fall of 1942 slowed the buildup, 

and it was not until the January 1943 Casablanca conference that 

the guiding principles for undertaking a truly “combined” bomber 

offensive were formulated. The USAAF successfully resisted British 

pressure to join in the night area offensives, and the two Allies 

agreed to pursue a loosely coordinated policy of “bombing around 

the clock.”

 By early 1943, General Ira Eaker’s 8th Air Force was able to begin 

deep daylight penetration against German targets. These targets 

were aircraft assembly plants, ball-bearing manufacturing centers, 

rail yards, and ports. All were consistent with the industrial web 

targeting philosophy developed at ACTS. Unescorted daylight 

bombing of these targets proved too costly to continue. Although 

German fighter and ball-bearing production was disrupted, the 

results did not justify the heavy losses incurred. In the wake of the 

“Fall Crisis” culminating in the disastrous October 14, 1943, raid on 

the ball-bearing factories at Schweinfurt, daylight penetrations into 

Germany were suspended until long range fighter escort became 

available.

 With the arrival of P-51 Mustang long-range fighters in early 

1944, the American daylight bombing effort entered its most 

important phase. Again, the targets were key industrial complexes. 
40

In some cases, such as the March 4, 1944, daylight raid on Berlin, the 

objective was to force the Luftwaffe fighters into the air so they could 

be engaged and destroyed by the aggressive USAAF fighter escort. 

The practice of using the bombers as “bait” for German fighters was 

controversial, but undeniably effective. The German day fighter 

arm was shattered in the spring of 1944, greatly assisting both the 

continuation of the combined bomber offensive and the success of 

the Normandy invasion in June 1944.48

 The USAAF continued its precision campaign against the 

synthetic oil industry and transportation targets. The transportation 

offensive primarily targeted the important German marshalling 

yards. Some commentators have argued that the attacks on 

marshalling yards were little more than thinly-disguised area 

attacks.49 Indeed, the “precise” nature of the USAAF effort in the fall 

of 1944 became a casualty of technical problems, European weather, 

and lack of current intelligence on the state of the German war 

economy. In short, USAAF “precision” attacks began to resemble 

RAF “area” attacks. And in the final months of the war, the Allied air 

leadership contemplated a series of raids on cities and transportation 

targets, known as THUNDERCLAP and CLARION respectively, 

that harkened back to the belief expressed in AWPD-1―that an 

overwhelming blow, at the right time, could shock an enemy nation 

into collapse.50 THUNDERCLAP was never executed in toto, but 

the USAAF did participate in the Dresden raids and also launched 

a mass raid on Berlin on March 3, 1945.51 Yet on balance, the USAAF 

attempted to adhere to its prewar philosophy of precision targeting, 

even if the massive urban destruction inflicted by many of these raids 

seemed to belie that intent. Eaker, in voicing his reservations about 

the CLARION proposal, stated, “We should never allow the history 

of this war to convict us of throwing the strategic bomber at the man 

in the street.”52 Historian Conrad Crane concludes, “Although theory 

did exceed technology, American airmen in Europe did the best with 

what they had.”53 Yet another historian’s verdict is somewhat less 

generous: the USAAF leaders “judged themselves by their motives 

rather than their results.”54
41

THE USAAF IN THE PACIFIC

 Along with the RAF night area offensive, the USAAF’s incendiary 

campaign against the Japanese home islands in 1944-45 stands as the 

last “milestone” in the prehistory of MAD. This series of devastating 

raids on Japanese industrial and population centers was perhaps 

the ultimate in non-nuclear urban air attack. By most accounts, the 

March 1945 fire raid on Tokyo was more destructive and lethal than 

either the Hiroshima or Nagasaki atomic strikes. USAAF strategic 

bomber forces in the Pacific operated under the direct control of 

General Henry H. “Hap” Arnold instead of the theater commanders, 

foreshadowing the later organization of Strategic Air Command. 

And the campaign ended with the first use of atomic weapons 

against enemy targets. 

 By late 1944, the war in the Pacific had progressed to the point 

where the Japanese home islands could come under direct air attack. 

A bloody amphibious invasion of the Marianas secured bomber 

bases on the islands of Saipan, Tinian, and Guam. Large numbers 

of the still untested and temperamental B-29 “Superfortress” were 

available to conduct the assault. By this late point in the war, a U.S. 

Navy submarine blockade of Japan had virtually strangled the 

industries of the home islands, yet, as the Allied forces approached, 

Japanese resistance grew ever more determined and fanatical. Amid 

concerns about mounting war weariness at home, American planners 

prepared to execute the final phases of the strategy for defeating 

Japan; blockade, strategic air assault, and amphibious invasion.55

 The bombing of Japanese cities had been widely discussed by 

U.S. civilian and military policymakers even prior to Pearl Harbor. 

George C. Marshall noted in November 1941 that “if war with the 

Japanese does come, we’ll fight mercilessly. Flying Fortresses will be 

dispatched immediately to set the paper cities of Japan on fire. There 

won’t be any hesitation about bombing civilians―it will be all-out.”56

President Franklin Roosevelt was equally determined to bomb the 

Japanese home islands and even risked two of the U.S. Navy’s 

precious aircraft carriers to launch the Doolittle Raid on Tokyo in 

April 1942.

 Despite such high-level interest in carrying the war directly to 

the civilian population, it was not until 1944 that an actual strategic 
42

campaign was underway. The early B-29 raids on Japan, from bases 

in China and, later, the Marianas, were conventional precision raids 

on industrial targets, primarily the aircraft industry. Yet for a variety 

of reasons, these attacks did not have the desired effect. The B-29 and 

its untested equipment and engines suffered from a host of teething 

troubles, and the jet stream above Japan played havoc with high 

altitude precision bombing. 

 The notoriously impatient Arnold fired several commanders, 

including General Haywood Hansell, one of the pioneers of 

daylight precision bombardment. After many failed attempts to 

improve precision bombing, Arnold ultimately turned to General 

Curtis E. LeMay. LeMay had proven to be a skilled leader and a 

tactical innovator during his time in the European theater and was 

not above jettisoning approved tactics and techniques in order to 

fulfill his boss’s desires. Arnold and the senior AAF leadership 

had already concluded that area attacks would be more effective 

in destroying dispersed Japanese industry and killing Japanese 

workers.57 LeMay decided to attack at low level at night, with a 

largely incendiary bombload. He eventually removed most of the 

guns from the B-29s so that they could carry more bombs. Adopting 

these tactics improved accuracy and reduced the strain on the B-29s 

fragile engines. Flying at night rendered Japanese air defenses less 

effective. 

 LeMay’s policy proved terribly effective during Operation 

MEETINGHOUSE, a mass nighttime incendiary raid on Tokyo on 

March 9-10, 1945. LeMay’s bombers stoked a conflagration that 

killed nearly 100,000 civilians. The B-29 wing commander leading 

the raid later recalled, 

I watched block after block go up in flames until the holocaust had 

spread into a seething, swirling ocean of fire, engulfing the city below for 

miles in every direction. True, there is no room for emotions in war. But 

the destruction I witnessed that night over Tokyo was so overwhelming 

that it left a tremendous and lasting impression with me.58

Superfortress crews never forgot the stench of burning human 

flesh that rose from the city below. Many resorted to wearing 

oxygen masks. Sixteen square miles of the city were completely 

burned out. Photographs taken shortly after the raid are virtually 
43

indistinguishable from those taken at Hiroshima 5 months 

later. During the following months, the 20th Air Force marched 

methodically down its list of industrial targets in Japan, incinerating 

each in its turn. At the same time, B-29s augmented the submarine 

blockade by conducting an extensive aerial mining campaign in 

Japanese coastal waters, aptly code-named STARVATION.59

 While the main goal remained the destruction of Japanese 

industrial potential, area incendiary raids and the massive casualties 

among the civilian work force that accompanied them were viewed 

as the appropriate means to that end. A striking graphic contained in 

a 1945 report prepared by Arnold for the Secretary of War consisted 

of a map of Japan “showing the principal industrialized cities burned 

out by B-29 incendiary attacks. Figures indicate what part of the city 

was destroyed. For comparison, each city is paired with a U.S. city of 

approximately the same size.”60 The map contained a grim litany of 

major cities reduced to ashes: Yokohama, 57.6 percent (Cleveland); 

Tokyo, 39.9 percent (New York); Kobe, 55.7 percent (Baltimore); 

Toyama, 95.6 percent (Chattanooga).

 LeMay explained after the fact, 

We were going after military targets. No point in slaughtering civilians 

for the mere sake of slaughter. Of course, there is a pretty thin veneer 

in Japan, but the veneer was there. It was their system of dispersal of 

industry. All you had to do was visit one of those targets after we’d 

roasted it, and see the ruins of a multitude of tiny houses, with a drill press 

sticking up through the wreckage of every home. The entire population 

got into the act and worked to make those airplanes or munitions of war . 

. . men, women, children. We knew we were going to kill a lot of women 

and kids when we burned the town. Had to be done.61

So confident were the AAF leaders that this was a war-winning 

strategy that they believed that when the target list was finally 

exhausted, Japan would collapse without an invasion. Indeed, 

Arnold was one of the few senior commanders to oppose dropping 

the atomic bombs, believing a Japanese collapse was imminent.62

The postwar Strategic Bombing Survey concurred:

Based on a detailed investigation of al the facts, and supported by the 

testimony of surviving Japanese leaders, it is the Survey’s opinion that 

certainly prior to 31 December 1945, and in all probability prior to 1 
44

November 1945, Japan would have surrendered even if the atomic 

bombs had not been dropped, even if Russia had not entered the war, 

and even if no invasion had been planned or contemplated.63

 Debate continues regarding the impact of the firebombing of 

Japanese cities on Imperial Japan’s surrender. In postwar testimony, 

former Premier Hideki Tojo downplayed the bombing campaign 

and instead cited the submarine blockade, the island-hopping 

campaign, and the operations of U.S. Navy carrier task forces as the 

key contributors to Japanese defeat.64 Others have argued that the 

firebombing was an excessive and even racist policy carried out by a 

vengeful United States against a virtually defeated foe. Others point 

to the fanatical defense of Okinawa and the evidence of extensive 

Japanese preparations to meet the expected invasion of the home 

islands. One commentator noted that after Emperor Hirohito toured 

devastated Tokyo on March 18, 1945, “There is reason to believe that 

what the shaken, grim-faced monarch saw at firsthand intensified 

his determination to bring the war to an end as soon as possible.”65

 Some things are clear. The Japanese government did surrender, 

no invasion was necessary, and Japanese industrial production had 

all but ceased by the summer of 1945. Strategic bombing of Japanese 

cities certainly contributed to all of these things. Yet so did the 

submarine campaign, the destruction of the Japanese fleet in sea 

and air battle, and the amphibious campaign that both destroyed 

Japanese military power and secured the bases from which to launch 

the air assault on the home islands. As was the case with Germany, 

the effect of city bombing could not be assessed in a vacuum because 

it had not taken place in one.

CONCLUSION 

 Any study of the “prehistory of MAD” must consider the postwar 

assessment of the bombing war. Did the targeting of cities, or of 

specific targets located in cities, hasten the collapse of Nazi Germany 

and Imperial Japan? The immediate investigations, most notably the 

massive United States Strategic Bombing Survey (USSBS), sought to 

interview captured enemy economic planners and military leaders, 

assess physical destruction, and determine the damage to enemy 
45

industrial output, combat power, fighting spirit, and political will. 

The USSBS concluded that “[Allied air power] brought home to the 

German people the full impact of modern war with all its horror and 

suffering. Its imprint on the German nation will be lasting.”66 Yet the 

Survey was a complex document with many parts, some of which 

suggested that strategic bombing in general, and attacks on civilian 

morale in particular, were not as effective as hoped. Needless to 

say, the surveys only began a debate that has continued, sometimes 

bitterly, to this day. Generations of postwar historians and military 

analysts have weighed in. Although it would be idle to suggest that 

a consensus has emerged, I would like to suggest some lessons from 

the pre-1945 experience of city busting that definitely nourished “the 

roots of MAD.”

 The U.S. Army Air Forces (soon to be the U.S. Air Force 

[USAF]) emerged from the World War II convinced in the efficacy 

of independent strategic air power. While the USAF’s fixation 

on strategic attack has perhaps been exaggerated, there is little 

doubt that it was the primary concern of the newly independent 

service. As a result, the lessons of the World War II strategic air 

offensives loomed large. In the popular mind, a sharp distinction 

existed between USAAF “precision” bombing and RAF-style “area” 

bombing. The latter was seen as both morally inferior and militarily 

less effective than the former. Most airmen knew better than to 

accept this simplistic interpretation. While the targeting philosophy 

between RAF Bomber Command and the USAAF was different, the 

two air efforts could be very similar in practice. An RAF night raid in 

the fall of 1944, using the latest blind bombing aids, was sometimes 

capable of greater “precision” than a USAAF daylight raid in the 

bad weather conditions of central Europe during the same period. 

Yet even these de facto “area” attacks had devastating effects on 

the German war economy. As historian Alfred Mierzejewski has 

demonstrated, area attacks on the vital marshalling yards of the 

German National Railway (most of which were located in urban 

centers) were among the most effective of the entire war. 67 And the 

commanders of 20th Air Force in the Pacific clearly believed that their 

incendiary offensive had precipitated a Japanese surrender without a 

costly amphibious invasion. Even if the airmen conveniently ignored 

the strategic effects of other operations, they shared a general belief 
46

in airpower’s contribution to Allied victory in World War II. This 

belief was not unjustified.

 It is ironic that the development of nuclear and thermonuclear 

warheads, which almost by definition were area attack weapons, 

essentially negated the gains in precision bombing that were made 

during World War II. Although first-generation Strategic Air 

Command planners continued to identify specific industrial targets 

in the USSR like the ACTS planers of old, the gap between intent and 

practice had widened tremendously, far beyond what Trenchard or 

LeMay had to contend with.

 The challenge of the postwar period was to balance the perceived 

lessons of the late conflict, interservice rivalries, rapidly changing 

weapon and aviation technology, and the threat of an emerging 

cold war. The experience of the first half-century of powered flight 

contained the seeds of postwar “deterrence regimes” and the roots 

of MAD. The advent of nuclear weapons was seen initially as a 

quantitative, though not necessarily qualitative, change in the means 

of conducting aerial warfare. Many airmen saw no great difference 

between the great Tokyo fire raid of March 1945, the Dresden 

firestorm of February 1945, and Hiroshima/Nagasaki.

 Fear of city bombing was one of the most striking cultural 

developments of the modern age. Industrialized nations continued to 

develop vast bomber and missile fleets of increasing sophistication, 

and at enormous cost, with the intend to deter or, if necessary, defeat, 

peer adversaries. Inseparable from the existence of these fleets was 

the specter of civilian casualties on a massive scale. The tools were 

new. The underlying issues predated powered flight. 

ENDNOTES - CHAPTER 1

1. The literature on the development of strategic bombardment is vast. 

Among the most useful works include Tami Davis Biddle, Rhetoric and Reality 

in Air Warfare: The Evolution of British and American Ideas about Strategic Bombing, 

1914-1945, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 2002; Lee Kennett, A History of 

Strategic Bombing, New York: Scribner’s, 1982; R. Cargill Hall, ed., Case Studies 

in Strategic Bombardment, Washington, DC: Air Force History and Museum’s 

Program, 1998; and John Buckley, Air Power in the Age of Total War, Bloomington: 

Indiana University Press, 1999. 

2. Carl von Clausewitz, On War, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1976, 

pp. 595-596. 
47

3. Peter Fritzsche, A Nation of Fliers: German Aviation and the Popular Imagination, 

Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1992, chapter 1.

4. Lee Kennett, The First Air War, 1914-1918, New York: Free Press, 1991, p. 

57.

5. Raymond H. Fredette, The Sky on Fire: The First Battle of Britain, 1917-1918, 

Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1991, p. 56.

6. Francis K. Mason, Battle over Britain, Bourne End: Aston Publications Ltd, 

1990, p. 18.

7. Kennett, History of Strategic Bombing, p. 25.

8. Robin Higham, Air Power: A Concise History, New York: St Martin’s Press, 

1972, p. 57.

9. Biddle, Rhetoric and Reality in Air Warfare, p. 46.

10. Thomas H. Greer, The Development of Doctrine in the Army Air Arm, 1917-

1941, Washington, DC: Office of Air Force History, 1985, p. 11. 

11. Kennett, p. 67.

12. On Douhet, see Philip S. Meilinger, “Giulio Douhet and the Origins of 

Airpower Theory,” in Philip S. Meilinger, ed., The Paths of Heaven: The Evolution of 

Airpower Theory, Maxwell AFB: Air University Press, 1997, pp. 1-40.

13. Giulio Douhet, The Command of the Air, Washington, DC: Office of Air 

Force History, 1983, p. 126.

14. Ibid., p. 58.

15. Bernard Brodie, Strategy in the Missile Age, Princeton: Princeton University 

Press, 1959, p. 106.

16. Tami Davis Biddle, “British and American Approaches to Strategic 

Bombing: Their Origin and Implementation in the World War II Combined 

Bomber Offensive,” in John Gooch, ed., Airpower: Theory and Practice, London: 

Frank Cass, 1995, p. 92.

17. Philip S. Meilinger , “Trenchard, Slessor and Royal Air Force Doctrine 

before World War II,” in Meilinger, Paths of Heaven, p. 52.

18. Hugh Trenchard, “The War Object of an Air Force, “ in Gerard Chaliand, 

ed., The Art of War in World History, Berkeley: University of California Press, 1994, 

p. 909.

19. William Mitchell, Skyways, Philadelphia: Lippincott, 1930, p. 262.

20. R.J. Overy, “Air Power and the Origins of Deterrence Theory before 1939,” 

Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 15, March 1992, pp. 73-101.

21. Edward L. Homze, Arming the Luftwaffe: The Reich Air Ministry and the 

German Aircraft Industry, 1919-1939, Lincoln: University of Nebraska Press, 1976, 

chapter 3.
48

22. Williamson Murray, Luftwaffe, Baltimore: Nautical and Aviation, 1985, pp. 

19-20.

23. Peter R. Faber, “Interwar US Army Aviation and the Air Corps Tactical 

School: Incubators of American Airpower,” in Meilinger, ed., The Paths of Heaven, 

pp. 183-238.

24. Barry Watts, The Foundations of US Air Doctrine: The Problem of Friction in 

War, Maxwell AFB, AL; Air University Press, 1984.

25. Haywood S. Hansell, The Air Plan that Defeated Hitler, Atlanta: HigginsMacArthur, 1972, pp. 304-305.

26. Horst Boog, ed., The Conduct of the Air War in the Second World War: An 

International Comparison, New York: Berg, 1992, p. 282.

27. Ibid., p. 386.

28. Adolf Galland, The First and the Last, Mesa, AZ: Champlin Museum Press, 

1986, p. 225.

29. Richard Muller, The German Air War in Russia, Baltimore: Nautical and 

Aviation, 1992, p. 234.

30. W.G. Sebald, On the Natural History of Destruction, New York: Random 

House, 2003, pp. 103-104.

31. Among the best general works on strategic bombing in World War II are 

Biddle, Rhetoric and Reality in Air Warfare; R. J. Overy, The Air War, 1939-1945, New 

York: Stein & Day, 1981; Alan J. Levine, The Strategic Bombing of Germany, 1940-

1945, New York: Praeger, 1992. 

32. The literature on RAF Bomber Command’s offensive is considerable. 

The best starting point remains the Official History, Charles Webster and Noble 

Frankland, The Strategic Air Offensive against Germany, 1939-1945, London: HMSO, 

1961. An excellent new short history is Mark Connelly, Reaching for the Stars: 

A New History of Bomber Command in World War II, London: I. B. Tauris, 2001. 

Max Hastings, Bomber Command, New York: The Dial Press/James Wade, 1979, 

is very critical of the campaign, while Denis Richards, The Hardest Victory: RAF 

Bomber Command in the Second World War, New York: Norton, 1995, is much more 

generous. 

33. Alfred Price, Battle over the Reich, New York: Scribner’s, 1973, p. 11.

34. Connelly, Reaching for the Stars, p. 39.

35. Hastings, Bomber Command, pp. 108-110.

36. Sir Arthur T. Harris, Despatch on War Operations: 23rd February 1942 to 8th 

May 1945, London: Frank Cass, 1995, p. 7.

37. Price, p. 61.

38. David Irving, The Rise and Fall of the Luftwaffe, Boston: Little, Brown, 1973, 

p. 234.
49

39. Albert Speer, Inside the Third Reich: Memoirs, New York: Macmillan, 1970, 

p. 284.

40. Connelly, Reaching for the Stars, p. 115.

41. Biddle, Rhetoric and Reality, p. 254.

42. Frankland, Bomber Offensive: The Devastation of Europe, New York: 

Ballantine, 1970. 

43. Hastings, Bomber Command, p. 176.

44. Ibid., p. 352.

45. A thoughtful defense of the bomber offensive is Richard Overy, Why the 

Allies Won, New York: Norton, 1995, chapter 4.

46. Williamson Murray, “Reflections on the Combined Bomber Offensive,” 

Militärgeschichtliche Mitteilungen, Vol. 51, 1992, p. 90.

47. On the USAAF’s strategic bombing effort against Germany, see Hansell, 

Air Plan that Defeated Hitler, note 25; Stephen L. MacFarland and Wesley P. 

Newton, To Command the Sky: The Battle for Air Superiority over Germany, 1942-

1944, Washington, DC: Smithsonian, 1991; Ronald Schaffer, Wings of Judgment: 

American Bombing in World War II, Oxford: Oxford University Press, 1985, which 

argues that the U.S. bombing effort was qualitatively little different from the 

RAF’s area assault on German urban areas, while Conrad Crane, Bombs, Cities 

and Civilians, Lawrence: University Press of Kansas, 1993, argues that American 

airmen adhered to the ideal of precision attacks against industrial targets. Kenneth 

P. Werrell, Blankets of Fire: US Bombers over Japan during World War II, Washington, 

DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 1996, provides excellent background on the 

USAAF’s bombing of Japan. 

48. Stephen L. McFarland and Wesley P. Newton, “The American Strategic 

Air Offensive against Germany in World War II,” in Hall, ed., Case Studies in 

Strategic Bombardment, pp. 216-218.

49. Buckley, Air Power in the Age of Total War, p. 164.

50. Biddle, Rhetoric and Reality, p. 239.

51. McFarland and Newton, “American Strategic Air Offensive,” pp. 230-

232.

52. Crane, Bombs, Cities and Civilians, p. 111.

53. Ibid., p. 160.

54. Biddle, Rhetoric and Reality, p. 240.

55. Alvin Coox, “Strategic Bombing in the Pacific, 1942-1945,” in Hall, ed., 

Case Studies in Strategic Bombardment, p. 266.

56. Thomas R. Searle, “‘It Made a Lot of Sense to Kill Skilled Workers’: The 

Firebombing of Tokyo in March 1945,” Journal of Military History, Vol. 66, January 

2002, pp. 115-116.
50

57. Ibid., p. 114-115.

58. Coox, p. 319.

59. Ibid., p. 344.

60. Jacob Vander Meulen, Building the B-29, Washington: Smithsonian 

Institution Press, 1995, p. 8.

61. Crane, Bombs, Cities and Civilians, p. 133.

62. Coox, p. 353.

63. The United States Strategic Bombing Survey, European War, Pacific War,

Maxwell AFB: Air University Press, 1987, p. 107.

64. Samuel Elliot Morison, The Two Ocean War: A Short History of the United 

States Navy in the Second World War, Boston: Little, Brown and Co., 1963, p. 282.

65. Coox, p. 321.

66. United States Strategic Bombing Survey, p. 37.

67. Alfred J. Mierzejewski, The Collapse of the German War Economy, 1944-1945: 

Allied Bombing and the German National Railway, Chapel Hill: University of North 

Carolina Press, 1988, p. 183.
51

CHAPTER 2

“DESTRUCTION ASSURÉE”:

THE ORIGINS AND DEVELOPMENT OF FRENCH NUCLEAR 

STRATEGY,

1945-19811

Bruno Tertrais

INTRODUCTION: AN EVENING IN PARIS 

 On the evening of April 2, 1956, around 9 p.m., a short young 

French air force colonel with a hawkish face entered the Hôtel 

Lapérouse carrying about 20 kilos of secret NATO documents.2

 He 

was to brief a key figure of French political life, a former premier 

who was expected to return soon to power. The topic was the 

North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) strategy of massive 

retaliation.3 The briefing had been suggested by the colonel’s boss, 

the deputy Supreme Allied Commander Allied Forces Europe 

(SACEUR), U.S. Air Force (USAF) General Lauris Norstad. General 

Charles de Gaulle and Colonel Pierre-Marie Gallois talked nuclear 

strategy for hours. At the end of the conversation, around 2 a.m., de 

Gaulle thanked his interlocutor and promised that he would take 

good care of his career. The results would go beyond what General 

Norstad had anticipated. France ended up setting up an independent 

nuclear force against the will of the United States and completely at 

odds with NATO strategy.

 The purpose of this chapter is to analyze the origins of France’s 

nuclear strategy and its development, particularly insofar as it 

relates to the concept of assured destruction. It covers the years 

1945 to 1981.4

 It is useful to go as far back as the World War II to 

understand French thinking on nuclear policy, especially given the 

fact that the Commissariat à l’énergie atomique (CEA) was created in 

the immediate aftermath of the Hiroshima and Nagasaki bombings. 

Most of the basic concepts of French nuclear strategy emerged in the 

1960s, but the strategy continued to develop in the 1970s, along with 

the setting up of the French triad. By the end of the 1970s, the main 
52

concepts were fixed and would not significantly change. When the 

French deterrent force reached what seemed to be a certain level of 

comfort called sufficiency, French political leaders began referring 

to an assured destruction capability. More specifically, given the 

fact that the French president is the only relevant authority in these 

matters, the election of François Mitterrand in 1981, provides a 

convenient and symbolic endpoint.

 The chapter shows that while French strategy was partly defined 

by experts such as Gallois, others factors were at least as important. 

The personal preferences of de Gaulle, the technical and financial 

means available to France, and the influence of U.S., United Kingdom 

(UK) and NATO were important factors. For these reasons, all things 

equal to the French version of assured destruction would end up 

being largely similar to that of the United States. 

 Section I outlines the origins of the French program and early 

thinking on nuclear policy. Section II describes the rationales for 

turning the original French nuclear effort into an operational and 

independent force. Sections III, IV, and V describe the basic concepts 

of French nuclear doctrine and their evolution. Section VI evaluates 

the implementation of the doctrine and its translation in operational 

terms in the first 2 decades that the French deterrent existed. Section 

VII assesses the relative importance and influence of various inputs 

on French strategy. 

SECTION I. A PROGRAM WITHOUT A STRATEGY: 

DEVELOPMENT OF THE FRENCH NUCLEAR OPTION

 At the time of the Gallois-de Gaulle meeting, France already had 

the basic tools it needed to go nuclear. The rudiments of a military 

nuclear program were gradually and discreetly put into place by the 

Fourth Republic’s government, supported by a small set of highly 

motivated individuals.

 French scientists had made key contributions to nuclear physics 

in the early 1930s, and had begun working on possible military 

applications of nuclear power in 1939.5

 While their efforts were 

cut short by the French 1940 defeat, they were able to work with 

the pioneering allied team in Canada until the signature of the 

1943 Québec cooperation agreements between the UK and the 
53

United States (perceived as “atomic isolationism” by the Gaullists6). 

Excluded from the Manhattan project, French scientists nevertheless 

managed to meet de Gaulle in 1944 and brief him extensively. It was 

with a clear view to have a military option for France that de Gaulle 

created the CEA in October 1945.7

 This was no more than an option, and the CEA’s goal was 

primarily civilian. In France, as in many other Western countries, 

atomic power was seen as embodying modernity.8

 Not before the 

early 1950s did the idea of a French bomb begin to get serious 

attention. Among those who supported and lobbied for it, two 

key figures were Colonels Gallois and Ailleret, both supporters of 

de Gaulle. Pierre-Marie Gallois combined important professional 

positions (both at Supreme Headquarters Allied Powers Europe 

[SHAPE] and in the French military bureaucracy), political savvy 

(he became a military adviser to several key officials), and talent as 

a writer and public speaker. Charles Ailleret was the chief advocate 

of the importance of nuclear weapons within the armed forces 

and frequently spoke on how such weapons would transform the 

nature of war. He gave countless seminars, training programs, and 

exercises, as well as lectures and articles, particularly in the Revue de 

la Défense Nationale. He established good contacts with the political 

leadership. Other individuals who played an important lobbying 

role in favour of the nuclear option include Bertrand Goldschmidt 

and Pierre Guillaumat at the CEA, as well as Generals Paul Bergeron, 

Albert Buchalet, Jean Crépin, and Paul Ely. They were supported 

by politicians (Gaullists and others) such as Maurice BourgèsMaunoury, Jacques Chaban-Delmas, Michel Debré, Félix Gaillard, 

Pierre Koenig, Pierre Mendès-France, Guy Mollet, Gaston Palewski, 

Antoine Pinay, and René Pleven. 

 Having given speeches and conferences about the atom bomb 

since 1950, Ailleret was asked by Army Chief of Staff General Blanc to 

head a new “Special Weapons Command”―no more than a nuclear, 

biological, and chemcial (NBC) protection command at the beginning, 

but soon to become a real “nuclear think-tank.” The new command 

was created in January 1952. Ailleret immediately asked his staff to 

do a feasibility study on the production of nuclear weapons.9

 That 

same year, London exploded its first atomic bomb, and it did not 
54

go unnoticed. In July, a 5-year plan for the development of a French 

nuclear complex was passed by the Parliament. An amendment 

proposed by the Left to exclude any military use for the plutonium 

that would be created was rejected.10 Going nuclear was then an 

option to be retained―no more, no less. In 1953, CEA administrator 

Guillaumat approached Ailleret and proposed a connection between 

the Commissariat and the military to prepare for the day the political 

authorities would decide to build a French bomb.11

 In March of 1954, Defense Minister René Pleven, who had been 

made aware of the work conducted within the armed forces by 

Ailleret’s team, stated during the annual parliamentary budget 

meeting that France should begin to think about having nuclear 

weapons, and that there was a need to train enough officers and 

engineers for such an endeavor. In October, a joint CEA-Ministry 

of Defense (MoD) committee in charge of military applications of 

the atom was created. In December, Premier Mendès-France held a 

special high-level meeting at the Quai d’Orsay on the topic; it was 

decided to create a true military applications division in the CEA, 

under the disguise of “Office of General Studies,” and to fund it 

through the defense budget. The goal was to study the development 

of an atomic bomb and a nuclear-powered submarine. In May 1955, 

an inter-department protocol authorizing the transfer of funds from 

the military to the CEA was signed. 

 Still, no nuclear program had officially been launched. Experts 

estimated that the critical choices in a context of limited resources 

could wait until around 1958.12 At that time, the French program 

was still virtual, technically comparable to those of other countries 

acquiring the assets necessary to cross the threshold if need be. 

The security rationales mattered, and many in the military were 

anxious to get nuclear weapons for defense purposes. But in 1954-

55, international standing was a key consideration. There was 

a growing understanding within government circles that in the 

context of NATO’s MC-48 strategy, which emphasized nuclear 

over conventional weapons, that true power, in particular within 

the Alliance, would only belong to those countries which possessed 

the bomb.13 As Mendès-France reportedly said, “if you do not have 

the Bomb you are nothing in international negotiations.”14 These 
55

ideas were supported by de Gaulle, then in political exile but closely 

following the French debates, and occasionally making known his 

support for a nuclear program.15

 Under the leadership of Buchalet, the CEA began setting up the 

technical facilities needed to produce nuclear weapons. In October 

1956, Premier Mollet, who also had received a Gallois briefing, signed 

a long-term directive on nuclear policy that included the need to 

develop the country’s nuclear infrastructure in order to gain allied 

support for a military program. The CEA was ordered to produce 

weapon-grade highly enriched uranium (HEU) and plutonium for 

possible future nuclear weapons. Studies were also commissioned 

for the development of a long-range bomber and of ballistic missiles. 

In December a committee in charge of military nuclear programs was 

created within the MoD. In 1957, the Special Weapons Command 

was made a joint body, and a Joint Nuclear Experiments Group was 

created. Ailleret went to set up a potential testing ground in the Sahara 

Desert. Political support for a national deterrent was gaining ground 

in the aftermath of the Suez crisis and of the Budapest repression in 

November 1956. Early warnings about U.S. vulnerability such as the 

first Soviet intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) test in August 

1957 and the Sputnik launch in October 1957, reinforced this trend. 

Political barriers against the French bomb were falling one after the 

other. On April 11, 1958, France went one step closer to the threshold 

when a key defender of the nuclear program, Premier Gaillard, was 

ordered to make the technical preparations for a series of tests. The 

now-official military applications division of the CEA numbered 

1,800 persons. 

 No military nuclear program had ever been launched, but France 

was on the verge of becoming a nuclear power. As one scholar noted, 

“France under the Fourth Republic would appear to represent the 

most striking example of minimal political leadership and maximum 

technocratic direction in the orientation of atomic policy.”16

 However, on the very eve of de Gaulle’s return to power, two key 

policy orientations had yet to be taken formally: the decision to test, 

build, and sustain an operational deterrent; and the decision to have 

a fully independent deterrent, not only in terms of use, but also in 

terms of procurement, planning, and operations.17 The first decision 
56

would be taken by de Gaulle. Without it, France might very well 

have remained a potential nuclear power with a recessed deterrent 

like India between 1974 and 1998. His role would be much more than 

just turning the ignition key. With de Gaulle, France’s willingness 

to go nuclear became a goal of the State rather than the desire of a 

few men. The second decision was, of course, also de Gaulle’s, and 

crystallized gradually in the years 1958-66 (see SECTION III). 

SECTION II. RATIONALES FOR BUILDING AN INDEPENDENT 

FORCE DE FRAPPE

 As suggested above, the original French motivations were merely 

the product of the dynamics of the nascent nuclear age, a time when 

the atom held seemingly unending benefits to a modern nation. The 

specificities of French nuclear policy developed only gradually, 

starting in the early to mid-1950s. They stemmed from a combination 

of strategic and political rationales fuelling each other. De Gaulle’s 

personal contribution from May 1958 on would be to push existing 

rationales to their logical conclusions, and to transform existing 

incentives into actual policy. There would be, in the words of one 

historian, an “imperious convergence” between the general and the 

bomb: “The nuclear fire is consubstantial to State Gaullism.”18

 Although some authors explain France’s program by prestige 

politics, there are good grounds to say that the realist explanation 

remains the most satisfying. It has been vindicated by recent 

testimonies and historical research.19 The main reasons for 

developing an operational, independent deterrent or force de frappe

were, first, to endow France with a credible security guarantee 

and, second, to recover France’s full sovereignty.20 However, other 

motives, such as regaining major power status, and ensuring control 

over the military, also came into play. 

Endowing France with a Credible Security Guarantee.

 Among European powers, few countries felt as unsafe as France 

at the beginning of the second part of the century. The French 

territory had been invaded three times in a few decades, the last one 
57

resulting in the humiliating 1940 defeat―an event that traumatized 

de Gaulle to the point of saying in 1943: “We must want the existence 

of France. Never again will it be self-evident.”21 He also resented that 

France had had to “beg” for allied support between 1940 and 1944.22

Thus in the 1950s, the perception of an emerging new major threat 

for the country’s existence―the Soviet Western Group of Forces was 

stationed close to French territory―made the need for a security 

guarantee very pressing.

 Most NATO countries viewed the U.S. nuclear guarantee as a 

fairly credible one. France did not. That perception emerged in the 

critical period 1954-57. The United States did not come to help French 

forces at Dien Bien Phu (1954), nor did it support the Suez operation 

(1956).23 Then Moscow demonstrated its ability to strike U.S. territory 

with ballistic missiles (1957), contributing to a major change in U.S. 

and NATO nuclear strategies, whereby a massive retaliation against 

Soviet cities thereafter would be seen only as a last resort option. 

French strategists had doubts about the principle of one nuclear 

country protecting another one. The heralded abandonment of the 

massive retaliation strategy was, from their point of view, the final 

nail in the coffin, and France refused to subscribe to the emerging 

NATO strategy of flexible response. This was officially adopted only 

after the withdrawal of Paris from the integrated military structure. 

For the Gaullist government, it amounted to the disappearance of the 

U.S. protection not only of France, but also of Europe as a whole.24

 De Gaulle inherited a certain distrust about the U.S. willingness 

to defend French territory. Sure enough, the Americans had come to 

defend France. But de Gaulle was inclined to see the half-empty part 

of the glass which was that the intervention of the United States in 

the two world wars had taken place only after its own interests were 

put at stake. Treaties providing for American and British security 

guarantees to France against Germany had been signed in June 

1919, but were of no avail in 1939. De Gaulle remembered that, once 

engaged in Europe, Washington was mostly preoccupied with its 

own national interests. In the early days of 1945, the United States 

had been ready to abandon the city of Strasbourg. De Gaulle had to 

commit Free French forces and challenge Eisenhower to counter the 

U.S. decision.25 He did not blame Washington for such an attitude. 

He thought that it was only natural that a country defends only 
58

its national interests. And de Gaulle expressed an opinion shared 

widely in France when he stated in 1963 that “nobody in the world, 

in particular nobody in America, can say whether, where, how, 

to what extent the U.S. nuclear arms would be used to defend 

Europe.”26 Nuclear weapons had changed the nature of alliances. 

One could not expect to be protected by a state which would engage 

its very survival in doing so.27 He told Eisenhower that, given the 

emerging U.S. vulnerability, Washington would only engage in 

nuclear action if its territory faced a nuclear attack.28

Recovering France’s Full Sovereignty.

 The second main rationale was to ensure full peacetime 

sovereignty of France. Following the 1940 defeat, the country had 

been occupied for 4 years. The Suez crisis had made clear that the 

United States, as well as the Soviet Union, would not hesitate in 

limiting the freedom of action of smaller powers. 

 This second rationale had been an important point for the Fourth 

Republic’s politicians.29 But nobody was as eager to emphasize 

sovereignty vis-à-vis the United States as de Gaulle. During the 

war, Washington’s preferred candidate as the leader of post-victory 

France had been his rival, General Giraud, who was seen as more 

flexible and sympathetic to U.S. views. And on the eve of the June 

1944 Normandy landing, de Gaulle learned from Churchill that 

the United States planned to place France under an Allied Military 

Government of Occupied Territories (AMGOT) instead of ceding its 

control to the government-in-exile. De Gaulle had to fight hard. For 

him, the bomb was an instrument of self-determination, a means “to 

exist by ourselves and, in case of drama, to choose our direction by 

ourselves.”30

 The need to be able to independently defend French interests 

would become particularly acute for de Gaulle as he began shaping 

a formidable political agenda which would transform French 

international identity and strategic culture. The termination of 

colonization was to be accompanied by the promotion of détente 

with the Communist world and the reconciliation of European 

powers “from the Atlantic to the Urals.”31 French reliance on a U.S. 

nuclear protection to guarantee its security was seen as potentially 
59

limiting the full exercise of France’s sovereignty. “It is obvious 

that, for a country, there is no independence if it does not possess 

nuclear weapons, for, if it does not have them, he is forced to defer 

to another who has them for his security and, therefore, for his 

policies.”32 As others before him, de Gaulle pushed this logic to 

the extremes, claiming that independence could not exist without 

nuclear weapons.33

That same reasoning was applied to belonging to the NATO 

integrated military structure. De Gaulle believed that integration 

limited European political sovereignty. He also thought that in the 

new world of the 1960s, U.S. leadership was not as justified as it 

might have been in 1949. European countries had recovered from 

the war, and were beginning to develop institutional ties among 

themselves. The European Community had been created in 1957, 

the Communist world was not as monolithic as it had been in the 

past, and the Soviet experiment was judged a failure. Therefore, the 

bipolar order and the “condominium” over Europe were deemed 

obsolete. Most importantly, the U.S. monopoly on nuclear weapons 

had disappeared and America was now vulnerable, making the U.S. 

guarantee less credible.34 France would commit forces if Europe 

was attacked. But de Gaulle emphasized a distinction between “the 

alliance, which is good, and integration, which is bad.”35For those who 

opposed it, integration implied not only U.S. peacetime command of 

some French officers and troops―a major point of contention―but 

also potential U.S. pressures on the management of the French armed 

forces and undue foreign influence on French military culture. Most 

importantly, it created the perception that France was a subordinate 

to another nation, and that it could not or would not be able to 

defend itself independently if need be. For de Gaulle, the existence 

of the French deterrent entailed new responsibilities that were not 

compatible with what he called dependence on the United States.36

He also thought that NATO did not fully acknowledge France’s 

place.37 Could France have become an independent nuclear power 

and stay in the integrated structure? On paper, perhaps yes. But de 

Gaulle thought that the adversary had to be absolutely convinced 

that France would independently decide to use nuclear weapons.38

In any case, the logic of the Gaullist stance would have led France to 

keep its new weapons completely out of Alliance planning, a position 
60

which would have been inconsistent with the logic of integration.39

Thus not only was integration no longer necessary, not only was the 

withdrawal possible, but it was in fact logical and probably imperative

from the French point of view. De Gaulle did not believe that a NATO 

Multilateral force, discussed in the mid-1960s, would allow Paris to 

retain truly independent control over its future nuclear force.40 The 

withdrawal would be effective in 1967, once the constitution of the 

Mirage-IV bomber force was achieved.

 The withdrawal of the NATO integrated structure and the birth 

of the French nuclear force were two faces of the same coin which 

was the need to regain national autonomy. This was obvious as 

early as September 1958. General Norstad (the same officer who had 

asked Gallois to brief de Gaulle in 1956, and who was now Supreme 

Allied Commander Europe [SACEUR]) was asked by the new French 

president whether there were U.S. nuclear weapons in France and 

what their role would be in NATO targeting plans. Norstad refused 

to answer, provoking the ire of de Gaulle, and thereby reinforcing 

de Gaulle’s desire for an independent French deterrent.41 De Gaulle 

confirmed the authorization given by his predecessors to attribute 

U.S. nuclear warheads to French forces in Germany (Honest John 

missiles in 1960 or 1961, and bombs for Mirage III and F100 aircraft, 

as well as Nike-Hercules air defense missiles, in 196342). But in 1967, 

these arrangements were cancelled when France withdrew from the 

integrated NATO structure. 

 De Gaulle also sought to develop other tools of national 

independence vis-à-vis the United States. A national ballistic missile 

program was launched in 1959, once it became clear that FrenchU.S. cooperation would be impossible. These were complemented 

by other efforts such as national space and computing initiatives, 

monetary reform allowing for the creation of a strong currency 

(and turning reserve U.S. dollars into gold assets), and the 

constitution of a national oil “major.” De Gaulle was aware of the 

benefits of the nuclear program for the energy industry and used 

it as a supplementary argument.43 More generally, he thought that 

the nuclear effort “helped the scientific, technical and industrial 

development of the nation.”44
61

Regaining Full Major Power Status.

 The narrower consideration of “prestige” mattered to an extent. 

And as stated above, like the United Kingdom, France needed a 

moral boost to come to terms with the end of colonial imperialism. It 

can be argued that France did not need the bomb to be acknowledged 

as a significant world player. Its permanent membership in the UN 

Security Council, and its particular position in NATO, would have 

been enough to ensure that the voice of Paris would be heard. But 

then again, the 1967 withdrawal was made possible only because 

France had become a nuclear power. 

 De Gaulle’s France quickly reaped the political benefits of 

resisting U.S. power and promoting an alternative universal model 

of democracy and self-determination. The independent French 

nuclear weapons program was perceived in the developing world 

as a symbol and an instrument of challenge to U.S. “hegemony.”45

 However, what really mattered for de Gaulle was to play a center 

stage part in the Cold War, that of European security. Here, it was not 

a matter of prestige, but of regaining full major power status in order 

to participate again in great power politics. He resented that France 

had not participated in the Yalta and Potsdam conferences.46 De 

Gaulle could not stand the idea that the fate of the continent would 

be determined by Washington and Moscow. When he returned 

to power in 1958, he considered the bomb “a political means to 

allow him to sit at the Greats [powers’] table.”47 For him, the Great 

Powers were the Soviet Union, the United States, and the United 

Kingdom. He wanted above all an equal role with his UK and U.S. 

partners in the Atlantic Alliance, and an end to the discrimination 

towards France imposed by the Québec agreements and the 1946 

MacMahon Act (amended in 1958 to allow for U.S.-UK cooperation). 

This discrimination was for him was particularly unacceptable, 

given France’s centrality in Alliance planning.48 Breaking the AngloSaxon monopoly on nuclear weapons had been an obsession since 

the beginning.49 It was inconceivable that France did not possess 

“the most powerful weapons of the day” and have mastery of a key 

scientific and industrial field.50
62

Ensuring Control Over the Military. 

 A fourth and arguably less important factor was to ensure control 

over the military. This came more as an added benefit than as an 

initial incentive. As soon as he returned to power in 1958, de Gaulle 

made clear that the armed forces were to be entirely subordinated to 

the political authorities.51 But his relationship with the military took 

a turn for the worse. In 1961, a coup was averted. In 1962, the armed 

forces were ordered to withdraw from Algeria. Many in the armed 

forces would see de Gaulle as no less than a traitor. The Organisation 

de l’Armée Secrète (OAS) was at that time conducting a terrorism 

campaign that would target de Gaulle himself (the assassination 

attempt at Petit-Clamart). Revamping French strategy around the 

backbone of putting nuclear weapons under tight civilian control 

helped to ensure control of the military. This strategy was followed 

by China and later by India. This reaffirmation of arma cedant togae 

was symbolized by the facts that the President could directly order 

the engagement of nuclear forces and that, until 1981, he was 

reportedly the only person holding the authorization codes.52

 The armed forces themselves had little interest in an independent 

French deterrent. As an institution, the French armed forces were 

rather conservative, as military institutions often are. Most of the 

officers who wanted nuclear weapons wanted them simply because 

they were the most modern, up-to-date weapons in store―and 

they might as well be American nuclear weapons. Indeed, for the 

French commanders in the Western European Union (WEU) staff 

in the late 1940s, one of the primary rationales for creating a NATO 

integrated military structure was the prospect of availability of U.S. 

nuclear weapons.53 From the onset, the French military had been 

among the most vocal proponents of the full nuclearization of the 

Alliance’s defense strategy, and Paris argued strongly in favour of 

nuclear sharing.54 There was a lot of frustration in national military 

circles about nuclear matters, which reportedly were managed 

within NATO “among Americans, with the British being treated as 

privileged allies.”55 Many supported the need to equalize the allies 

through the procurement of nuclear weapons. To be considered 

“militarily adult,” France needed to procure such weapons.56 Given 
63

the evolution of NATO strategy, the possession of nuclear weapons 

was seen as imperative by the chiefs of staff.57 However, for most of 

the French high command, an independent nuclear program meant 

diverting resources reducing conventional budgets and forces.58

That was all the more true by the late 1950s. “What would the atom 

bomb bring us to pacify Algeria?,” asked a skeptic General Jouhaud 

in 1958.59 But de Gaulle imposed on them both the withdrawal from 

Algeria and the bomb.60 As a commentator put it, “France is the only 

nuclear power where the civilians have imposed the nuclear [choice] 

to the military.”61 At the extreme, if there was to be an independent 

nuclear program, it would need to be integrated within the Alliance.62

Later, when the military realized that getting the bomb and leaving 

the NATO integrated military structure―an unthinkable option for 

any self-respecting French officer at that time―were part of the same 

deal, their hostility would be even more acute. 

 Thus a paradox of French nuclear strategy is that it was, to a large 

extent, forged by a small coterie of military individuals against the 

will of the military as an institution. 

SECTION III. FORGING THE DOCTRINE: 

“TEARING AN ARM OFF THE AGGRESSOR”63

The Key Actors.

 The key concepts underlying French nuclear doctrine developed 

during the 10 years from 1958-68. The early 1960s were especially 

important as the United States and NATO were moving towards 

flexible response. The intellectual breeding ground for French 

strategy was almost exclusively military, with one exception. 

Pierre-Marie Gallois and Charles Ailleret played critical roles 

because they combined technical expertise, strong determination, 

access to political authorities, and ability to write for both the 

military community and the public. Two other significant players 

were Generals André Beaufre, a respected high-ranking officer 

and retired analyst; and Lucien Poirier, a young colonel who later 

became a prolific writer with intellectual ambitions. The exception 

was Raymond Aron, a political scientist of the realist school and a 
64

key intellectual figure in French security debates, particularly on the 

subject of nuclear policy. All continued to be influential throughout 

the 1970s, and both Gallois and Poirier were still writing in the late 

1990s.64

 Others played significant roles in the construction of French 

nuclear culture, although they did not appear frequently in public 

debates, or appear close to political authorities. One name must be 

mentioned first: Admiral Raoul Castex, who as early as October 

1945 published a seminal article which was the French equivalent 

of Bernard Brodie’s The Absolute Weapon. This article may have 

influenced de Gaulle’s decision to create the CEA.65 The list also 

includes general officers Billotte, Buchalet, Catroux, Chassin, Crépin, 

Gerardot, Koenig, Philippon, Stehlin, and Valluy. These people 

worked inside the bureaucracy or through publications, though not 

all of them supported the Gaullist independent stance.

 The French doctrine as it coalesced in the 1960s involved a 

concept of deterrence “of the strong by the weak.” The doctrine was 

based on the logic of “proportionality to the stake of the conflict.” 

Nuclear reprisals would take the form of massive retaliation, and 

were theoretically geared “tous azimuts.”

The Key Concepts. 

Deterrence of the Strong by the Weak. The logical foundation of 

French Cold War nuclear strategy was the concept of “deterrence of 

the strong by the weak” (dissuasion du faible au fort).66 The idea was 

that deterrence was possible where one of the two parties is much 

smaller and less powerful than the other because of the equalizing 

power of the atom (pouvoir égalisateur de l’atome). Asymmetrical size 

and power did not matter. It was possible to deter a major country 

with much smaller nuclear forces than the adversary’s. As de Gaulle 

stated in 1964: 

Of course, the megatons that we could launch would not equal in number 

those that the Americans and Russians are able to unleash. But once 

unleashing a certain nuclear capability and as far as one’s own defense is 

concerned, the proportion of respective means has no absolute value. In 

fact, since a man and a country can only die but once, deterrence exists 

as soon as one can mortally wound the potential aggressor and is fully 

resolved to do so, and [the aggressor] is well convinced of it.67
65

This idea was included in the 1972 White Paper, which described 

nuclear weapons as an imperative for a small, low-populated 

country like France. At the same time, being only a medium power, 

it did not need an arsenal as big as those of major powers.68

 Gallois is often credited with inventing the concepts of “weak to 

strong” and “equalizing power.” He developed them in Stratégie de 

l’âge nucléaire,

69 but the intellectual background for these concepts 

clearly preceded him. Background materials are contained in the 

1945 Castex article, in early UK writings about nuclear strategy, 

and in the dossier presented to the French political authorities in 

December 1954.70 Ailleret alluded to these ideas in his seminal 1959 

conferences.71 The contribution of Gallois (who was familiar with 

these sources and even says that reading the Castex article had been 

an epiphany for him) was to popularize the concepts in France, in 

particular in his late 1950s articles and his 1960 book. 

Proportionality to the Stake of the Conflict. Another key concept in 

French thinking is “proportionality” which meant that deterrence of 

the strong by the weak can be assured as long as the weak can inflict 

on the aggressor damages that would be at least equivalent to the 

stake of the conflict. This was expressed in the phrase “proportionate 

deterrence.”72 Gallois theorized and developed it in his 1960 book.73

De Gaulle endorsed the concept. In 1963, de Gaulle stated that 

deterrence was achieved as soon as the nuclear capability made an 

adversary realize that aggression was not worthwhile.74 The next 

year, he confirmed that “deterrence is proportional to the stake.”75

 A consensus emerged among experts that, to achieve deterrence, 

the damage should actually be superior to the stake. As early as 1959, 

Aron mentioned “risks out of proportion with the benefits.”76 Gallois, 

for his part, said in 1960: “The ‘quantity of destruction’ that the 

reprisal force represents when it reaches its objectives must at least 

cancel the benefits that the aggressor expected from his attack.”77 The 

next year, he used an expression which became commonly used in 

French strategic language: “incommensurable.” It referred to the lack 

of comparison between widespread destruction by atomic weapons 

to what could be feared with conventional weapons.78 In 1963, 

Beaufre suggested that the losses to be suffered by Moscow had to 

be “disproportionate with the possible gains” of the Soviet Union.79
66

De Gaulle would sanction this adjustment in 1964 by mentioning 

“risks incommensurable with the benefit of conquering our soil.”80

The White Paper stated that deterrence only applies if there is for the 

adversary “an immediate risk out of proportions with the stake of 

the conflict.”81 Thus proportionate deterrence had become, in fact, 

disproportionate deterrence, an idea that is very close to John Foster 

Dulles’s original expression of massive retaliation.82 It remained a 

basic tenet of French strategy.83

A Mass Destruction Single Strike. The idea of threatening 

mass destruction in order to deter aggression came early in the 

development of French strategy. This seems to be the result of French 

exposure to U.S., UK, and NATO strategy in the 1950s, and that, as 

a small country, France could not afford limited war or flexible 

response-type strategies. As Gallois put it later, “France has nothing 

to cede that would not be herself.”84 Once a nuclear nation, France 

held firmly to the strategy of massive retaliation and, while still in 

the integrated structure (1964-67), strongly opposed emerging steps 

within NATO away from that direction. The expression “massive 

retaliation” was frequently used in 1970s French rhetoric.85 Apart 

from the fact that a single strike seemed consistent with a pure 

anti-cities concept, an additional justification for maintaining rigid 

strategic targeting plans was given by Poirier. For a small power, 

the “threat can only have deterrent value if the threatened party 

knows that he would experience the effects of one blow, without 

his losses being spaced out over time.”86 If strategic nuclear war was 

to be managed, the weaker party would be at a disadvantage. The 

possibility that a massive strike on the Soviet Union would elicit an 

equally massive―and thus deadly―response on the national territory 

was considered and accepted. It was, however, also pointed out that 

Moscow might refrain from doing so on the grounds that “one does 

not destroy the prize.”87

 Any nuclear aggression on France would be considered strategic 

in nature simply because of the small size of the country, therefore 

implying a massive nuclear response.88 This would be the case, in 

particular, if the adversary destroyed the intermediate range ballistic 

missiles (IRBMs) deployed on the Plateau d’Albion in South-Eastern 

France. Though located in a low population area, their neutralization 
67

would entail such a massive strike that it would necessarily have a 

strategic effect on France. This theory sometimes known as the 

“attached goat” was developed a posteriori, since the IRBMs were 

initially developed as an interim measure before the introduction of 

fleet ballistic missile submarines [SSBNs].89

 But would it be the same in case of strictly conventional 

aggression? France’s version of massive retaliation initially seemed 

to mirror NATO’s MC-48 strategy, as reflected in the 1964 Ailleret 

articles and in de Gaulle’s instructions to the Defense Council the 

same year. An aggression would elicit “immediate” retaliation on 

Soviet soil, as well as in Germany “time permitting.”90 But in private, 

de Gaulle refrained from assuring that conventional aggression 

against France would be met in the same way a nuclear one would.91

The solution to this classical deterrence problem was found through 

the development of a specific tactical nuclear weapons doctrine, 

which helped France to implement a strategic concept located 

somewhere between massive retaliation and flexible response. In 

1969, Chief of Staff Fourquet confirmed that France rejected an “all 

or nothing” vision.92 That said, the concept at the strategic level was 

and would remain inflexible. 

An All-Azimuths Strategy. A third important concept is tous 

azimuts, an artillery term expressing the idea that the nuclear force 

was not directed at any adversary in particular, but should be able to 

strike anywhere in the world. 

Tous azimuts was a matter of principle based on the idea that, since 

nuclear systems were to have a long service life, it was impossible 

to determine who would be the adversary 20 years ahead, especially 

with the risks of further proliferation.93 This idea has been long 

credited to Ailleret, but it is now known that de Gaulle himself was 

the originator of the concept.94 As early as 1959, he told the French 

military cadets that “since it is theoretically possible for France to be 

destroyed from any point of the world, our force must be made to act 

anywhere on Earth.”95 He used the expression tous azimuts at least as 

early as 1962 in private conversations and even toyed with the idea 

of using the bomb against Tunisia.96 In 1965, he mentioned the ability 

“to launch projectiles . . . in any region of the world . . . and to do 

it, if need be, against any region of the world.”97 In January 1967, he 
68

wrote a personal instruction stating that by 1980 France should have 

a full-fledged intercontinental triad (including seven to eight SSBNs) 

armed with thermonuclear weapons and be able to strike any major 

power.98 In July, he told the Council of Ministers: “Let’s prepare 

ourselves for striking in any direction (tirer dans tous les azimuts) if 

France’s life is at stake.”99

 Ailleret was more than a mere spokesman. He elaborated on 

this concept in an interesting discourse on what would be termed 

today the “globalization of strategy.” Nuclear proliferation, the 

possibility of rapid horizontal escalation of modern conflict, and the 

range of ballistic missiles justified a new approach. With de Gaulle’s 

approval, Ailleret’s article suggested that France needed “megatonyield ballistic devices of global range,” and to ultimately become a 

“space force.”100

 For de Gaulle, tous azimuts also served broader political purposes. 

First, as he said at least once in private, nuclear force was useful “as 

much to deter an aggressor . . . as to deter an abusive protector.”101

Second, tous azimuts may have been a way to emphasize différence 

vis-à-vis the United Kingdom and to avoid reducing the French 

force to a mere complement of the U.S. arsenal. Third, it was a 

concrete application of the Gaullist drive for going beyond the East/

West face-off and promoting détente. Finally, it was meant to open 

the eyes of the armed forces to the fundamental novelty of nuclear 

weapons.102

 In any case, even if taken at face value, the concept was meant as 

a goal, not as an immediate force sizing criterion. It was a paradigm 

in the original sense of the term. As a part of French official policy, it 

was fairly short-lived. An ICBM program was judged too costly. And 

after de Gaulle, with the French nuclear program well-established, 

the need for strong national rhetoric to support an independent 

force was not as strong. Nevertheless, the leadership continued to 

pay tribute to this concept. The Warsaw Pact was rarely mentioned 

as the prime adversary in official public documents, and then, only 

implicitly.103 As late as 1977, France still claimed that its SLBMs were 

capable of “covering the whole world.”104
69

SECTION IV: FORGING THE DOCTRINE: 

BALANCING INDEPENDENCE AND SOLIDARITY 

The Debate on the Role of the French Deterrent in the Alliance.

 The insertion of the French nuclear contribution in the Atlantic 

Alliance had a fuzzier approach. The nuclear force was to be a 

national one, but also one that protected European neighbours. The 

employment decision was to be strictly under Paris’s control, but 

French authorities sought consultation and coordination with allies. 

Some considered the French force as a “trigger” that would force U.S. 

intervention. Most believed that the French force was contributing to 

the security of the West. 

 A National Deterrent. De Gaulle initially told the United States 

that he would be glad to buy U.S. nuclear weapons, provided that 

the weapons were solely under French control.105 It is hard to tell 

whether de Gaulle was serious. It is possible that he did not believe 

that such an option was realistic if only because maintenance 

would have required U.S. assistance. In any case, deterrence was 

to be strictly national in terms of employment, along with the 

rest of France’s defense policy. One of de Gaulle’s most often 

quoted statements was in 1959: “The defense of France must be 

French.”106 In his colorful vocabulary, he stated that he wanted to be 

“unbearable on [his] own.”107 This expressed a consensus in France. 

Along with de Gaulle, Gallois thought that any deterrent which was 

not strictly national could not be credible: “Democracies can really 

practice the deterrence strategy only at the service of an absolutely 

vital cause.”108 Neither the nuclear risk, nor the nuclear decision, 

could be shared in any way.109 For most French thinkers, extending 

U.S. and U.K. deterrence forces to their allies did not make sense, 

period. In addition, de Gaulle and Gallois did not believe that the 

U.S.-proposed Multilateral Force was compatible with an effective 

national nuclear deterrent. 

 A Force to Defend “Vital Interests”―Including Europe? Official policy 

was not as rigid as it seemed. The French force was designed to defend 

what was called the vital interests of France. This expression first 

appeared in Gallois’s work and was sometimes used by de Gaulle.110

Vital interests included, but were not limited to, the metropolitan 
70

territory, i.e., French territory in Europe. For political reasons, de 

Gaulle first publicly emphasized the purely national dimension of 

the French deterrent. But he and his successors made clear that the 

force de frappe was protecting Europe as well, and French nuclear 

weapons might be automatically used if Germany was threatened.111

De Gaulle had argued to Kennedy that since “the Rhine [was] 

narrower than the Atlantic,” France felt “more intimately linked 

to the defense of Germany than America to [France’s defense].”112

His secret instructions to the military chiefs in 1964 were clear: 

“France should feel threatened as soon as the territories of Federal 

Germany and Benelux would be violated.”113 The reasons were, first, 

that Europe was a small territory where the fate of countries were 

intertwined. Second, optimal military efficiency implied committing 

French forces far away from the French-German border. Prime 

Minister Pompidou told the Parliament that the French force “plays 

a full and automatic role for the benefit of Europe, the defense of 

which is inseparable from her own.”114 Chief of Defense Fourquet 

publicly stated that the French battle corps would normally have 

to be engaged as far as possible from the national borders, in close 

coordination with the Allies.115 The “approaches” of the country 

would be explicitly considered part of France’s vital interests, as 

stated in the 1972 White Paper.

116 The exact scope of these interests 

was unclear. It was recognized that uncertainty on the nuclear 

threshold was a critical component of deterrence. Third, from the 

onset French leaders asserted that the country’s national deterrent 

helped the construction of Europe and, beyond that, was, in fact, a 

building block of a future European nuclear force.117

The Possibility of Consultation and Coordination with Allies. Contrary 

to some popular perceptions of French strategy, the use of the force 

in conjunction with allied nuclear assets was an option. As early 

as 1954, the government suggested that Alliance employment of 

nuclear weapons should be made at least “at Three” (Washington, 

London, Paris) if lack of time made NATO consultations 

impossible.118 De Gaulle went further by suggesting in his famous 

1958 memorandum a tripartite directorate where the nuclear powers 

collectively ruled the Alliance, with a coordinated nuclear planning 

and decisionmaking mechanism.119 He discussed such options with 

Presidents Dwight Eisenhower and John Kennedy. The mechanism 
71

de Gaulle envisioned would be created outside NATO and allow for 

consultations on nuclear use “anywhere in the world.”120 De Gaulle 

knew he was “asking for the moon” in 1958, but nevertheless later 

confirmed in private that he was ready to “combine” French and 

allied strategies once his country had an operational deterrent.121 In 

the first multiyear defense plan, nuclear weapons were presented 

as a way for French forces to “cooperate more efficiently siding 

with allied forces, for the defense of the free world.”122 They would 

be built and used nationally, but “of course, without refusing 

cooperation, technical or strategic, if wished by our allies.”123 It was 

thus possible to “conjugate the employment of these weapons with 

that of our allies’ same weapons in the framework of the common 

effort.”124 Since French forces were still integrated, such options were 

perfectly feasible.125 In 1964, Beaufre conceptualized this approach. 

He described a common nuclear planning mechanism, a coordinated 

“deterrent manoeuvre” in crisis time, and, if war broke out, a 

coordinated employment of nuclear forces.126 The idea appeared less 

frequently after 1966, but resurfaced around 1968 at a time when the 

French force was indisputable and the affirmation of différence less 

politically necessary.127

A Contribution to the Overall Security of the West. Beyond the 

defense of European neighbours, the force de frappe was seen in France 

as an asset for the broader transatlantic community. Beaufre and 

Aron defended the idea of the national deterrent as a contribution 

to the overall security of the West. Due to the importance of French 

military forces for the defense of NATO, a France endowed with 

independently employed nuclear weapons implied an increased 

risk of nuclear escalation and thus a better overall Alliance deterrent 

(a “multilateral deterrent”). Also, according to Beaufre, the threat 

of early French use “benefited the West by bringing an element of 

doubt into enemy calculations rather than letting them rest solely 

on the ‘reasonable’ attitude of the United States.”128 Beaufre, like 

Gallois, challenged U.S. Secretary of Defense Robert MacNamara’s 

arguments against European national nuclear forces, but in a 

positive and constructive way: “It is because the French force blurs 

the American game that it gives back the American game the atom 

of credibility that it lacked.”129 For Beaufre, an alliance of nuclear 
72

powers brought more deterrence power than a nuclear protectorate 

or even a “multilateral force.”130

While dismissing the value of the Alliance per se, Gallois used 

similar arguments. He argued that, in a situation of approximate 

parity, the main adversary had to take into account the existence 

of a third nuclear power which created an “imbalance” detrimental 

to the management of the main adversarial relationship, since the 

smaller power could cripple the bigger one.131

 De Gaulle adopted this logic.132 With Eisenhower he emphasized 

that an “additional deterrent” posed a problem for the Union of 

Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR).133 He thought that the mere 

possibility that France would open nuclear fire to protect Germany 

could not fail but be taken into account by Moscow.134 French 

nuclear weapons “introduce[d] in a dangerous world a new and 

powerful element of wisdom and circumspection.”135 This was 

acknowledged by the 1972 White Paper: “Western Europe . . . cannot 

but indirectly benefit from French strategy which constitutes a stable 

and determining factor of security in Europe . . . national as it is, our 

nuclear deterrent force is an element that cannot but matter to the 

prevention of a crisis in Europe.”136 Likewise, Chirac said in 1975 that 

the existence of French tactical nuclear weapons was a contribution 

to the security of Europe.137

 A “Trigger” to Force U.S. Intervention? One of the most original 

and hotly debated features of French nuclear thinking was the idea 

that France would be a possible detonator or trigger (détonateur, or 

sometimes gâchette) for the use of U.S. nuclear forces in defense of 

Europe if deterrence failed. Consistent with French strategy, the 

logic was that the United States would delay, if not refuse, the use 

of nuclear forces in case of a Soviet invasion. Initial nuclear use by 

France, however, would project the conflict into the nuclear realm. 

France’s deterrent force was thus equivalent to the primary stage of 

a thermonuclear weapon. As National Assembly member Alexandre 

Sanguinetti colorfully put it, this was about “forbidding to the Great 

[Powers] the delights of classical war on the European territory.”138

This concept has been the subject of many misunderstandings 

and errors of interpretation that began with the origin of the concept. 

Many, including Gallois, have attributed the concept to Aron and 

Beaufre. Indeed, Aron described it in his 1964 book.139 But he sees its 
73

origins in U.S. perceptions. In fact, the idea was already present in 

the transatlantic debates of the late 1950s, and some Fourth Republic 

politicians toyed with it.140 Gallois himself, who was one of the most 

vocal opponent of this idea, had discussed it at length in his 1960 

Stratégie de l’âge nucléaire, suggesting that it justified the British 

program, thus not rejecting it entirely.141 At the time, Gavois was still 

a friend of Aron, who claimed later that he never embraced it.142 As 

per Beaufre, he completely repudiated the concept.143

 This misunderstanding stems partly from the fact that there are 

two possible interpretations of the concept. Aron and Beaufre did 

not see the employment of French nuclear weapons as a means to 

force the United States into using nuclear weapons for the defense 

of Europe. They saw the existence of French nuclear weapons as a 

contribution to overall Western deterrence, akin to the UK “second 

center of decision” theory. Beaufre also thought that “in crisis time, 

the existence of the third partner allows its powerful ally to intervene 

only in second position.”144 Thus their perspectives were the reverse 

of the “hard” trigger interpretation, it was a priori (deterrence) as 

opposed to a posteriori (use), and in some circumstances it was 

supposed to give the United States more freedom of action, not less.

145

Beaufre mentions one hypothetical situation that entails a less benign 

version of the concept. In a crisis between the weak and the strong, 

in a situation of strategic balance, the “powerful ally” would have to 

intervene in the crisis.146

 Another misunderstanding is about how far French policymakers 

actually embraced the concept. Prime Minister Debré, for instance, 

denied that it had any official value.147 This must be strongly 

qualified. First, French leaders believed in the “soft” or Aron/

Beaufre interpretation.148 Second, testimonies have revealed that de 

Gaulle did subscribe to the “hard” interpretation of the concept, and 

referred to it many times in private.149 “The Alliance does not oblige 

[the United States] to be at our sides immediately, with all their might 

and all their weapons. That is why our atomic force is necessary. It 

is a triggering and driving force. It’s the starter.”150 He once used 

words nearly identical to those of Gallois: “They have understood 

that we now have the finger on the trigger . . . We are becoming 

as redoubtable as a man walking in an ammunitions depot with a 

lighter. . . . Of course, if he lights it up, he’ll be the first to blow. But 
74

he will also blow all those around.”151 Giscard referred at least twice 

to de Gaulle’s belief in the trigger concept.152

 De Gaulle also specifically justified the existence of tactical 

nuclear weapons by this function.153 The views expressed by Chief 

of Defense Fourquet in 1969, are in tune with this interpretation and 

refer to the “driving effect” (effet d’entraînement) on the Alliance that 

the massive use of French tactical nuclear weapons (TNW) would 

have close to the battle lines.154 They were reaffirmed by the Army 

Chief of Staff in 1975, when he stated that the role of TNW was not 

only to pose a problem to the adversary but also to force the Allies 

to renounce flexible response, to the goal of true deterrence: massive 

retaliation.155

Differences between the French and British Approaches.

 Overall, this contribution to the security of Europe and the 

Atlantic Alliance may sound close to the UK position. There are 

many similarities between the French and UK nuclear philosophies. 

The importance of nuclear weapons for international prestige and the 

fear of being relegated to second-rank allies if London did not have 

its own nuclear weapons were discussed in UK government circles 

after the war. The need to be a major power again after the trauma 

of Suez, was present in the UK debates of the 1950s.156 Common 

doctrinal tenets include the “proportionality” and “intolerable 

damage” concepts. Lesser known is the UK’s endorsement of its 

potential ability to do enough damage to the Soviet Union to create 

an imbalance in the U.S.-Soviet face-off, which would be a factor in 

deterrence.157

 However, at least three features distinguished France’s nuclear 

program as it developed after 1958, from that of the United Kingdom. 

Where the British emphasized Alliance security and solidarity, the 

French emphasized national independence. De Gaulle rarely justified 

the French bomb with the “second center of decision” argument. As 

stated above, he did not view the emerging force de frappe as having 

an exclusively national focus. He could foresee, like some of his 

predecessors, a situation where French nuclear forces would be 

combined with those of the United Kingdom and the United States. 

On this point, he was in tune with the views of Beaufre, who was 
75

enthusiastic about the “second center” argument.158 But for French 

political leaders in the 1960s and 1970s, Alliance solidarity was never 

a prime rationale for the French bomb, in their public discourse, or 

policymaking. UK forces were “by default” integrated in a NATO 

context, and, conceptually, a strictly national use would have 

been an exception. By contrast, the default position of the French 

forces was a national use, and only if necessary and feasible would 

coordination have taken place. A paradox here is that the “second 

center” argument was more valid for France, a country probably 

deemed by the Soviet leadership to be more independent than the 

United Kingdom. 

 Where the British emphasized independence of the authority 

to use the weapons, the French emphasized independence in toto, 

including operations and procurement once it was evident that no 

U.S.-French cooperation was possible in mutually acceptable terms.159

In the absence of Alliance reform post-1967, it was inconceivable that 

French nuclear weapons would be formally coordinated with U.S. 

and UK weapons through formal NATO procedures. De Gaulle 

thought that the British model did not allow for a truly independent 

use of nuclear weapons.160 Sir Michael Quinlan argued that there are 

two forms of independence in the nuclear arena. One is the British 

model, based on independent authority of use. The other is the 

French model, based on maximal independence in all dimensions 

from procurement to operations. In this respect, independence is not 

unlike the two traditional designs of classical gardens; à la française

and à l’anglaise. 

 Finally, where the British emphasized the importance of being 

a nuclear power in order to influence U.S. policy, the French 

emphasized the importance of being a nuclear power to avoid 

being influenced by U.S. policy. Thus, while adopting the same 

basic rationale that going nuclear would change each country’s 

relationship with the United States, the political justifications offered 

by the two European countries were exact opposites.

Evolutions of Official Thinking after the Gaullist Years.

 In the 1970s, things evolved somewhat differently from what 

early French thinkers and officials envisioned. Tous azimuts was less 
76

frequently mentioned in official statements.161 The trigger concept in 

its pure form fell from grace. While consultation was not excluded, 

the coordination option was discarded and engulfed by the U.S.-

French rift of the mid-1960s.162 French leaders consistently referred 

to the “independence of decision” insofar as the employment of 

strategic nuclear forces was concerned. Consultation and perhaps 

coordination for the employment of tactical nuclear forces in Europe 

was still an option, but one that was rarely mentioned publicly.163

However, three features remained. 

 One was the idea that French nuclear forces protected more 

than the national territory. This concept was further expounded by 

Prime Minister Chirac in 1975 (“We cannot content ourselves with 

‘sanctuarizing’ our own territory.”164) Under Giscard, the idea of 

participating directly to the forward defense of Europe was clearly 

accepted, and in 1976, Chief of Defense Staff Méry went as far as 

using the expression “enlarged sanctuarization,” which was the 

closest France ever came to declaring an explicit extended deterrent 

posture, with the exception of the 1963 offer.165 In 1977, Prime 

Minister Barre explained, as de Gaulle and Pompidou had before 

him, that due to France’s geographical position, the fate of nearby 

countries would immediately affect her in case of war. According 

to him, France would be directly affected by aggression in Europe. 

Therefore, her vital interests had to include “neighboring and allied 

territories.”166 In 1980, Giscard confirmed that if the time came to 

think about the employment of tactical nuclear weapons, France 

would take into account the fact that it was “directly concerned with 

the security of neighboring European States.”167 And Barre stated 

even more clearly that aggression against “our vital interests in 

Europe” would trigger massive retaliation.168

 The second feature that remained was the idea that French 

nuclear forces made a significant contribution to the overall security 

of NATO, notably by adding a margin of uncertainty in the eyes of 

Soviet planners. As is well-known, this was recognized at the 1974 

Ottawa North Atlantic Council meeting, where 16 allies declared 

that the French and UK independent nuclear forces contributed to 

the “overall strengthening of the deterrence of the Alliance.”169

 The third feature was the related idea that the existence of French 

nuclear forces was enough to create an imbalance detrimental to the 

bipolar order, but beneficial to overall deterrence. Méry said in 1977 
77

that the “damage that we could cause to either superpower would 

immediately place it in such a situation of imbalance regarding 

the other superpower that it is doubtful that either could afford to 

tolerate suffering that damage at any time.”170 Barre said at the same 

time that “the amount of damage we can cause is . . . sufficient in 

itself and even more, concerning the great nuclear powers, because 

of the decisive imbalance that it could introduce in their contest 

among equals (duel paritaire).”171

SECTION V: FORGING THE DOCTRINE: TACTICAL NUCLEAR 

WEAPONS OR THE CRUX OF THE MATTER 

As in the United States and the United Kingdom, in France the 

role of TNW was the object of much controversy during the Cold 

War, and their official function evolved significantly over the years. 

In fact, as in the NATO context, the role of TNW was at the core of 

the French nuclear strategy debate, both in terms of how the use of 

nuclear weapons was conceived, and in terms of their role for the 

security of Europe. 

A War-Fighting Tool? 

 De Gaulle’s initial views on TNW appeared simple. In 1961, he 

wanted France “to get atomic projectiles, strategic and tactical.” 

A decision in principle for the procurement of TNW was made in 

1963.172 In 1964, he made it clear to his military staff that the French 

counteroffensive in a European war would be “all means included, 

with all classical and atomic fire support.”173 TNW were apparently 

a war-fighting tool, a bonus with no particular importance (although 

he thought that the use of TNW in Europe would necessarily lead 

to a strategic exchange, and envisioned the concept of a nuclear 

“warning shot” as early as 1964174). After the withdrawal from the 

NATO integrated structure, many in the French leadership saw the 

procurement of tactical nuclear weaponry as a necessity, in order to 

replace U.S. weapons previously at the disposal of French ground and 

air forces and to avoid lacking a military tool that all other European 

armies had.175 The armed forces were, of course, interested.176 While 

mindful of the fact that France’s fissile material stocks were limited, 
78

de Gaulle agreed to the development of a significant TNW program. 

He was keen to give a boost to the post-Algeria Army’s morale.177

But for him, true deterrence resided in strategic weapons, and at that 

time he did not think that TNW reinforced deterrence.178

 Meanwhile, the government defended the idea that TNW were 

a complement to strategic deterrence and were not to be seen as a 

war-fighting device. One rationale was to deter the possibility of an 

attack designed to annihilate the French battle corps.179

 De Gaulle’s last statements on the subject show that he attached 

considerably greater importance to these weapons, perhaps because 

of NATO’s adoption of flexible response in 1968. Privately he went 

as far as telling General de Boissieu, soon to be Army Chief of Staff, 

and also his stepson: 

For, from the time when the 1st Army and the tactical air forces will have 

tactical atomic [weaponry], the Alliance will not be able to envision our 

manoeuvre forces only with their conventional means. You will have to 

let [them] know that you envision counterattacking with the support of 

our tactical nuclear forces. Thus if the allied high command needs this 

only strategic reserve in Europe, it will have to decide employing its 

nuclear fires beforehand or at the same time. Believe me, tactical atomic 

[weaponry] is an essential component of our defense system. If one day 

you have to choose, due to lack of credits, between strategic and tactical 

atomic [weaponry], choose the latter, for it is better to perfect what is 

happening before the Apocalypse than the Apocalypse itself.180

The emphasis on the “trigger” function is certainly one of the reasons 

why he attached great importance to the political control of TNW 

use.181 Such statements confirm that France was not necessarily ready 

to conduct immediate strategic reprisals in case of Soviet aggression 

in Europe, and that the first French use of nuclear weapons would 

have been with tactical, not strategic. Of course, one cannot exclude 

the possibility that de Gaulle was trying to please the Army by 

overstating the role of these weapons. But then again, since these 

views were translated into operational guidance, they represented 

official policy.

Attempts to Define a Specific TNW Doctrine.

 The emerging TNW doctrine was fuzzy, to say the least. In 1968, 

Defense Minister Messmer emphasized their nuclear nature but also 
79

stated that, since classical forces would be equipped with them, there 

would be less and less difference between conventional and nuclear 

weapons.182 In the planning staff, Poirier described the endowment of 

the First Army (the bulk of the French land forces) with TNW as a tool 

to “test” the enemy’s intentions, forcing the enemy to increase the 

means he engaged in battle. He also discussed their use as a possible 

“warning shot” to the attacking Soviet forces if Moscow attacked 

French lines and approached the national borders.183 However, in 

a famous 1969 speech, Chief of Defense Staff Fourquet distanced 

himself from the Poirier concept. He emphasized the importance 

of TNW to fight the Soviet armies. Their use would be a second test 

of enemy intentions, conducted with “maximum efficiency,” and 

manifest France’s will to resist. In contrast, Poirier wanted a strictly 

political use of these weapons to avoid a conventional battle.184

The White Paper was in-between these two approaches. It referred 

to the original test concept, that TNW would be used if the enemy 

could not be “contained,” thus letting him “know that if his military 

pressure were to continue, the recourse to strategic nuclear weapons 

would be ineluctable.”185

 After de Gaulle, the doctrine zigzagged for several years. 

Confusion reigned. Emphasis on war-fighting, then gave way to 

the primacy of the political function of TNW. In the early 1970s, 

there was a flexible response temptation. Pompidou hinted at 

least once to TNW giving France the means of a “flexible response 

(réponse flexible).”186 Also, Giscard and Chirac emphasized the 

specific deterrent role of TNW for contingencies where the threat 

of a strategic response was not credible, and the “more nuanced” 

strategy that would result from the possession of these weapons, 

which helped avoiding the “all or nothing” dilemma.187

 In the mid-1970s, French political leaders consistently referred to 

a dual role of “deterrence” and “war-fighting” (bataille).188 Deterrence 

encapsulated the test function. In 1975, Chirac described at length 

the Poirier test function. The endowment of the French 1st Army 

(the bulk of France’s land defense forces, based on conscription) 

with Pluton missiles was meant to dissipate all ambiguities in the 

adversary’s mind if he underestimated Paris’s resolve. The message 

to Soviet forces approaching the 1st Army lines was both “you are 

entering the domain of nuclear combat” and “you are not going to 
80

fight French forces: you are going to fight a country.” It was meant to 

make it clear that engaging the 1st Army meant engaging a nuclear 

France. But the Pluton was also described as a war-fighting weapon. 

This marked a departure from the Poirier warning shot.189 Giscard 

emphasized the term “battle” in his defense policy speeches, and 

referred to nuclear weapons as the “most advanced” weapons. He 

once said the employment of TNW was akin to that of―horresco 

referens―an “artillery.”190 He clearly separated TNW from strategic 

deterrence and referred to them as a means of “protection.”191 At that 

time the warning shot concept was twisted in a way that gave the 

impression that it had as much military as political value. Fourquet’s 

successor, General Maurin, mentioned the use of TNW as a “halting 

strike” (coup d’arrêt). Halting provided a pause in the enemy’s 

aggression and gave him a chance to reconsider his plans, a concept 

close to NATO’s guidelines for initial nuclear use.192 Meanwhile, 

the trigger concept had not disappeared. A few days after leaving 

his Army Chief of Staff post, Boissieu, faithful to the memory of his 

stepfather, reiterated publicly and forcefully the role of TNW as a 

trigger of Alliance nuclear escalation, and as a way to force NATO 

into going back to “real” deterrence.193

 The 5-year defense plan adopted in 1976 contained these 

ambiguities and did not clarify them, saying that the presence 

of TNW in the battle corps added to both their deterrence and 

warfighting abilities. But the plan also stated that the use of TNW 

would set the record straight vis-à-vis an adversary who had 

misjudged the frontier of French vital interests or its determination 

to defend them.194

A Political Tool: Emergence of the “Final Warning” Concept. 

 Beginning in 1976 the political function of TNW and its link with 

strategic weapons was increasingly emphasized, especially with the 

emergence of the concept of “final warning.” In 1976 Méry said that 

TNW would be used primarily to indicate a change in nature of the 

conflict.195 In 1977 Barre referred to TNW as being first, weapons 

of deterrence, and if deterrence failed, being secondarily weapons 

that provided a “last and solemn appropriate warning, before the 
81

Apocalypse.”196 Elements of war-fighting had disappeared from 

the doctrine, and the nuclear nature of TNW was increasingly 

emphasized over its tactical character. The “final warning” would 

be the defining rationale for French TNW. This was not exactly the 

warning shot envisioned by Poirier because the policy continued to 

emphasize the need for a significant military effect of TNW use. Nor 

was it a mere imitation of NATO doctrine. There could only be one

warning, and the idea of “restoring deterrence” was, at the time, 

emphatically rejected in the official rhetoric.197

SECTION VI: OUTCOME: 

ASSURED DESTRUCTION A LA FRANÇAISE

How far were these concepts translated into actual nuclear 

force posture and targeting? The first French nuclear test, dubbed 

Gerboise Bleue and supervised by General Ailleret, was a success.198

In December 1960, a plan to develop a bomber and submarine force 

armed with fission and thermonuclear weapons was voted by the 

Parliament. A 36 Mirage-IV nuclear bomber force was set up between 

1964 and 1966. The production of ballistic missiles went fast. Based on 

preliminary studies and tests conducted during the Fourth Republic, 

the space and ballistic program initiated in 1960 came to fruition in 

1964. After some difficulties, the first thermonuclear test was done 

in 1968. Initially just an interim solution before the sea-based leg 

matured, 18 ground-based missiles were deployed in 1971-72.199 The 

first fleet ballistic missile submarine (SSBN) went on alert in 1972. 

Thus less than 15 years after de Gaulle’s return to power, France 

became the third country to develop an operational triad of strategic 

nuclear forces. 

The Definition and Evolution of French Targeting Doctrine. 

 As a nuclear power, France came of age later than its Anglo-Saxon 

allies. Its initial reflections about targeting were less influenced by 

air power debates and the experience of World War II than these 

reflections had been in the United Kingdom.200

 The French debate on the best way to implement “proportionality 

to the stake of the conflict” targeting had two starting points. First 
82

was the consensus on targeting cities. For many such as Gallois, the 

anti-cities strategy was deterrence in its purest form. Flexibility and 

counterforce were degradations of the very essence of deterrence, 

and the art of military operations was meaningless when applied 

to nuclear weapons.201 Gallois also used classical arguments such as 

the mobility of adverse forces, and the risk of striking empty silos.202

Most experts believed that targeting cities was the only way to ensure 

damage of sufficient scope to deter the adversary. The U.S. debates 

on the credibility of massive countercities strikes were deemed not 

applicable to small European countries whose very survival were 

at stake in an East-West conflict.203 In the United Kingdom, such 

arguments were apparently not as powerful. Early UK targeting 

debates, within Royal Air Force circles, focused on targeting Soviet 

air bases.204

 The second starting point was the so-called “equivalence” 

concept. In a war with the Soviet Union, the stake would be no less 

than the existence of France itself. So, the damage sought had to be 

equivalent to the destruction of France in demographic, economic, or 

even geographic terms. The genesis of this idea is hard to retrace. 

Some early French works on nuclear strategy mentioned it.205 De 

Gaulle endorsed it. He told the Council of Ministers in January 1963 

that the nuclear force made it possible “to kill as many Russians as 

there are French” thus bringing the “certainty that they would not 

attack.”206 The White Paper alluded to it indirectly when it suggested 

that France, being only a medium power, did not need an arsenal 

equivalent to that of the great powers. The concept continued to 

appear episodically over the years, in particular in the writings of 

Gallois207 and was mentioned by Giscard after leaving office: “French 

nuclear forces have been calculated to permit reaching a population 

of the adversary of the same order as that of our own country. If 

France were destroyed, our adversary would lose the equivalent of 

France.”208

 However, public discourse and expert analysis on targeting 

strategies remained rather vague, if not confusing. Populations per 

se, cities, Soviet “potential,” “economic function,” “resources,” “vital 

centers,” or “vital works” were referred to alternatively.209 One reason 

was that many in France placed a higher value on the psychological 

than on the physical underpinnings of deterrence. De Gaulle said 
83

at the end of his 1956 meeting with Gallois that a French deterrent 

only needed to “tear an arm” of the aggressor.210 He enjoyed such 

vague expressions as “frightful destructions,” “deadly wound,” 

“destructions beyond repair” or “frightful wounds.”211 In his 1960 

book, Gallois emphasized the need to target the “demographic 

system” of the adversary but also interchangeably referred to 

population and cities’ targeting as the most potent and cost-effective 

deterrent and suggested “frightful reprisals.”212 For him, the goal 

was to “break the political and social structure” of the adverse 

country.213

 Two points are clear. First, historical evidence shows that, 

contrary to popular beliefs, French leaders, from the onset, were 

interested in targeting the Soviet economy as much as its population. 

In 1961, de Gaulle mentioned the planned French ability to threaten 

“about 65 percent of the Soviet potential” by 1965.214 His instructions 

given in December of that year were to “inflict to the Soviet Union 

a notable reduction, that is, about 50 percent, of its economic 

function.”215 In private conversations, he also alluded to the fact that 

a French strike would destroy many “kombinats, dams, and power 

plants.”216 In 1962, he said that France would soon be able to kill “20 

million” and mentioned the goal of threatening 25-50 percent of the 

adversary’s population.

217 The next year, he referred to the potential 

of killing “40 to 50 million” by 1971.218 These were private statements. 

Publicly, he just mentioned the “sombre and terrible capacity [of the 

French force] to destroy in a few instants millions and millions of 

people.”219 For his part, Prime minister Messmer referred to cities as 

being both “demographic and industrial targets.”220 A decade later, 

Prime minister Barre referred to “the major urban concentrations of 

an adverse nation, where the greatest share of its demographic and 

economic power is concentrated.”221

 Second, it is possible to say that the original targeting guidance 

focused on 20-40 cities. “It is probable that a few tens of projectiles 

or thermonuclear warheads” would be enough, said Gallois.222 He 

regularly mentioned about 30 cities as targets.223 In 1961, de Gaulle 

mentioned the planned French ability to “destroy 20 Russian cities” 

by 1962.224 Such a number corresponded to early U.S. and UK strategic 

planning.225 But it may also have been derived from a calculation 
84

based on the “equivalence” concept, since it was predicted that 

about 30 thermonuclear weapons could destroy France.226 De Gaulle 

referred several times to Moscow, Leningrad, Odessa, and Kiev as 

prime targets.227 An example of early French nuclear planning might 

include six to seven bombs on Moscow, two to three on each major 

city, and one on a dozen other significant Western Soviet cities. 

By the mid-1970s, under Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, the first 

post-Gaullist President, some attention was apparently given to 

a diversification of targets. As a result, targeting policy may have 

become “less demographic, more economic.” The 1977-82 Defense 

Plan contained no explicit reference to cities. Strategic targeting 

was described as “the annihilation of vital targets.”228 Open sources 

offered a variety of rationales for a shift in targeting. One was the 

fear that Moscow would develop large-scale civil defense and antiballistic programs to ensure, directly or indirectly, the protection of 

the Soviet population. In March 1977, Chief of Staff Méry remarked 

that some key economic assets were located in low-population zones, 

which implied that alternative targeting policies were possible.229

This was not an isolated trial balloon. Other MoD officials publicly 

hinted at such a shift for the same reason, and emphasized the 

difference between anti-cities and anti-demographic targeting.230

A major parliamentary report issued in 1980 suggested the same 

rationale, and added others: the fact that the Soviet leadership would 

not necessarily be deterred by threats against its population, and the 

bonus added by a strategy that made economic recovery difficult.231

Clearly such ideas were being widely debated in policy circles. A final 

rationale―stated a posteriori―was based on ethical grounds. Giscard 

said that, when in office, he refused to give targeting instructions 

in the form of a percentage of the Soviet population. His guidance 

was “the destruction of 40 percent of Soviet economic capabilities 

before the Urals, and the disorganization of the country’s leadership 

apparatus.”232

There is little evidence of the extent to which this orientation 

translated into operational planning. In fact, Giscard continued to 

refer to demographic targeting after he left office. One unconfirmed 

source said he asked the Joint Staff in March 1980 to “submit to 

his approval diversified objectives that would not exclusively 

concern big agglomerations, but be directed at targets such as 
85

military installations, centers of economic activity, and perhaps 

secondary cities.”233 One thing is clear. By 1980, official references 

to demographic targeting per se had disappeared, replaced by the 

mention of “cities” and “the economy” of the aggressor.234

 All in all, the best overall characterization of French targeting 

philosophy at that time might be “no-counterforce,” since the 

option to target Soviet nuclear forces was consistently opposed 

by French officials. Such an option was judged not efficient (the 

Gallois arguments), not faithful to the principles of deterrence (a 

“warfighting strategy” according to Barre) or inapplicable to France 

because, for geographical reasons, any major war in Europe engaged 

its vital interests.235

Thermonuclear Weapons, Multiple Independent Reentry Vehicles 

(MIRV), and the Road to “Sufficiency.”

 In the mid-1970s, megaton-yield warheads were introduced 

simultaneously on the ground leg (the S3 IRBM) and on the sea leg 

(the M20 sea launched ballistic missiles [SLBM]) of the French triad. 

This change, combined with the entry into service of additional 

SSBNs, led to a dramatic increase in France’s total explosive nuclear 

yield (20 Mt in 1974, 84 Mt in 1981). There were hints at a threshold 

being crossed.236

 France had sought thermonuclear warheads since 1960, in 

particular to have the same means as its allies. But the deployment of 

the new systems was also part of an acquisition strategy designed to 

evade Soviet defenses, notably through hardening and penetration 

aids. The TN61 warhead deployed in the late 1970s was the first 

French warhead that fully took into account Soviet defenses. The 

need to penetrate such defenses was a prime rationale for the 

development of MIRV loading, with a considerable increase of the 

number of warheads.237

 The MIRV program may be evidence that Moscow was a key 

objective. Being both the capital and the most populated of Soviet 

cities, it was a lucrative target. One boatload of 96 MIRVed warheads 

was judged sufficient to degrade Soviet defenses.238 However, what 

the UK called the “Moscow criterion” may not have been as central 

for Paris as it was for London. France had a larger force than its 
86

neighbor, and its “mini-triad” symbolized that it considered itself 

a “mini-superpower.” Remaining the third nuclear power was 

important for political leaders in the 1970s. France was able to inflict 

massive damage to the adversary, not necessarily focusing on the 

capital as the United Kingdom might have done in its national 

targeting plans. And the efforts to evade defenses may have been 

designed to counter possible future Soviet defenses beyond the 

Moscow region. 

 The notion of “unbearable” or “intolerable” damage to the Soviet 

Union, out of proportion with the stake of a conflict, became the 

main factor in defining the level of the French nuclear arsenal. The 

idea of bringing destruction that was considered unbearable by the 

adversary was already present in the 1960s speeches of political 

leaders.239 Poirier introduced the expression “intolerable damage” 

in France in 1972.240 In 1981, the expression became “unbearable 

damage.”241

 The required quantity and quality of weaponry for such a goal 

would be called “sufficiency.” This captured two ideas. One was a 

rejection of overkill. It was a Gallic version of finite or minimum 

deterrence. As stated above, de Gaulle said that “since a man and 

a country can only die but once, deterrence exists as soon as one 

can mortally wound the potential aggressor.”242 The other idea 

was a rejection of parity.243 This, too, was linked with the notion of 

proportionality but in a different way. Parity was rejected on several 

accounts. France had no counterforce strategy and thus did not 

need to take into account the force levels of the adversary. It was 

not a major power and thus did not need parity for political reasons. 

Finally, it did not have the means to develop an arsenal as important 

as the U.S. or Soviet ones.244 As de Gaulle had stated in 1962: “We 

do not have the ambition to make a force as powerful as those of the 

Americans or the Soviets, but a force proportionate to our means, 

our needs, and our size.” A few months later, he said: “The question 

is not to raise ourselves at the same level as the others. The question 

is to represent a reprisals capability sufficient to have [the adversary] 

renounce to his aggression.”245 Such a vocabulary was widely used in 

the early 1970s. Poirier referred to a “necessary but sufficient” level 

of weaponry.246 President Pompidou used a similar vocabulary.247

“Sufficiency” came into use later in the decade.248
87

“Unbearable” Damage? 

Was the strategy credible? A firm answer to this question would 

require a thorough historical research of Soviet perceptions of French 

Cold War policies. One thing that can be tested, however, is the 

coherence of intentions and capabilities. 

Platforms Nominal payload System range

Total operationally 

available warheads 

(max.) / Yield249

Total 

yield

1967

36 MirageIVA1x AN21 bomb ~3,000 km250 36 AN21 (60 kt) 2.16 Mt

36 36 2.16 Mt

1974

36 MirageIVA

18 IRBM silos

2-3 SSBNs 

1x AN22 bomb

1x S2 IRBM

16x M1/M2 SLBM

~3,000 km 

3,000 km

2,500/3,000 km

36 AN22 (60 kt)

18 MR31 (150 kt)

32 MR41 (500 kt)

2.16 Mt

2.7 Mt

16 Mt

56-57 86 20.86 Mt

1981

36 MirageIVA

18 IRBM silos 

4-5 SSBNs 

1x AN22 bomb

1x S3 IRBM

16x M20 SLBM

~3,000 km 

3,500 km

3,000+ km

36 AN22 (60 kt)

18 TN61 (1 Mt)

64 TN60/61 (1Mt)

2.16 Mt

18 Mt

64 Mt

58-59 118 84.16 Mt

Table 1. Evolution of French Strategic Nuclear Forces.

 Calculating the exact effects of a massive nuclear strike is no 

small feat, and involves many debatable assumptions. For U.S. 

Defense Secretary MacNamara’s team, destroying only 30 percent of 

the Soviet population and 75 percent of its industry required no less 

than about 400 megaton-equivalent (MTE).251 And in 1966, to destroy 

22.5 percent of the Soviet population and 52.4 percent of its industrial 

production reportedly meant destroying 100 cities.252 France at that 

time, with its 36 Mirage-4s armed with circa. 60-kt weapons, was 

obviously unable of producing such results. Assuming about 30 

aircraft dropped their bombs, they would inflict damage on up to 30 

cities. By 1970, according to Poirier, France had the capacity of killing 
88

only 14-18 millions Soviets with a 50 percent probability of success.253

However, additional data and more optimistic calculations provided 

in 1974 by a U.S. analyst allows for a different perspective.254

Percent Percent Percent Number of

Number of Total of Urban of 1-Megaton 

of cities Population Population Population Industry Warheads 

Needed 

10 main 21 million 8.8% 15.7% 25% 31

30 main- 33 million 13.8% 24.5% 25-40% 57

Western part

30 main 37 million 15.4% 27.3% 25-40% ~60

50 main 46 million 19.1% 33.8% 40-50% 85

Table 2.

 From these numbers several conclusions can be inferred. First, 

whatever the deterrent power of French nuclear weapons up until 

the late 1970s, they did not fulfill the objectives stated by the political 

authorities. Second, by 1980-81, with 82 one-megaton warheads 

on line (plus 36 bombs), the situation changed dramatically. By 

that time, France was fulfilling the “equivalence” criterion and was 

able to threaten the rough equivalent of its population. This met de 

Gaulle’s 1961-62 criteria of being able to target half of the Russian 

population.256 In fact, the French came very close to meeting 

MacNamara’s assured destruction criteria in their latest and least 

ambitious variant, assuming it was able to target the 50 main Soviet 

cities.257 This last point warrants further historical research. It may be 

just a coincidence, it may also be a direct imitation of U.S. strategy, 

or it may be the product of identical judgements made by France and 

the United States on what would have been “unacceptable” to the 

Soviet Union whatever the stake of the conflict. 

SECTION VII: ASSESSMENT: THE ORIGINS OF FRENCH 

NUCLEAR STRATEGY 

 The five experts identified above played a role in forging the 

French strategy, but their reputation in France and abroad is 

overvalued. In contrast, the importance of other inputs (U.S. and 
89

UK in particular), is underestimated. Other key factors in designing 

French strategy include de Gaulle’s personal preferences and the 

financial and technical resources available. 

The Diverse Impact of French Thinkers. 

The Overvalued Role of Gallois. Pierre-Marie Gallois (the only air 

force officer among the group) was, of course, a key element. He 

had numerous personal meetings with many top French officials, 

including de Gaulle and Premiers Mendès-France and Mollet.258

He undoubtedly made an impact on political decisionmaking by 

helping to build a consensus on developing nuclear weapons. Also, 

some concepts that can be attributed to Gallois made their way into 

the French strategic culture. One is the idea that deterrence should 

and could only be national. As stated in the 1972 White Paper, “the 

nuclear risk cannot be shared.”259 Another is the more elaborate 

concept which states that the existence of a small nuclear force could 

create a situation detrimental to the Soviet Union in its face-off with 

the United States. Gallois may also have been the first author to 

introduce the expressions “vital interests” and “sanctuary.” While 

the latter faded from the official vocabulary, the former became a 

central feature of the doctrine.260

 But Gallois does not deserve his reputation as the father of 

French nuclear doctrine. Stratégie de l’âge nucléaire, published in 1960, 

has often been considered the textbook of French strategy. While 

this book was important in popularizing the emerging nuclear 

policy debates, only a few lines in it are devoted to the possibility 

of an independent French bomb. Although de Gaulle reportedly 

read and approved many of his publications, the two generals, who 

were of different generations, never developed a close personal 

relationship.261

 Gallois’ ideas were, in fact, a caricature of French thinking. 

Whereas de Gaulle thought that nuclear weapons and integration

were incompatible, Gallois suggested that nuclear weapons and 

alliances were incompatible. MacNamara thought that small 

independent nuclear forces were “prone to obsolescence, and lacking 

in credibility.”262 Gallois, in essence, reversed the argument, saying 

that nuclear weapons made alliances obsolete and not credible in 
90

a time of mutual vulnerability.263 He derided the planned NATO 

Multilateral Force by calling it the “multilateral farce.” He carried all 

his arguments to the extreme. For him, the concept of “imbalance” was 

a possible justification of nuclear proliferation. An early proponent 

of the “more may be better” thesis, he was invited to Baghdad to 

give lectures.264 Whereas Ailleret thought that flexible response was 

not applicable to the European continent, Gallois was of the opinion 

that the doctrine just did not make sense.265 Whereas de Gaulle left 

himself a margin of manoeuvre in case of a strictly conventional 

attack, Gallois thought that massive reprisals should be automatic. 

For him, there was no flexibility, refinement, or significant role for 

conventional forces: “all or nothing.”266 Deterrence was a pure contest 

of wills between two nations, the ultimate exercise in brinkmanship. 

For him, what mattered the most in the deterrence calculus was 

that even though the probability of massive retaliation by the weak 

might be small, the penalty was so huge that this small probability 

was enough to guarantee that the strong would not attack. As one 

commentator later put it, “Gallois preferred retaliation so automatic 

that no unfriendly nation would dare be provocative, but even a 

small risk of retaliation might be sufficient.”267

It should thus come as no surprise that Gallois ended up 

disagreeing strongly with many features of French strategy as it 

developed and matured. These included the “trigger” concept, 

the notion that the French force could protect more than just the 

national territory, and the development of a specific tactical nuclear 

weapons doctrine. Thus the only concepts that are truly original in 

French nuclear thinking were precisely the ones that were the most 

adamantly opposed by Gallois.

The Underappreciated Contribution of Beaufre. What of the other 

four major intellectual players―Ailleret, Poirier, Aron and Beaufre? 

Charles Ailleret played a very important role. He was a key 

lobbyist for the French nuclear program. He clearly understood 

the value of nuclear weapons for strategic bombing, for operations 

on the battlefield, and for deterrence. He was among those who 

persuaded de Gaulle to build tactical nuclear weapons. He was also 

a key operator in the nuclear program, from his days as head of the 

Army’s Special Weapons Command, to his responsibilities for the 

preparation of the first nuclear tests and his tenure of head of the 
91

armed forces after 1962. But he did not have any significant input in 

the definition of the key concepts of French strategic nuclear doctrine 

apart, perhaps, for his early use of the expression “vital works” of 

the aggressor as prime targets. 

 Lucien Poirier was a significant operator and particularly valuable 

in the internal formalization of French doctrine through his writings. 

Many of his articles were co-authored with Ministry of Defense 

(MoD) colleagues between 1966 and 1968.268 The conclusions of these 

documents were reportedly approved by de Gaulle.269 His “test” and 

“warning shot” dual rationale for tactical nuclear weapons were 

included in the 1972 White Paper. But the “warning shot” had been 

envisioned by de Gaulle at least as early as 1964, and the French 

TNW doctrine evolved in a way that Poirier did not approve, in 

that it eventually emphasized the need to achieve effective military 

results. More generally, his influence was a bit overvalued because 

of his prolific and intellectually ambitious writings.270

 Raymond Aron was of two minds concerning France’s nuclear 

effort. He saw it as a means to force the United States into sharing 

nuclear technology and having a meaningful dialogue with them on 

strategic issues. He viewed it as a possible prelude to a European 

deterrent, as well as an insurance policy against “the imprevisibility 

of the diplomatic future.”271 He also recognized that it could be in 

some respects a contribution to Alliance security. But he became the 

most vocal opponent of the emerging French doctrine. Originally 

a close friend of Gallois, he later called him the “world champion 

of dogmatism” and his theses a “logical delirium.”272 Opposing the 

withdrawal from the integrated military structure, he argued that a 

small deterrent force such as France’s was vulnerable, and would not 

be able to inflict sufficient damage to be credible.273 He derided other 

arguments, such as political influence, in favour of a French bomb.274

Aron had a critical role in intellectual and political debates, and 

contributed immensely to the formation of French strategic culture. 

He brought to the table his excellent knowledge and understanding 

of the U.S. strategic concepts. But he did not play an important part 

in constituting French official doctrine. 

 Finally, André Beaufre may be the most under-appreciated 

intellectual contributor to the formation of the doctrine. He was 

initially isolated from the Gaullist camp represented by Ailleret. 
92

During the war, he was the main military aide to General Giraud, 

de Gaulle’s rival. Later he was the herald of the pro-NATO faction 

in the armed forces, along with other generals such as Valluy and 

Stehlin. Thus, his vision was much closer to that of Aron, though the 

two never collaborated directly. But his views on several issues, such 

as the potential of tactical nuclear weapons and the contribution of 

French nuclear weapons to Alliance security, provided a strong 

intellectual backbone to de Gaulle’s policy. As head of an inter-allied 

tactical studies group (a competitor to Gallois’s New Approach 

Group [NAG]), he gave a key briefing to the French Chiefs of Staff 

in November 1954.275 He emphasized the importance of the link 

between tactical and strategic nuclear forces, and how the link 

served to avoid a situation where neutralization at the strategic 

level made conventional conflict possible. “It is indispensable that 

[the classical] level be made inseparable (complètement solidaire) from 

the nuclear level through the threat of tactical atomic weapons use. 

It is only at that price that nuclear deterrence can be fully efficient 

on the classical level.” 276 The primacy he gave to the hypothesis of 

“multilateral deterrence”―the idea that French doctrine was credible 

only in the context of a broader Alliance vs. USSR context―was 

shared by political leaders. Authors such as Poirier and officials such 

as Méry agreed that in a hypothetical bilateral face-off with Moscow, 

the dissuasion du faible au fort might not be operative.277 As a NATO 

staff officer, a member of the MoD’s Policy planning staff, and later 

as the founder of the first French military think tank (the French 

Institute for Strategic Studies), he had the opportunity to weigh 

in on the formation of the national doctrine.278 And, as a master of 

formal models and conceptualization, he was an inspiration for later 

experts such as Poirier. 

The Importance of U.S., UK, and NATO Inputs.

 There was undoubtedly “something French” in the nature of 

the strategy constructed in the early 1960s. The strategy’s logical 

consistency, simplicity, conceptual elegance, and its refusal to focus 

on technicalities reflected the French character.279 However, the 

French nuclear mythology does not do justice to the importance of 
93

UK and U.S. inputs to the origins of French strategy. Indeed, it can 

be said that the French massive retaliation doctrine was to a large 

extent inherited from Allied thinking. 

 This should not come as a surprise. The UK government’s 

adoption of a national massive retaliation strategy attracted 

attention in the early years of the French program.280 In Stratégie 

de l’âge nucléaire, Gallois describes at length the British deterrent 

and implicitly tells his French readers that Paris could adopt the 

same posture. In 1963 he acknowledged that the UK example was a 

“model” for France.281 Indeed, deterrence of the strong by the weak 

and its logical implications were implicit in UK doctrine as early as 

1957-1958.282

 Most importantly, the French military thinkers all had NATO 

experience and numerous interactions with allied experts, in 

particular with the RAND Corporation, then the intellectual 

breeding ground of U.S. nuclear strategy. Beaufre held several NATO 

positions, including deputy-Chief of Staff at Supreme Headquarters 

Allied Powers Europe (SHAPE), and French representative to 

NATO’s Standing Group. In 1952-53, he pioneered studies about 

early and massive use of tactical nuclear weapons.283 Gallois was one 

of the authors of MC-48. As one of the four so-called “hot colonels” 

forming the NAG, he helped design NATO’s version of massive 

retaliation in 1953-54.284 The French liked the 1950s NATO strategy 

so much that they stuck to it, at least in spirit. The disproportionate 

deterrence concept was probably a direct import from U.S. strategy 

as described in John Foster Dulles’s seminal 1954 article. Ten years 

later in 1964, as NATO rethought its strategy under U.S. pressure, 

Ailleret published two articles of quasi-official value. These articles 

emphasized early strategic and tactical use of nuclear weapons, 

akin to the “sword and shield” NATO conception which had been 

abandoned.285

 Other allied inputs to French strategy included the concept of 

“unbearable” or “unacceptable” damage. The former expression was 

included in the UK White Paper of 1962, and the later was used by the 

U.S. Government in the early 1960s.286 Another borrowed concept 

was “sufficiency.” The rejection of superiority was mentioned in 

UK documents from 1952 onwards.287 The term sufficiency was 

introduced by the Nixon administration in 1969. As mentioned above, 
94

there is a troubling coincidence between the French “sufficiency” 

level and the U.S. criteria for “assured destruction” (a term later 

used by French leaders). Finally, one suspects that the later French 

debates about the diversification of strategic targets were influenced 

by the same debates that took place under the Nixon and Ford 

administrations. 

 U.S., UK, and NATO inputs to French nuclear culture have yet to 

be fully acknowledged by experts and policymakers on both sides of 

the Atlantic, especially in Paris where they remain today, to a large 

extent, the repressed memories of the French nuclear education.

The Importance of De Gaulle’s Personal Preferences 

and Pragmatism.

 French strategy was, above all, de Gaulle’s strategy. The General 

was an important provider of ideas, such as tous azimuts. On 

the French contribution to the security of NATO and Europe, his 

personal positions were radically different from those of Gallois. A 

strong believer in the value of the Atlantic Alliance, he was ready 

to coordinate the use of “his” forces with those of London and 

Washington, and thought that “American nuclear weapons . . . 

remain the essential guarantee of world peace.”288 The Gallois 

and Poirier conceptions of a pure national deterrent were not his, 

neither would they be his successors.”289 Until at least the mid1960s, he mused about a strategy of graduated strategic response.290

He approved the development of TNW as a tool for a more flexible 

strategy than the one described in 1964 by Ailleret (who was ready to 

renounce such weapons in order to build ICBMs291). He rarely used 

the word “sanctuary,” with its rigid connotations.

 As an analyst put it: “[Gallois’s] ‘absolutist’ thinking should not 

be confounded with de Gaulle’s, more pragmatic, more flexible, 

more ambiguous too. De Gaulle did not refute solidarity with the 

members of the Atlantic Alliance, nor conventional forces, supported 

by tactical nuclear weaponry, nor the notion of battle.”292 In fact, one 

could say that de Gaulle made a synthesis between the Gallois-Poirier 

“pure-national deterrence” model and the Beaufre-Aron “flexibletransatlantic deterrence” model, while at the same time adding his 

own ideas such as tous azimuts.
95

 De Gaulle’s pragmatism and open-mindedness is also reflected in 

the fact that he did not seem to mind French strategy being determined 

to a large extent by the means available. What mattered to him was 

that the basic tools were there, and that there was a political will to 

use them.293 Doctrinal and technical refinements were of secondary 

importance. In the words of a leading French historian, “De Gaulle 

was only distantly interested in the theoretical aspects of deterrence 

strategy. A pragmatic before all, he considered in any case that a 

strategic doctrine could only be built from means. . . .”294 In 1960, he 

told the Defense Council: “the force de frappe is a political weapon, 

technical precision is not essential.”295 This was in line with his 

thinking on military strategy. As early as 1944, he said: “May French 

military thought resist the old attraction of preconceived thinking, 

of absolutism and dogmatism!”296 The “thank you” notes he wrote 

to the experts who respectfully sent their works to the Elysée were 

particularly revealing. To Aron he wrote: “I know that there is no 

respite for theologians.” To Beaufre he wrote a more serious and 

less dismissive formula: “[I]n these matters, there is no worthwhile 

practice other than to depend on men and on circumstances.”297 This 

did not mean that he was a supporter of “existential deterrence.” 

His insistence on the ability to threaten a given portion of the Soviet 

State or population gives little room for such an interpretation. 

Nevertheless, the political dimension of deterrence was always 

given primacy over the operational dimension. As he half-jokingly 

said once about the upcoming Mirage-IV force, “[W]e don’t have 

fighter aircraft, we have fear-inducing aircraft.”298 He believed that 

as soon as it existed, the French bomb, despite its limited destructive 

power, would have some impact on the adversary’s intentions.299

The Importance of Resources. 

 This therefore implied that the strategy would be strongly 

influenced by the financial and technical means available. Although 

naturally inclined to define specific concepts, those de Gaulle called 

the theologians did not necessarily mind this constraint. Gallois 

referred often to the importance of the “strategy of the means.”300

After all, small countries such as the UK or France had to have the 

most cost-effective strategy.301 But many French experts, especially 
96

after de Gaulle, sought to enshrine the national nuclear doctrine 

in a rigid and elaborate theoretical framework, an approach not in 

line with the way the founder of the Fifth Republic thought about 

policies in general, and about nuclear policy in particular.

 The targeting debate and the evolution of French forces is 

particularly telling about the relationship between concepts and 

resources, and reveals the importance of the “strategy of the means” 

as a driving factor in French Cold War nuclear strategy. 

 The Western or European part of the USSR comprised most of 

Soviet demographic, economic and political power. The 3,000 km 

range of France’s aircraft and missiles was adapted to this fact. 

However, the development of longer-range systems were also much 

costlier. Notwithstanding the fact that tous azimuts was perhaps 

as much a political point as a well-thought strategy, its actual 

implementation would have been very difficult. The 8,000 km ICBM 

program that was considered and defended by Ailleret as the true 

tous azimuts weapon was judged too expensive, especially in the 

post-May 1968 budgetary situation.302

 Likewise, lack of intelligence, low accuracy, and the relative 

paucity of fissile materials drove France, as other nuclear powers 

before and after her, towards what was viewed as the most costefficient targeting strategy. In 1963, Messmer said that targeting 

cities was the only option that made sense given France’s means.303

Barre referred to the French strategy 14 years later as being, inter alia,

“the less costly” option.304 In 1980, he stated that even if it wished to 

have a counterforce strategy, “France, a medium-sized nation with 

limited resources, cannot pretend seeking parity with the two great 

nuclear powers. The only way which is opened to us is that of the 

current strategy.”305

 Nuclear weapons soon became a justification for avoiding major 

expenses in other fields, such as classical forces and defenses. France, 

like other European allies, refused to augment classical forces to a 

point where they could resist a conventional invasion of Europe.306

France never considered missile defense for herself. Such refusal 

was consistent with its strong rejection of civil defenses, to which the 

French were adamantly opposed. They thought such defenses might 

be seen in the eyes of the adversary as a “weak” posture signalling 
97

a lack of faith by French leaders in the validity of their deterrent. 

However, the rejection of defenses can also be partially explained by 

France’s inability, from a budgetary point of view, to modernize its 

nuclear forces, build an antiballistic missile (ABM) system, and build 

numerous fallout shelters. Since there was a strong belief among 

French elites in the value and efficiency of nuclear deterrence, 

budgetary concerns were probably not a dominant factor, but they 

no doubt played a part.307

Is the same logic applicable to the possible shift in targeting 

policy described above? In the late 1970s, the introduction of MIRVed 

systems was planned and scheduled for circa 1985. French thinkers 

and officials knew that the foreseeable increase in the number 

of warheads, as well as perhaps a better CEP, gave additional 

flexibility in targeting. Moreover, it was clear from U.S. calculations 

that an increase in warheads was better spent on industrial than on 

population targets; the efficiency curve was much steeper. Giscard 

claimed that the range of the future M4 missile was defined because 

of his new targeting instructions, but also that the new targeting 

guidance had been “proposed” to him by the military staff.308 One 

source says that he “notified” the Joint Staff in March 1980 to have 

new plans prepared that would be adapted to the introduction of 

MIRV.309 This point thus remains unclear. 

CONCLUSIONS: 

FRENCH STRATEGY IN A HISTORICAL PERSPECTIVE 

A Resilient but Adaptable Doctrine. 

 Up to 1981, French nuclear doctrine remained remarkably faithful 

to its basic tenets as defined by de Gaulle: a small, “sufficient” 

deterrent force independently operated and targeted, which would 

only defend France’s vital interests. The concept was that, if Moscow 

unmistakably signalled its intention to conquer France, struck the 

country with nuclear weapons, or crippled the French State as an 

organized entity, Paris would launch a single massive retaliatory 

strike on key Soviet cities, causing superior damage to the stake that 

it represented.
98

 This resiliency stemmed from several factors. One was the 

simplicity and logical consistency of the French strategy. Another 

was certainly the relative paucity of means available, which to a 

large extent saved France from debates such as counterforce vs. 

countervalue, or offense vs. defense. A third was probably the 

hesitation of French presidents to fundamentally alter the heritage of 

de Gaulle, who remained an inescapable reference for most French 

politicians. 

 At the same time, by 1981 the doctrine had become was more 

focused than the Gaullist approach (by getting rid of tous azimuts), 

and more flexible than what the leading French strategists wanted (by 

suggesting that it would contribute to the overall security of Europe, 

by introducing TNW as a tool of deterrence, and by broadening the 

range of targets). Also, the numbers and explosive power of the force 

had dramatically increased, making it more credible than in 1967. 

 France adopted many allied concepts, but also developed some 

of its own. There were always two distinct dynamics in this regard. 

One was a process of imitation of allied concepts, either through the 

introduction of exogenous ideas or through a logical process identical 

to evolutions in other countries’ thinking (including the adaptation 

of strategies to means available). Another, which came along with 

France’s more autonomous stance and the Alliance’s own evolution, 

was “dissociation.” Dissociation applied to the maintenance of a 

strategy discarded by NATO, to the apparent abandonment of the 

“consultation-coordination” option, and to the affirmation of some 

original concepts (tous azimuts, détonateur, chèvre au piquet, ultime 

avertissement). 

 Can it be said, as some have argued, that opposition to flexible 

response had only a political purpose, and that in fact France ended 

up having a strategy very close to that of the Alliance?310 This seems 

an exaggeration. There were sound conceptual bases for the country 

to endorse a massive retaliation strategy. Although French strategy 

was more flexible than it was in the beginning, there remained 

irreconcilable differences with U.S. and NATO concepts. France 

refused to consider strategic counterforce options, the massive use of 

tactical nuclear weapons in a “direct defense” scenario, or any kind 

of follow-one use of TNW. The “final warning” concept exemplified 

a compromise between massive retaliation and flexible response. 
99

A “Minimum Assured Destruction” Capability.

 How relevant is the French example to the history of MAD? The 

expression “mutual assured destruction” was never part of French 

official nuclear rhetoric.311 The “mutual” part was, of course, not 

relevant to a “deterrence of the strong by the weak” posture. And, in 

practice, there was no conceivable contingency where France would 

be alone in facing the Soviet Union with the rest of the Alliance 

as spectators. But France’s nuclear history nevertheless brings 

interesting insights for the broader history of the massive retaliation 

and assured destruction concepts. As seen above, far from being 

a truly original creation, the initial French doctrine was largely 

inherited from U.S., UK, and NATO doctrines of the 1950s, including 

the Dulles 1954 concept. Later, the expression “massive retaliation” 

itself was occasionally used.

 Interestingly, France also seems to have been inspired later 

by MacNamara’s brief flirtation with a pure assured destruction 

strategy, and it is possible that U.S. calculations on the requirements 

of such a strategy had an impact on French debates on “sufficiency.” 

French experts and leaders were quite conscious of the importance 

of a second-strike asset, and a SSBN program had been in the works 

since 1960. Given the small size of the French territory, other options 

had too many drawbacks.312 In 1973, President Pompidou referred to 

the emerging “assured second strike” capability of France.313 By the 

late 1970s political and military leaders hinted in public speeches that 

a threshold was being crossed. In 1980, Barre stated explicitly that 

France had reached “a deterrence capability making it able to prevent 

major aggression.”314 Indeed, in 1981 the fifth SSBN entered service, 

which allowed up to three boats to be on patrol at all times. It also 

allowed launching on generated alert, in a second-strike situation, 

up to 64 warheads (four loads of single-warhead missiles).315 At 

the same time, the French deterrent’s total yield was considerably 

increased with the introduction of thermonuclear weapons of 

megaton yield. Such capabilities allowed for the targeting of about 

50 cities, representing about 20 percent of Soviet population (46 

million people, the rough equivalent of France), and 40-50 percent 

of Soviet industry. These percentages were similar to MacNamara’s 
100

1968 criteria for assured destruction. That may be what allowed 

Prime Minister Barre to state that “France has achieved a deterrence 

capability allowing her to prevent a major aggression,” which he 

described as the ability to threaten the adversary with “the assured 

destruction of a notable part of his cities and his economy.”316 In 

other words, France had achieved what could be called a “minimum 

assured destruction” capability. 

ENDNOTES - CHAPTER 2

1. Some of the most thorough analyses of French strategy have been conducted 

by foreign experts such as Philip Gordon, Beatrice Heuser, Lothar Ruehl, Diego 

Ruiz Palmer, and David Yost. On the early French nuclear program, the works 

of Wilfrid Kohl and Lawrence Scheinman, as well as the Norris, Burrows & 

Fieldhouse Nuclear Weapons Databook Vol. V, are useful sources. Since the late 

1980s, important scholarly work has been conducted in France on the nation’s 

defense policy and nuclear program, in particular by Frédéric Bozo, Samy Cohen, 

Marcel Duval, Dominique Mongin, Georges-Henri Soutou, and Maurice Vaïsse. 

Also, new insights on Gaullist thinking have been provided by the writings of 

Jean Lacouture and Alain Peyrefitte. The works of these authors were particularly 

useful in researching for this chapter. The author would also like to thank Sir 

Michael Quinlan and Dr. David Yost for their thoughtful comments on an earlier 

draft of this chapter.

2. See Université de Franche-Comté/Institut Charles de Gaulle, L’aventure 

de la bombe: De Gaulle et la dissuasion nucléaire 1958-1969, Paris: Plon, 1985; PierreMarie Gallois, Le sablier du siècle: mémoires, Lausanne: L’Âge d’homme, 1999, pp. 

370-373; and Dominique Mongin, La bombe atomique française 1945-1958, Brussels: 

Bruylant, 1997, p. 418. 

3. The MC-48 document, committing NATO to the defense of Europe through 

the early and massive use of nuclear weapons, had been endorsed by the North 

Atlantic Council (NAC) on December 17, 1954.

4. For a broader perspective, see Chapter 7 by David Yost in this volume. 

5. Artificial radioactivity was discovered by Frédéric and Irène Joliot-Curie in 

1934. The possibility of atomic reaction was demonstrated by Frédéric Joliot-Curie 

and his staff in 1939. 

6. Geoffroy de Courcel in L’aventure de la bombe, p. 16. 

7. See Alain Peyrefitte, C’était de Gaulle, Paris: Gallimard, 2002, p. 1,313. 

8. On this point, see Mongin. The idea of nuclear power as embodying 

modernity would remain present in Gaullist French rhetoric; even by 1976, 

President Giscard d’Estaing would refer to the need for France to always have the 

“most advanced” weapons, hinting that it was one of the prime rationales for the 
101

French bomb. See Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, speech to the IHEDN, June 1, 1976, 

text reproduced in Revue de la défense nationale [hereafter: RDN], July 1976, p. 12. 

9. Charles Ailleret, L’aventure atomique française, Comment naquit la force de 

frappe, Paris: Grasset, 1968, pp. 96. 

10. Some argued against what amounted for them to unilateral disarmament, 

others did not want France to give up nuclear weapons at the time others were 

building the bomb. The amendment was defeated 518/100.

11. Ailleret, L’aventure atomique française, pp. 124-141. 

12. See Marcel Duval and Dominique Mongin, Histoire des forces nucléaires 

françaises depuis 1945, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1993, p. 32. 

13. An August 1954 note by the Head of the “Services des Pactes” of the 

Ministry of Foreign Affairs stated that: “The direction of strategy will from 

now on, increasingly, belong to the powers possessing the atomic weapon. . . . 

It is essential that France undertakes an atomic military program. Otherwise, its 

security will be entirely assured by the Anglo-Saxons,” quoted in Georges-Henri 

Soutou, “La politique nucléaire de Mendès-France,” Relations Internationales, Vol. 

59, Fall 1989, p. 320. In September 1954, General Georges Catroux told the Defense 

Council: “There will be States which have the atomic bomb, which won’t use it 

among themselves. There will be States which do not have the atomic bomb and 

they will be the nuclear battlefield,” quoted in Soutou, p. 321. A note in the dossier 

presented to the December 1954 Cabinet meeting stated that “no country will 

. . . be able, in the near future, to claim true political independence if it does not 

possess atomic weapons,” quoted in Soutou, p. 326. 

14. As reported by Bertrand Goldschmidt in Mongin, p. 333. 

15. “By lack of atomic weaponry, of which we have left the monopoly to 

others, our forces, expensive as they are, do not constitute a [coherent] whole, and 

as a result they are relegated to being mere auxiliaries. . . . France too needs to be 

an atomic power,” Press conference, April 7, 1954, in Charles de Gaulle, Discours 

& Messages, Vol. II, Paris: Plon, 1970, p. 607. 

16. Lawrence Scheinman, Atomic Energy Policy in France Under The Fourth 

Republic, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1965, p. 213. 

17. In a December 1954 note, the Political Director of the Ministry of Foreign 

Affairs made clear that the French preference at that time for the use of nuclear 

weapons in the defense of Europe would have been a joint decision “at Three” 

for a collective use of American, British, and French arsenals. See Soutou, p. 322. 

Note also that there was talk in government circles of a European nuclear force as 

early as 1954, and that there was a plan in 1957 to jointly develop nuclear weapons 

with Italy and Germany (the so-called “FIG” project). Also, for some such as 

Premier Pleven, a national nuclear force might have been a compensation for 

the integration of French forces into the planned European Defense Community 

(EDC). 
102

18. Jean Lacouture, De Gaulle, III: Le souverain, 1959-1970, Paris: Seuil, 1986, p. 

452. 

19. Scott Sagan has used the French experience as exemplifying his “norms” 

model, making the French program essentially a product of symbolic politics and 

a quest for “grandeur.” Scott D. Sagan, “Why Do States Build Nuclear Weapons? 

Three Models in Search of a Bomb,” International Security, Vol. 21, No. 3, Winter 

1996-1997, pp. 76-80. However, his dismissal of the security arguments is not 

convincing. In support of his thesis, Sagan argues first that France made “the 

two most critical decisions initiating the weapons program” before the Suez 

crisis. But the decisions taken before the end of 1956 had not put France on an 

irreversible course towards an operational nuclear weapons program. Second, 

Sagan uses the British example to argue that the outcome of the Suez crisis would 

have been the same for a nuclear France. But the UK nuclear force was still in its 

infancy, about 15 bombs, and was closely integrated to that of the United States. 

And Suez just confirmed the doubts many had about the U.S. alliance, which 

would be reinforced by the 1957 events. Third, Sagan dismisses French belief that 

the U.S. guarantee was unreliable on the grounds that other European nations 

gave up the nuclear option, and that the United States had come to save France 

in 1944. This argument is curious in that it discusses perceptions, which are not 

challengeable provided that they are documented. Also, while Sagan emphasizes 

the United States entering the war in 1941, the French view was that the country 

had been defeated and occupied for 3 years, and that only when Washington saw 

that its own interests were at stake, did it decide to go to war. Finally, among the 

countries which had been occupied in the Second World War, only France had the 

budgetary and technical means to embark in a nuclear program.

20. This expression force de frappe was used until 1960, when Prime minister 

Debré made force de dissuasion the official expression. Lacouture, p. 465. 

21. De Gaulle to Maurice Schumann, quoted in Pierre Messmer & Alain 

Larcan, Les écrits militaires du général de Gaulle, Paris: Presses Universitaires de 

France, 1985, p. 201. The 1940 trauma was also a significant motivation for the 

Fourth Republic’s politicians. See André Bendjebbar, Histoire secrète de la bombe 

atomique française, Paris: Le Cherche-Midi éditeur, 2000, p. 182; and Mongin, p. 410. 

Felix Gaillard’s first reaction when hearing the news about the first test was that 

France had finally “overcome” the 1940 defeat, quoted in Bendjebbar, p. 290; de 

Gaulle himself, attending a test in the Pacific, also used the word “resurrection,” 

as reported by Peyrefitte, pp. 1,352-1,353. 

22. Lacouture, p. 466. De Gaulle would emphasize the fact that twice in the past 

decades, “the Americans have waited 3 years before deciding to land [in Europe],” 

quoted in Lacouture, p. 707. This point would be reiterated to Eisenhower in 1959. 

See Charles de Gaulle, Mémoires d’espoir. Le Renouveau, Paris: Gallimard, 2000, p. 

1,068.

23. On the impact of Suez, see Bendjebbar, pp. 224, 228. 

24. On this point, see Frédéric Bozo, Deux stratégies pour l’Europe; De Gaulle, 
103

les Etats-Unis et l’Alliance atlantique, 1958-1969, Paris: Plon/Fondation Charles de 

Gaulle, 1996, pp. 124-127. 

25. See Peyrefitte, p. 349. 

26. Press conference at the Elysée Palace, January 14, 1963, in Charles de 

Gaulle, Discours & Messages, Vol. IV, Paris: Plon, 1970, p. 73. 

27. As reported by Peyrefitte, p. 707. 

You see, for a long time, one could count on the automaticity 

of alliances, because they were totally committing the existence 

of a nation. Today, atomic warfare puts all commitments into 

question. Can you imagine a U.S. President taking the risk of 

condemning to death tens of millions of Americans in application 

of an alliance treaty? 

28. See Lacouture, pp. 352-353. 

29. See Bendjebbar; and Mongin. Some in the government community also 

developed the interesting argument according to which the possession of nuclear 

weapons would deter foreign intervention in French overseas possessions, see 

Mongin, p. 416. 

30. As reported by Peyrefitte, p. 1,408. 

31. The exact causal relationship here is complex. To some extent, for instance, 

the decolonization of Algeria made the bomb possible by freeing additional 

defense resources. 

32. Speech at the Ecole militaire, February 15, 1963, in de Gaulle, Discours 

& Messages, Vol. IV, p. 85. He also referred twice to the “strategic, and therefore 

political, dependence” of European non-nuclear nations vis-à-vis the United States 

in his press conference at the Elysée Palace on July 23, 1964, in ibid., p. 231. 

33. On this point, see Philip Gordon, A Certain Idea of France. French Security 

Policy and the Gaullist Legacy, Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1993, p. 42. 

34. Press conference at the Elysée Palace, July 29, 1963, in de Gaulle, Discours 

& Messages, Vol. IV, p. 124. 

35. Quoted in Bendjebbar, p. 302. 

36. Press conference at the Elysée Palace, July 23, 1964, in de Gaulle, Discours 

& Messages, Vol. IV, pp. 226-227. 

37. De Gaulle, Mémoires d’espoir, p. 1,063. 

38. Ibid., p. 1,067. 

39. “We were part [of the Alliance], of course, as long as we did not have our 

bombs. But from the time we have them, and they are not part of NATO, we are 

essentially no longer in NATO,” as reported by Peyrefitte, p. 648. Also: ”. . . one 

does not integrate atomic forces,” ibid., p. 1,397. 

40. See Peyrefitte, pp. 389-390. 
104

41. This infuriated de Gaulle to the point of telling Norstad, who was 

personally sympathetic to French views: “Please tell your government that it is 

the last time that France accepts such an answer on this subject!” See Lacouture, p. 

465; and Duval, p. 69. 

42. There was reportedly a French right of veto on the use of these warheads, 

Duval, p. 70. 

43. Speech in Lyon, September 28, 1963, in de Gaulle, Discours & Messages, 

Vol. IV, p. 137; and Peyrefitte, p. 715. 

44. Press conference at the Elysée Palace, July 23, 1964, in de Gaulle, Discours 

& Messages, Vol. IV, p. 229. This idea inherited from the 1950s still imprinted 

Gaullist thinking. 

45. See Paul Balta, “Dix ans de politique etrangère,” RDN, May 1968, p. 817. 

46. See Peyrefitte, p. 1,408. 

47. General Alfred Buchalet, “Les premières étapes, 1955-1960,” in L’aventure 

de la bombe, p. 52. 

48. See Bozo, pp. 30-31. France did get some initial help from Washington in 

the form of a small stock of enriched uranium for propulsion research. Reportedly, 

the sale was authorized in 1959 on the grounds that, according to the U.S. Navy, 

France was unable to build nuclear propulsion reactors anyway. See Jacques 

Chevallier, “La genèse de la force de dissuasion nucléaire française,” in Vaïsse, 

ed., Armement et Vème République, p. 286. 

49. The same reasoning would later be applied to thermonuclear weapons: de 

Gaulle thought it was indispensable that France had the same means as the other 

nuclear powers. See Peyrefitte, pp. 1,325-1,388. 

50. See radio/TV speech of April 19, 1963, in De Gaulle, Discours & Messages, 

Vol. IV, p. 96; and speech in Lyon in ibid., p. 137. 

51. Samy Cohen, La défaite des généraux. Le pouvoir politique et l’armée sous la 

Vème République, Paris: Fayard, 1994, pp. 50-51. 

52. Samy Cohen, “France, Civil-Military Relations, and Nuclear Weapons,” 

Security Studies, Vol. 4, No. 1, Autumn 1994, pp. 153-179, especially p. 161. De 

Gaulle justified the direct election of the President of the Republic by the authority 

to use nuclear weapons, see Peyrefitte, p. 1,359; and Pierre Messmer, “Notre 

politique militaire,” RDN, May 1963, p. 760. 

53. See André Beaufre, NATO and Europe, New York: Vintage Books, 1966, p. 

25. 

54. Stt Marc Trachtenberg, “La formation du système de défense occidental: 

les Etats-Unis, la France et MC-48,” in Maurice Vaïsse, Pierre Mélandri, and 

Frédéric Bozo, eds., La France et l’OTAN, 1949-1996, Brussels: Complexe, 1996, pp. 

115-127. 

55. General François Valentin in L’aventure de la bombe, p. 270. 
105

56. Beaufre, quoted in Mongin, p. 263. See also the 1954 testimony of General 

Catroux in Soutou, p. 321. 

57. See Mongin, p. 251. 

58. In the public debate, a rare exception was General Paul Gerardot, who 

argued in favour of “an efficient reprisals system specific to our country and freed 

from any servitude.” See “Plaidoyer pour l’attaque,” RDN, March 1956, pp. 285-

305. 

59. Quoted in Cohen, La défaite des généraux, p. 84.

60. There is another link between the two issues: the reduction in conventional 

forces following the withdrawal from Algeria allowed for a greater share of the 

defense budget to be devoted to the nuclear program. 

61. Cohen, La défaite des généraux, p. 84. 

62. See Gallois, Le sablier du siècle, p. 371. 

63. The expression was used by de Gaulle at the end of his 1956 conversation 

with Gallois, see Introduction. 

64. When Valéry Giscard d’Estaing was elected president in 1974, he invited 

Aron, Beaufre, and Gallois for lunch to inform him about nuclear strategy, Aron, 

Mémoires, pp. 566-567. 

65. Raoul Castex, “Aperçus sur la bombe atomique,” RDN, October 1945, pp. 

466-473. The causal link with de Gaulle’s decision is suggested by Lacouture, p. 

453. The general admired and respected Castex, and the decision was taken a few 

days after the publication of the article. 

66. France’s bomb was also a means for what could be called “persuasion 

of the strong by the weak.” “The possession of some nuclear weaponry will 

constitute one of the only means to have independence and sovereignty of the 

country respected by a stronger party,” Pierre-Marie Gallois, “L’affaire de Berlin 

ou la peur d’une ombre,” La Nef, No. 27, Avril 1959, p. 28. De Gaulle suggested that 

only after Israel got the bomb did the United States commit itself to guarantee its 

borders. See Peyrefitte, p. 707. 

67. Press conference of July 23, 1964, at the Elysée Palace, in de Gaulle, 

Discours & Messages, Vol. IV, p. 233.

68. Ministère de la Défense, Livre blanc sur la défense nationale, Vol. I, 1972. 

Interestingly, the expression “deterrence of the strong by the weak” was not 

widely used by officials. A rare exception is general Fourquet in 1969. 

69. See Pierre-Marie Gallois, Stratégie de L’âge Nucléaire, Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 

1960, pp. 3-4. 

70. Castex: “The weak nation, as much as the strong nation, will possess atomic 

weapons, in lower quantities probably, but these considerations of numbers do not 

matter much for weapons which have such a great individual power,” p. 467. 1954 

dossier: ”. . . the threat of destruction that such devices entails must be enough to 
106

deter an aggressor, even [if he is] much more powerful,” quoted in Soutou, p. 24. 

71. See Lucien Poirier, Des Stratégies Nucléaires, Brussels: Complexe, 1988, p. 

298. 

72. This expression originally had a slightly broader meaning. It was used 

by UK and U.S. authors in the 1950s to describe concepts of “flexibility” and 

“adaptation” of nuclear reprisals to the value of the stake defended. 

73. “The force de frappe can be made proportional to the value of the stake 

that it represents,” Gallois, Stratégie de l’âge nucléaire, p. 184. 

74. As reported by Peyrefitte, p. 350. 

75. Ibid., p. 368. 

76. Aron, quoting his November 16, 1959, article in Raymond Aron, Mémoires: 

50 ans de réflexion politique, Paris: Julliard, 1983, p. 429. 

77. Gallois, Stratégie de l’âge nucléaire, p. 189. 

78. Pïerre-Marie Gallois, “La logique de l’ère nucléaire et ses incidences 

sur l’OTAN,” in Claude Delmas, Maurice Faure, Général Gallois, and Général 

Carpentier, L’avenir de l’alliance atlantique, Paris: Berger-Levrault, 1961, pp. 144-

145. 

79. André Beaufre, Introduction à la stratégie, Paris: Armand Colin, 1963, 

chapter 3. 

80. As reported by Peyrefitte, p. 710. He stated again in 1966 that “the risk that 

an adversary would run would be incommensurably superior to the stake that we 

would represent for him,” ibid., p. 1,359. A more official statement was “damage 

incommensurable with the aggressor’s benefits,” Charles Ailleret, conference at 

the IHEDN, December 19, 1967, quoted in Ruehl, p. 214. 

81. Livre banc sur la défense, Vol. I. 

82. Dulles said that deterrence “requires that a potential aggressor be left in no 

doubt that he would be certain to suffer from damage outweighing any possible 

gain from aggression. . . . a potential aggressor should know in advance that he 

can and will be made to suffer for his aggression more than he can possibly gain 

by it. . . . a prospective attacker is not likely to invade if he believes the probable 

hurt will outbalance the probable gain,” John Foster Dulles, “Policies for Security 

and Peace,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 32, No. 3, April 1954, pp. 357-359. 

83. “An almost unprecedented disparity between what an aggressor stands to 

gain and what he risks losing as result of his aggression,” Giscard d’Estaing, speech 

to the IHEDN, June 1, 1976, p. 13; ”. . . the damage would be incommensurable 

with the profit the aggressor could hope from his action,” Raymond Barre, speech 

to the IHEDN, September 11, 1980, text reproduced as “La politique de défense de 

la France,” RDN, November 1980, p. 12. 

84. Gallois, Le sablier du siècle, p. 402. 

85. See Michel Fourquet, Conference to the IHEDN, March 1969; Livre blanc 
107

sur la défense, Vol. I; and Guy Méry, “Une armée pour quoi faire et comment?” 

RDN, June 1976, p. 17. 

86. Poirier, Des stratégies nucléaires, p. 192. 

87. See, for instance, de Gaulle as reported by Peyrefitte, p. 710. 

88. Livre blanc sur la défense, Vol. I; Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, press conference 

of June 1980 quoted in Duval, p. 60; and Barre, “La politique de défense de la 

France,” p. 17. Giscard thought that the French deterrent applied only to threats of 

nuclear attacks and of invasion and was an early proponent of “negative security 

assurances.” See his press conference of October 24, 1974, text reproduced in 

Assemblée nationale, Rapport d’information deposé en application de l’article 

145 du Règlement par la Commission de la défense nationale et des forces armées 

sur l’état et la modernisation des forces nucléaires françaises, et présenté par M. 

Raymond Tourrain, Député, No. 1730, May 1980, p. 23. In 1977 the government 

confirmed that France rejected “no-first-use,” Raymond Barre, “Discours prononcé 

au camp de Mailly le 18 juin 1977,” RDN, July-August 1977, p. 9. 

89. The expression “attached goat” (chèvre au piquet), referred to the strategy 

used by shepherds to attract and ambush wild animals such as wolves. The theory 

is described in the 1972 White Paper. 

90. Quoted in Bozo, p. 130. 

91. See Peyrefitte, pp. 710-711. 

92. ”. . . one can think of a number of circumstances in which the alternative of 

‘all or nothing’ would make our posture less realistic and less credible . . . we have 

already rejected the ‘all or nothing’ solution,” Fourquet. 

93. “None of the countries possessing [nuclear] weapons will give them up. 

On the contrary, others will get them sooner or later. The Bomb will disseminate. 

This is inevitable. Danger can come from anywhere. Do you hear me? Anywhere! 

We must get ready to strike at any point of the compass, tous azimuts,” as reported 

by Peyrefitte, p. 708. 

94. See the testimonies of General Bourgue and Alain Larcan in L’aventure de 

la bombe, pp. 201-202. 

95. Conference of November 3, 1959, Untitled document, Fondation Charles 

de Gaulle.

96. See Peyrefitte, pp. 299-300, 708. The hypothesis of a nuclear strike against 

the Tunisian port of Bizerte was mentioned in 1963, ibid., pp. 420, 708-709. In 

December 1966, he said: “The Germans, the Algerians and the Tunisians need to 

know that if they wanted to create us trouble, we could easily crush them,” ibid., 

p. 1,389. The reference to Germany may appear shocking coming from de Gaulle, 

who had fostered the reconciliation between the two countries; but he was in fact 

mindful about German national culture and said many times that Bonn should not 

get the bomb. See, for instance, ibid., p. 1,356. 

97. Speech to the Coët-Quidan military school, February 16, 1965, in De 

Gaulle, Discours & Messages, Vol. IV, p. 345. 
108

98. This important and still classified document is quoted in Lacouture, pp. 

477-478. 

99. Quoted in Pierre Pascallon, “La dissuasion nucléaire française à l’heure 

du comité stratégique et de la nouvelle loi de programmation militaire,” in Pierre 

Pascallon, ed., Quel avenir pour la dissuasion nucléaire française? Brussels: Bruylant, 

1996, p. 261. 

100. Charles Ailleret, “Défense ‘dirigée’ ou défense ‘tous azimuts’,” RDN, 

December 1967, pp. 1,924-1,932. 

101. As reported by Peyrefitte, p. 299. 

102. See Lacouture, p. 477. 

103. Such implicit references to an “enemy from the East” include the 

Fourquet 1969 speech and the 1977-1982 Defense Plan. 

104. Barre, “Discours prononcé au camp de Mailly le 18 juin 1977,” p. 12. 

105. De Gaulle, Mémoires d’espoir, p. 1,063. In 1959, the option to acquire 

nuclear systems from another country was still officially considered. See Charles 

de Gaulle, speech at the Ecole militaire, November 3, 1959, reproduced in 

Dominique David, La politique de défense de la France, Textes et documents, Paris: 

FEDN, 1989, p. 73. 

106. De Gaulle, speech at the Ecole militaire, November 3, 1959, p. 71. 

107. Quoted in Lacouture, p. 353. 

108. Gallois, Stratégie de l’âge nucléaire, p. 197. 

109. The White Paper would reaffirm that flexible response was at best a 

second-best solution, and at worse an illusion. But this was not meant to be 

a criticism: it was “the natural order of things, since deterrence is exclusively 

national.” There was, however, an element of dissociation in the White Paper visà-vis the absolutist Gallois thinking: the mention that “presently” the nuclear risk 

could not be shared, perhaps opening the way for a future integrated Europe. Livre 

blanc sur la défense, Vol. I. 

110. “In fact, because national unanimity could only be made when facing a 

grave threat, the domain of efficacy of the deterrence strategy is more generally 

limited to the defense of the vital interests of the country that practices this 

strategy,” Gallois, Stratégie de l’âge nucléaire, p. 210; also ibid., p. 218; for De Gaulle, 

see Peyrefitte, p. 618. 

111. “But due to the mere fact that it is a European force, the ‘French’ atomic 

force will in any case be employed automatically for the defense of Europe, as 

this defense means the same as the defense of France. It could not be imagined 

in any way that Germany was attacked by Russia, without France being lost 

simultaneously,” conversation with a German official, July 1964, quoted in 

Heuser, p. 155. He proposed to Adenauer a formal nuclear security guarantee 

in 1963. On this point, see, for instance, Peyrefitte, p. 710. A scholar has noted 

that this proposal was not mentioned in the German record of the meeting, see 
109

Georges-Henri Soutou, L’Alliance incertaine, Paris: Fayard, 1996, p. 274. However, 

this was not mere posturing. In private, de Gaulle said: “But it will protect them 

automatically! In a much better way than the American force [does]! For the 

simple reason that we are Europeans and the Americans are not. The American 

interest to not let Europe be destroyed is minuscule as compared to ours. If Europe 

is invaded, we are toast.” As reported by Peyrefitte, p. 653. See also p. 858.

112. Quoted in Vincent Jauvert, L’Amérique contre de Gaulle. Histoire secrète, 

1961-1969, Paris: Seuil, 2000, p. 29. 

113. Quoted in Jacques Isnard, “Le grand déballage nucléaire,” Le Monde, 

February 4, 1997. 

114. “M. Pompidou: ‘La force de dissuasion française joue automatiquement 

au bénéfice de l’Europe’,” Le Monde, December 3, 1964. 

115. Fourquet.

116. “France lives in a web of interests which exceeds her frontiers. . . . Our 

vital interests are located on our territory and on its approaches,” Livre blanc sur la 

défense, Vol. I. 

117. See Gordon, pp. 44-47. 

118. See Soutou, p. 322. 

119. See the text of the September 1958 memorandum to the UK and the 

U.S. Governments in Bozo, pp. 262-263. According to Gallois, the Taiwan Straits 

crisis, where the use of nuclear weapons had been considered, was reportedly a 

triggering factor in de Gaulle’s proposal, Gallois, Le sablier du siècle, p. 466. 

120. Eisenhower meeting: de Gaulle, Mémoires d’espoir, p. 1,068. The quote is 

from de Gaulle’s meeting with Kennedy in 1961 and is mentioned in Jauvert, pp. 

30-31. 

121. See Peyrefitte, p. 360. 

122. Loi de programme No. 60-1305 du 8 décembre 1960 relative à certains 

équipements militaires, 1960-1964, text reproduced in Tourrain, p. 141. 

123. Press conference at the Elysée palace, January 14, 1963, in de Gaulle, 

Discours & Messages, Vol. IV, p. 76. Coordination was welcome “in particular in 

wartime,” Peyrefitte, p. 372. 

124. Speech at the Ecole militaire, de Gaulle, Discours & Messages, Vol. IV, p. 

83. 

125. The 1965 military program law still affirmed that the action of French 

forces, conventional and nuclear, would be “in principle conjugated with those of 

our allies,” quoted in Ruehl, p. 211. 

126. Beaufre, Dissuasion et stratégie, p. 188. In his next book, he referred to 

an “interallied coordination of national deterrent strategies during peacetime.” 

Beaufre, NATO and Europe, chapter 5, and p. 188. 

127. See Bozo, pp. 201-202. 
110

128. Beaufre, NATO and Europe, p. 70.

129. André Beaufre, conference to the IHEDN, 1968, reproduced in Charles 

Zorgbibe, Textes de stratégie nucléaire, Paris: Presses Universitaires de France, 1993, 

p. 17. 

130. Beaufre, Dissuasion et stratégie, pp. 101, 108. He was, however, wary of 

nuclear proliferation. See p. 108.

131. Gallois thought that the Soviet Union would not run the risk “of losing 

about thirty urban concentrations, tens of ports installations and other military 

targets, putting itself in a position of inferiority vis-à-vis the United States or 

China, spectators of the conflict,” in L’aventure de la bombe, p. 205. 

132. See Peyrefitte, p. 710. 

133. Quoted in Lacouture, p. 353. 

134. See Peyrefitte, p. 710. 

135. Press conference at the Elysée Palace, July 23, 1964, in de Gaulle, Discours 

& Messages, Vol. IV, p. 233. 

136. Livre blanc sur la défense, Vol. I. 

137. Jacques Chirac, speech at the camp de Mailly, February 10, 1975, text 

reproduced as “Au sujet des armes nucléaires tactiques françaises,” RDN, May 

1975, p. 12. 

138. Debate of December 3, 1964, quoted in Ruehl, p. 193. 

139. “The threat, though not explicit, of using the French atomic force as a 

detonator is its sole conceivable deterrence function within the framework of 

the present Atlantic organization.” Raymond Aron, Le grand débat. Initiation à la 

stratégie atomique, Paris: Calmann-Lévy, 1963, p. 156. On Gallois’ perceptions, see 

Le sablier du siècle, pp. 389-390. 

140. Such as Félix Gaillard, according to Lacouture, p. 471. 

141. Gallois, Stratégie de l’âge nucléaire, pp. 185-189. He writes that due 

to the emerging vulnerability of the U.S. territory, “It is thus not certain that 

the small atomic arsenal of less wealthy peoples may effectively play the role 

of a fuse leading to the explosion of the powder keg of the Greats”; but he also 

acknowledges that it could be “an ‘accelerator’ in the march towards the great 

trial.” 

142. “I did not really believe at that time in the idea, then common, of the 

‘trigger’ . . .,” Aron, Mémoires, p. 430. 

143. He does so in a dismissive footnote: “. . . the simplifying theory of the 

‘trigger’ does not even deserve a discussion. Nobody wants to trigger a nuclear 

conflict.” André Beaufre, Dissuasion et stratégie, Paris: Armand Colin, 1964, p. 94.

144. Beaufre, Dissuasion et stratégie, p. 94. 

145. In some circumstances only―for Beaufre also acknowledged that, overall, 
111

“the existence of a third partner limits in some respects the freedom of action of the 

two others,” Beaufre, Dissuasion et stratégie, p. 94.

146. Ibid., p. 92. 

147. See Michel Debré, “La France et sa défense,” RDN, January 1972, pp. 6-8. 

Scholars who rejected de Gaulle’s belief in the concept include Lacouture, p. 471. 

148. Georges Pompidou, National Assembly debate of December 2, 1964, 

quoted in Ruehl, p. 192. 

149. See Peyrefitte, pp. 433, 638. 

150. As reported by Ibid., p. 638. 

151. Ibid., p. 353. 

152. Giscard’s testimony is slightly ambiguous, and it is difficult to tell whether 

it supports the “hard” or “soft” interpretation: “be useful as a trigger in case the 

United States hesitated in employing their own strategic nuclear means to deter 

the Soviets to invade Europe,” Giscard d’Estaing, Le pouvoir et la vie, p. 192; and 

“be able ourselves to decide on a nuclear action that would constrain the United 

States if they hesitated to bring into play the superiority they had at the time visà-vis the USSR in nuclear matters,” Interview in Le Figaro, December 12, 1983, p. 6. 

David Yost has suggested an in-between interpretation which corresponds to one 

of the Beaufre hypotheses: in a crisis, the threat or use of French nuclear weapons 

would force “a U.S. involvement bringing about termination of the conflict on 

terms acceptable to the West.” David S. Yost, France’s Deterrent Posture and Security 

in Europe. Part II: Strategic and Arms Control Implications, Adelphi Paper No. 195, 

London: International Institute for Strategic Studies, Winter 1984-85, p. 18. 

153. He reportedly told Army Chief of Staff general de Boissieu in 1970 the 

following: 

From the time when the 1st Army and the tactical air forces will have 

tactical atomic [weaponry], the Alliance will not be able to envision our 

manoeuvre forces only with their conventional means. You will have to 

let them know that you envision to counterattack with the support of 

our tactical nuclear forces. Thus if the allied high command needs this 

only strategic reserve in Europe, it will have to decide employing its 

nuclear fires beforehand or at the same time. 

This important statement was first publicly quoted by defense minister André 

Giraud in Discours aux Assises du Mouvement européen, October 11, 1987, text 

reproduced in David, p. 292. 

154. Fourquet.

155. See below, part V. 

156. In 1951, Lord Cherwell, adviser to Winston Churchill on nuclear matters, 

wrote him: “If we are unable to make bombs ourselves and have to rely entirely on 

the United States army for this vital weapon, we shall sink to the rank of a second-
112

class nation, only permitted to supply auxiliary troops, like the native levies 

who were allowed small arms but not artillery.” Quoted in Margaret Gowing, 

Independence and Deterrence. Britain and Atomic Energy 1945-1952, Vol. I: PolicyMaking, New-York: St. Martin’s 1974, p. 407. On Suez, see Lawrence Freedman, 

“British Nuclear Targeting,” in Ball & Richelson, p. 114. 

157. This would be acknowledged by London in 1980, see the contribution by 

Michael Quinlan in this volume; and also Heuser, p. 77. 

158. Beaufre, Dissuasion et stratégie, pp. 85-116. He justified the multiplicity of 

nuclear decision centers by the deterrent effect of the addition of “several methods 

of deterrence.” André Beaufre, “The sharing of nuclear responsibilities: a problem 

in need of solution,” International Affairs, Vol. 31, No. 3, July 1965, p. 416. 

159. After 1957, the French position was that it would only accept U.S. 

ballistic missiles on the national territory if they were under a formal “dualkey” system and if Washington was willing to help Paris build its own deterrent 

through cooperation agreements similar to those existing with London. When he 

returned to power in 1958, de Gaulle sought U.S. technological help for the French 

nuclear efforts, and cooperation options were discussed in various forms until 

1966. But French insistence on maximum national control and U.S. political or 

military resistances prevented the emergence of mutually acceptable solutions. 

In particular, in 1962, Paris refused a U.S. offer to endow France with Polaris

SLBMs, suspecting that it was an attempt to put the nascent French force under 

U.S. tutelage. Paris later bought 12 KC-135 aircraft and supercomputers to the 

United States. Although U.S. Ambassador to France James Gavin supported it, it 

is not clear whether the sale of KC-135, the principle of which was discussed as 

early as 1962, was formally approved by the U.S. Government. Some sources say 

that the USAF was favourable to the sale because it allowed it to buy from Boeing 

the number of aircraft it had promised to buy. See Vaïsse, ed., Armement et Vème 

République, p. 222. On these issues, see in particular Bozo. 

160. See Peyrefitte, pp. 428-429. 

161. An exception is Barre, “Discours prononcé au camp de Mailly le 18 juin 

1977,” p. 11.

162. On this, see Yost, France’s Deterrent Posture, Vol. II, pp. 15-16. 

163. Here again the exception is Barre, “Discours prononcé au camp de Mailly 

le 18 juin 1977,” p. 14. Bruno Tertrais, “La coopération militaire depuis 1969: la 

France, l’OTAN, et la Question Nucléaire” in Bozo, Mélandri & Vaïsse, eds., pp. 

621-623. 

164. Chirac, “Au sujet des armes nucléaires tactiques françaises,” p. 12. 

165. General Guy Méry, Conference at the IHEDN, March 15, 1976, reproduced 

as “Une armée pour quoi faire et comment?” RDN, June 1976, p. 15. 

166. Barre, “Discours prononcé au camp de Mailly le 18 juin 1977,” p. 14. 

167. Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, press conference of June 26, 1980, text 
113

reproduced in Tourrain, p. 38. 

168. Barre, “La politique de défense de la France,” p. 12. 

169. Declaration on Atlantic Relations approved by the North Atlantic 

Council, June 19, 1974, para. 6. 

170. Guy Méry, “Conférence,” Défense, No. 9, May 1977, p. 19. 

171. Barre, “Discours prononcé au camp de Mailly le 18 juin 1977,” p. 10. See 

also his September 1980 speech. 

172. Quoted in Cohen, La défaite des généraux, p. 104.

173. Testimony of General Valentin in L’aventure de la bombe, p. 191.

174. See his February 15, 1963, speech in p. 86. His 1964 declarations about the 

possibility of a warning shot are reported by Peyrefitte, p. 711. 

175. This argument was used in particular by Defense Minister Messmer; see 

Peyrefitte, p. 1,374. 

176. The 1967 Ailleret-Lemnitzer agreements included a provision for U.S. 

nuclear support to French conventional forces, but that applied only in case the 

French forces joined the common defense and the nuclear threshold had been 

crossed. 

177. See Peyrefitte, pp. 1,376, 1,379. 

178. Ibid., pp. 1,378-1,379. 

179. Press conference by Pierre Messmer, October 24, 1966, quoted in Vaïsse, 

ed., Armement & Vème République, p. 185. 

180. Jacques Chevallier, “La genèse de la force nucléaire de dissuasion 

française,” in Vaïsse, ed., Armement & Vème République, p. 284. Chevallier says 

that the letter is dated 1968. A slightly different, but entirely consistent, version of 

de Gaulle’s instructions was provided by Boissieu himself on 30 November 1989, 

referring to a meeting that took place in April 1970: 

Your priority mission is to have the [Pluton] launchers built and to put 

into service the tactical atomic [weaponry]. Because, from the day the 

land forces, that is the First Army, will have tactical atomic [weaponry] 

at its disposal, it is the whole First Army and FATAC apparatus . . . 

which will participate in the nuclear deterrent. . . . Tactical atomic 

[weaponry] is so essential for us French that, when we will later have 

to choose between perfecting tactical atomic [weaponry] or strategic 

atomic [weaponry], here again we will probably have to choose tactical 

atomic [weaponry], for what’s the use of perfecting apocalypse, Vol. It is 

better to place efforts on what would happen beforehand . . .” 

Quoted in Cohen, La défaite des généraux, p. 108.

181. Lacouture, p. 484. 

182. Pierre Messmer, “L’atome, cause et moyen d’une politique militaire 
114

autonome,” RDN, March 1968, pp. 395-402. 

183. See Poirier, “Dissuasion et puissances moyennes,” pp. 107-108; and Des 

stratégies nucléaires, p. 325. This meant, for Poirier, that French forces could not be 

committed in significant quantities to the forward defense of Europe. 

184. Fourquet. 

185. Livre blanc sur la défense, Vol. I. 

186. Press conference of September 27, 1973, text reproduced in Tourrain, 

p. 21. It is clear from the text that he meant escaping from an “all or nothing” 

dilemma rather than adopt NATO’s strategy. 

187. See, in particular, Chirac, “Au sujet des armes nucléaires tactiques 

françaises,” p. 15. He also mentions that one reason why France had to have TNW 

is simply that others had such weapons. 

188. See, in particular, Giscard d’Estaing, speech of June 1, 1976, p. 15. On 

these debates, see inter alia, Duval, pp. 74-87.

189. Chirac, “Au sujet des armes nucléaires tactiques françaises.”

190. Interview on Antenne-2 TV channel, November 12, 1975, quoted in 

Tourrain, p. 28. 

191. Interview on TF-1 TV channel, May 5, 1976, quoted in Tourrain, p. 30. 

192. “Entretien avec le général Maurin, chef d’état-major des armées,” RDN, 

Vol. 30, No. 7, July 1974, pp. 15-17. 

193. “Entretien avec le général de Boissieu,” RDN, July 1975, p. 26. 

194. Rapport sur la programmation des dépenses militaires et des équipements 

des forces armées pour la période 1977-1982, text reproduced in David, p. 195. 

195. Méry, “Une armée pour quoi faire et comment?,” p. 17. 

196. Barre, “Discours prononcé au camp de Mailly le 18 juin 1977,” p. 13. 

197. Ibid., p. 14. The idea to “restore deterrence” was seen at the time as 

symbolizing a “war-fighting strategy.” In the same speech, Barre also makes a 

rare reference to the possibility of TNW being deployed with overseas projection 

forces. 

198. The “M1” device had been tested in the morning of February 13, 1960, 

in the Sahara desert near Reggan, Algeria, and gave a yield of 60-70 kilotons, as 

expected.

199. There is a debate on de Gaulle’s view of these systems. Some testimonies 

suggest that he attached no particular importance to the Albion missiles, see 

Peyrefitte, p. 1,378. Others suggest that he thought that France being a continental 

power, it had to be also defended by visible land-based systems for the French so 

feel secure, see the testimony by his aide de camp in L’aventure de la Bombe, p. 237. In 

any case, their value as a complement to the SSBNs was quickly acknowledged. 

200. On early UK debates, see Heuser, p. 66s. 
115

201. Pierre-Marie Gallois, “Puissance et limitation des armes de la dissuasion,” 

Le Monde, Février 14-15, 1960. 

202. Pierre-Marie Gallois, “Les sophismes de M. MacNamara et le départ du 

général Norstad,” RDN, October 1962, pp. 1,454-1,471. 

203. See, for instance, Beaufre, Introduction à la stratégie, chapter 3. 

204. See the contribution by Michael Quinlan in Chapter 9. 

205. Gallois refers to General Pierre Stehlin, “L’adaptation de l’instrument de 

la défense à la révolution technique,” Revue militaire générale, Février 1959, Gallois, 

Stratégie de l’âge nucléaire, p. 229. 

206. As reported by Peyrefitte, p. 366. 

207. “. . . with 0.4 percent of the atomic potential of the Soviet Union, France 

could ‘raze an habitat’ equivalent to hers,” Pierre-Marie Gallois, “La dissuasion du 

faible au fort” in L’aventure de la bombe, p. 169; and “To be efficient, the destruction 

capabilities of our nuclear force must be equivalent to the ‘value of France’ 

(équilibrer la ‘valeur France’),” in L’aventure de la bombe, p. 205.

208. Interview of President Giscard d’Estaing in Le Figaro, December 12, 1983, 

p. 6. 

209. The naval expression “vital works” appeared frequently. First employed 

by Ailleret in his 1959 lectures, Poirier, Des stratégies nucléaires, p. 298. It was used 

by Gallois, Stratégie de l’âge nucléaire, p. 182, p. 193; and by de Gaulle, radio/TV 

speech of April 19, 1963, in de Gaulle, Discours & Messages, Vol. IV, p. 96; Mémoires 

d’espoir, p. 1,067. Aron used it in Le grand débat, p. 124. It appeared as late as 1980 

in some semi-official publications, Guy Lewin, “L’avenir des forces nucléaires 

françaises,” RDN, May 1980, pp. 17-18. Beaufre used “anti-resources,” Dissuasion 

et stratégie, p. 37, an equivalent of “counter-value.” 

210. Quoted in Gallois, “La dissuasion du faible au fort,” p. 170. 

211. “Frightful destructions,” press conference at the Elysée Palace, January 

14, 1963, in de Gaulle, p. 72-74; and radio/TV speech of April 19, 1963 in ibid., p. 95. 

“Deadly wound,” press conference of July 23, 1964, at the Elysée Palace, in ibid., p. 

233. “Destructions beyond repair,” 1967 instruction Lacouture, p. 478; “Frightful 

wounds,” de Gaulle, Mémoires d’espoir, p. 1,057. 

212. Gallois, Stratégie de l’âge nucléaire, pp. 170-175. 

213. Ibid., p. 174. 

214. Quoted in Hervé Alphand, L’étonnement d’être. Journal, 1939-1973, Paris: 

Fayard, 1977, p. 368. 

215. General François Maurin, “La mise en place opérationnelle de la triade 

stratégique, Mirage IV, SSBS Albion, SNLE, et des chaînes de contrôle,” in 

L’aventure de la Bombe, pp. 228-229. 

216. As reported by Peyrefitte, p. 710. 
116

217. “20 million,” as reported by Peyrefitte, p. 179. “One-fourth or half of the 

Russians,” ibid., p. 299. “One-half of the Russians,” ibid., p. 345. 

218. As reported by Peyrefitte, p. 350. In 1964, he claimed that around 1971-

1972 that capability would be “80 million Russians,” ibid., p. 654.

219. Press conference at the Elysée Palace, January 14, 1963, in de Gaulle, 

Discours & Messages, Vol. IV, p. 72-74; and press conference at the Elysée Palace, 

July 23, 1964, in ibid., p. 233. 

220. Messmer, “Notre politique militaire,” p. 747. 

221. Barre, “Discours prononcé au camp de Mailly le 18 juin 1977,” p. 10. See 

also Général Maurin, “Entretien avec le général Maurin, chef d’état-major des 

armées,” RDN, July 1974, p. 13: “a notable part of his industrial and demographic 

potential.” 

222. Gallois, Stratégie de l’âge nucléaire, p. 174. 

223. Ibid., p. 205, in which he also adds “tens” of other targets; and FEDN/

Université de Paris I, L’arme nucléaire et ses vecteurs. Stratégie, armes, parades, 

Paris, 1989, p. 374, in which he refers to “20, 30, 40” cities. 

224. Quoted in Alphand, p. 368. 

225. The optimum targeting set recommended by a JCS Advisory Group 

in October 1945 was 20 urban Soviet targets, see Barton J. Bernstein, “Eclipsed 

by Hiroshima and Nagasaki: Early Thinking about Tactical Nuclear Weapons,” 

International Security, Vol. 15, No. 4, 1991, p. 171. UK planning in the late 1950s was 

30-40 cities; see Heuser, pp. 67, 73; and the contribution by Michael Quinlan in this 

volume. 

226. On this point, see Aron, Le grand débat, pp. 115-117. 

227. See a conversation with Adenauer reported in Bendjebbar, p. 307, in 

which he adds Stalingrad; and Peyrefitte, p. 654, in which he adds “the biggest 

cities.” 

228. Loi de programmation 1977-1982, in David, p. 194. 

229. Méry, “Conférence,” p. 20. 

230. On these debates, see David Yost, “French Nuclear Targeting,” in 

Desmond Ball & Jeffrey Richelson, eds., Strategic Nuclear Targeting, Cornell Studies 

in Security Affairs, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, p. 132. 

231. Tourrain, p. 206. 

232. Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, Le pouvoir et la vie (II). L’affrontement, 

Evreux: Compagnie 12, 1991, p. 180.

233. Marc Theleri, Initiation à la force de frappe française 1945-2010, Paris: Stock, 

1997, p. 233. 

234. Barre, “La politique de défense de la France,” pp. 17, 12. Gallois asserted 

several times in the 1980s that France targeted some military facilities on Soviet 

territory, see above; however, he never included Soviet nuclear forces in such 
117

assertions. 

235. Barre, “La politique de défense de la France,” p. 17. 

236. See, for instance, interview of Giscard d’Estaing on FR-3 TV channel, 

March 22, 1979, text reproduced in Tourrain, p. 36. In another TV interview in 

February 1980, Giscard revealed that French forces totalled 20 Mt in 1974, 75 Mt in 

1980, and would total 90 Mt in 1985, making it the “third nuclear power.” 

237. Such developments were called for by the 1972 White Paper. In 1976, Méry 

referred to Soviet defenses as the main rationale for the coming shift to MIRVed 

warheads, Méry, “Une armée pour quoi faire et comment?,” p. 21. In 1977, Barre 

stated that in order to counter Soviet defenses France would have to “quadruple” 

the capacity of the French deterrent, Barre, “Discours prononcé au camp de Mailly 

le 18 juin 1977,” p. 10. The program would lead to the introduction of the MIRVed 

M4 SLBM in 1985. 

238. Jacques Chevallier, “Histoire de la Direction des applications militaires 

du CEA,” in 40° anniversaire de la DAM, Commissariat à l’énergie atomique, 

1998, p. 22. 

239. See Pompidou’s speech to the National Assembly in December 1964, 

Ruehl, p. 192. 

240. See Lucien Poirier, “Dissuasion et Puissance Moyenne,” RDN, March 

1972, text reproduced in David, pp. 97-110, where he mentions the need for an 

“intolerable damage capability.” 

241. ”Intervention du Ministre de la Défense,” M. Robert Galley à l’IHEDN, 

Paris, February 3, 1981, text reproduced as “La politique militaire de la France,” 

RDN, March 1981, p. 18. 

242. Press conference of July 23, 1964, at the Elysée Palace, de Gaulle, Discours 

& Messages, Vol. IV, p. 233; Bendjebbar, p. 307; and de Gaulle, Mémoires d’espoir, p. 

1,069. 

243. “Our objective is not parity, but sufficiency.” Barre, “Discours prononcé 

au camp de Mailly le 18 juin 1977,” p. 10. 

244. This last point was acknowledged in the 1972 White Paper. 

245. As reported by Peyrefitte, p. 350.

246. Poirier, “Dissuasion et puissances moyennes,” p. 104. 

247. See Pompidou’s December 1973 conference, Theleri, p. 327. 

248. See, for instance, Guy Méry, “Conférence prononcée par le général 

Méry,” RDN, May 1978, p. 29. 

249. Yields mentioned are the most commonly found number in open sources. 

The yield of the AN22 was 80 kt according to a 1970 parliamentary report, see 

Ruehl, p. 306, and “nearly 100 kt” according to the 1972 White Paper. A CEA 

source, Chevallier, p. 16, gives 55 kt for the AN21 and 115 kt for the MR31. For a 
118

detailed overview of French nuclear warheads, see Robert S. Norris, Andrew S. 

Burrows, and Richard W. Fieldhouse, Nuclear Weapons Databook, Vol. V: British, 

French and Chinese Nuclear Weapons, Boulder: Westview Press, 1994. 

250. The 3,000 km range is frequently found in the open literature. The 

Mirage-IV was designed to fly at supersonic speed half of the distance. The original 

1956 requirement had specified a total range of 2,650 km, but that distance was 

“doubled” in 1959, see Claude Carlier, “La genèse du système d’arme stratégique 

piloté Mirage-IV, 1956-1964,” in Vaïsse, ed., Armement & Vème République, pp. 

206-222. The Mirage-IV needed one, if not two, in-flight refuellings to reach Soviet 

targets by using northeastern or southeastern flight plans to avoid over-flying 

Warsaw Pact countries; hence the use of additional Mirage-IVs as refuelling 

stations and the acquisition in 1962 of 12 KC-135 aircraft. The maximum “useful” 

range was planned to be 4,800 km with in-flight refuelling, according to Messmer 

in 1963, Ruehl, p. 187. The operational range probably took into account that, 

in many scenarios, bombers were not expected to return to their home bases. 

Counting on the fact that these bases “would have been atomized, by definition,” 

de Gaulle hypothesized that they would land “in Sweden or Turkey”―Peyrefitte, 

p. 368. 

251. Alain C. Enthoven and K. Wayne Smith, How Much is Enough? Shaping the 

Defense Program, 1961-1969, New-York: Harper & Row, 1971, p. 207. 

252. U.S. DoD numbers Ball, Vol. I, p. 33. 

253. According to Poirier, Des Stratégies Nucléaires, p. 297. 

254. Most data from Geoffrey Kemp, Nuclear Forces for Medium Powers. Part 

1: Targets and Weapons Systems, Adelphi Paper No. 106, London: IISS, Fall 1974, p. 

5; and Nuclear Forces for Medium Powers. Parts II and III: Strategic Requirements and 

Options, Adelphi Paper No. 107, London: IISS, Fall 1974, p. 5, p. 9. The number of 

required warheads takes into account the loss of a number of warheads due to 

reliability problems and interception successes. Calculations for 30 cities in the 

Western part of the Soviet Union are based on data provided by Kemp, Vol. II-III, 

pp. 23-25. Note that his calculations are based on the assumption of an average of 

a 5 psi overpressure, thus not allowing for the complete destruction of industrial 

installations. Also, the total of the main USSR cities include one or two cities such 

as Tashkent which may not have been accessible to French SSBNs patrolling in the 

Atlantic. 

255. Kemp, Vol. I, p. 5; 50 percent in Kemp, Vol. II-III, p. 5. 

256. The Soviet population, 208 million in 1959, was 241 million in 1970. Thus 

one-fourth to one-half of the Russian population corresponded roughly to 30-60 

million in 1970. Arguably, when de Gaulle said “Russia,” he often meant “the 

Soviet Union.” In this hypothesis, France would probably still have been able 

to target about one-fourth of the Soviet population when adding about 30 airdelivered 60 kt bombs. 

257. MacNamara’s criteria were 25-33 percent of the Soviet population and 
119

about 66 percent of its industrial capacity, 1965; revised to 20-25 percent and 50-66 

percent, 1967; and again in 1968 to 20-25 percent and 50 percent. See Ball, p. 14; and 

Kemp, Vol. I, p. 25. 

258. Gallois met with Premier Mollet in March 1956. He argues that his 

intervention was critical for the acceleration of the nuclear program, see Le sablier 

du siècle, pp. 362-365. 

259. Livre blanc sur la défense, Vol. I. The sentence began with “presently,” 

leaving the door open to a future different perspective in light of European 

integration. 

260. For vital interests, see above; for sanctuary, see Pierre-Marie Gallois, 

“Deux budgets militaires, une politique de sécurité,” RDN, June 1962, pp. 937-

953. 

261. After the 1956 meeting, Gallois met with de Gaulle only once, in 1963. 

The President wanted to hear Gallois’s views on the emergence of China as a 

nuclear power. 

262. The quote is from Robert MacNamara’s Ann Arbor address of June 16, 

1962. 

263. He expounded the argument in Pierre-Marie Gallois, Les paradoxes de la 

paix, Paris: Presses du temps présent, 1967. 

264. See Gallois, Stratégie de l’âge nucléaire, pp. 231-234. To be fair, his views 

on the subject have sometimes been exaggerated: he did acknowledge that some 

countries would see their nuclear deterrent as a mean to blackmail and coerce 

others. 

265. Charles Ailleret, “Opinion sur la théorie stratégique de la flexible 

response,” RDN, August-September 1964, p. 1,328. 

266. Gallois, Le sablier du siècle, p. 402. 

267. Lawrence Freedman, The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy, Studies in 

International Security No. 20, London: MacMillan, 1981, p. 315. 

268. Poirier was a lieutenant-colonel at the Policy planning staff of the MoD, 

along with general Beaufre and civilian analyst Gaston Bouthoul, under the 

supervision of military engineer Hugues de l’Estoile. With his colleagues, he 

framed the French concept in a document reportedly entitled “Logical study of 

a conceivable strategic model for France. Confrontation of the model with some 

concrete cases.” Also known as “document 952” and dated March 15, 1966, it is still 

classified, but its contents have been made public by Poirier through conferences 

and writings. See Poirier, Des stratégies nucléaires, p. 325. 

269. See Lacouture, p. 472. 

270. On this, see, for instance, Cohen, La défaite des généraux, pp. 96-97. 

271. Aron, Le grand débat, p. 133. 

272. Ibid., p. 12, the reference to Gallois being obvious, p. 136. Gallois later 
120

accused Aron of being paid by the CIA, Gallois, Le sablier du siècle, p. 164. 

273. See his preface to Gallois, Stratégie de l’âge nucléaire, pp. v-vi; and Aron, 

Le grand débat, pp. 115-156. Aron, however, credited de Gaulle for being able to 

convey the impression that he would use the nuclear force, ibid., p. 122, and thus he 

was not completely out of tune with the Gallois argument, according to which the 

psychological factor of deterrence was the most critical. 

274. Aron, Le grand débat, pp. 126-127. 

275. See Mongin, pp. 254s. 

276. Beaufre, Dissuasion et stratégie, p. 66. 

277. On this point, see David Yost, France’s Deterrent Posture and Security in 

Europe, Part I: Capabilities and Doctrine, Adelphi Paper No. 194, IISS, Winter 1984-

1985, p. 39. 

278. Beaufre also may be the author of the expression “non-use,” non-emploi, 

i.e., “non-warfighting,” which was to become later a keyword in French nuclear 

discourse.

279. See Bruno Colson, “La culture stratégique française,” Stratégique, No. 53, 

1992, pp. 27-60. 

280. Critical public documents describing this strategy include the 1952 Global 

Strategy Paper, and the 1957 White Paper. See Heuser, pp. 93s. 

281. Pierre-Marie Gallois, “The raison d’être of French defense policy,” 

International Affairs, Vol. 39, No. 4, October 1963, p. 497. See also ibid., “Deux 

budgets militaires, une politique de sécurité.” On the influence of British thinking 

on American, French and NATO strategies, see Beatrice Heuser, NATO, Britain, 

France and the FRG. Nuclear Strategies and Forces for Europe, 1949-2000, London: 

MacMillan Press, 1997. 

282. See Heuser, p. 73. 

283. Beaufre, NATO and Europe, pp. 51, 54. Gallois claims that the Beaufre 

group, like many other allied efforts, just added nuclear weapons with 

conventional strategy without taking into account the revolutionary potential of 

these weapons, Gallois, Le sablier du siècle, p. 315. 

284. The group also was comprised of U.S. Colonels Goodpaster and 

Richardson and UK Colonel MacDonald. It functioned from September 1953 to 

late 1956. 

285. Charles Ailleret, “Unité fondamentale des armements nucléaires et 

conventionnels,” RDN, April 1964, pp. 565-577; and Charles Ailleret, “Opinion 

sur la théorie stratégique de la ‘flexible response’,” RDN, August-September 1964, 

in particular, p. 1334s. 

286. For instance, “maintaining a clear and convincing capability to inflict 

unacceptable damage on an attacker,” in Senate Armed Services Committee, 

Military Procurement Authorization, Fiscal Year 1966, Washington, DC: U.S. 

Government Printing Office, 1965, p. 43. MacNamara also referred from 1962 on 
121

to “intolerable punishment.” See, for instance, Statement of Secretary of Defense 

Robert S. MacNamara before the House Armed Services Committee on the Fiscal 

Year 1966-1970 Defense Program and 1966 Defense Budget, February 18, 1965, p. 

39. References taken from Desmond Ball, Targeting for Strategic Deterrence, Adelphi 

Paper No. 185, London: IISS, 1983, p. 14. 

287. See the contribution by Michael Quinlan, Chapter 9. 

288. Press conference at the Elysée Palace, January 14, 1963, in de Gaulle, 

Discours & Messages, Vol. IV, p. 73.

289. Gallois saw the emerging French doctrine as heresy because he saw it as 

an alibi to maintain important conventional forces. See Pierre-Marie Gallois, L’adieu 

aux armées, Paris: Albin Michel, 1976, chapter 7: “La dérive.” He despised the “test” 

idea and would be no less severe for the later “final warning” concept, described 

as “childish” and “dangerous,” Gallois, Le sablier du siècle, pp. 402-408. Poirier, for 

his part, disdained the 1969 Fourquet concept of engaging a conventional battle 

with the option to use TNW for military efficiency and as a second “test.” He 

described it as intellectually sloppy, a drift from his intellectually elegant 1968 

model, see Poirier, Des Stratégies Nucléaires, p. 326. 

290. See Lacouture, p. 473; and Peyrefitte, p. 354, in which he imagines a 

scenario where the Soviet union threatened to bomb Marseilles, and France 

replied by threatening to bomb Odessa. 

291. See Ruehl, p. 223. 

292. Cohen, La défaite des généraux, p. 95. 

293. This is acknowledged in particular by Pierre Messmer, Mémoires, Paris: 

Albin Michel, 1992. 

294. Maurice Vaïsse, “Historique du concept français de dissuasion nucléaire 

1945-1994,” in Pierre Pascallon, ed., Quel avenir pour la dissuasion nucléaire française?, 

Brussels: Bruylant, 1996, p. 5. 

295. Quoted in Bendjebbar, p. 324. 

296. Charles de Gaulle, Le fil de l’épée, Paris: Union générale d’éditions, 1962, 

p. 142. 

297. Both quoted in Bozo, p. 121. 

298. “Des avions d’épouvante,” 1963 statement Claude Carlier, “La genèse du 

système d’arme stratégique piloté Mirage IV, 1956-1964,” in Vaïsse, ed., Armement 

et Vème République, p. 214. 

299. See Press conference at the Elysée Palace, p. 74. 

300. See Gallois, “Puissance et limitation des armes de la dissuasion.”

301. See, for instance, Gallois, Stratégie de l’âge nucléaire, pp. 180-183; and 

Beaufre, Introduction à la stratégie, Paris: Hachette, 1998, p. 111. 

302. Arguably, the choice was between the ICBM and two more SSBNs, see 
122

Ruehl, pp. 225-226, 303-305; and one should also note that the programme was 

definitely abandoned only in 1969 after de Gaulle left power. The point here is that 

a context of budgetary restrictions contributed to the choice made. 

303. Messmer, “Notre politique militaire,” p. 747. 

304. Barre, “Discours prononcé au camp de Mailly le 18 juin 1977,” p. 10. 

305. Barre, “La politique de défense de la France,” p. 17. 

306. See, for instance, Fourquet. 

307. For a discussion of this point, see the contribution of David Yost in 

Chapter 7. 

308. Giscard d’Estaing, Le pouvoir et la vie, p. 180. 

309. Theleri, p. 233. 

310. An idea suggested by Lothar Ruehl, p. 233. 

311. A rare exception is its use by Giscard in his memoirs, Le pouvoir et la vie, 

p. 210. 

312. See Messmer, “Notre politique militaire.” 

313. Georges Pompidou, press conference, December 1973, in Theleri, p. 327. 

314. Barre, “La politique de défense de la France,” p. 15. 

315. Two SSBNs at 100 percent of the time, three at 75 percent, and four in 

crisis time, if needed. 

316. Barre, “La politique de défense de la France,” pp. 17, 12.
123

CHAPTER 3

THE U.S. NAVY’S FLEET BALLISTIC MISSILE PROGRAM

AND FINITE DETERRENCE

Harvey M. Sapolsky

 In their earliest incarnation Submarine Launched Ballistic Missiles 

(SLBMs) were the epitome of a Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) 

strategy fully implemented in that they were second strike weapons 

that were mobile, invulnerable to enemy detection and destruction, 

and capable only of hitting soft urban/industrial targets. Polaris was 

the U.S. Navy’s first SLBM. Given its limited accuracy, the Polaris

could hit a Soviet city only if the city were big enough to make a miss 

unlikely. But technology, strategy and organizational opportunities 

change. There is little that is MAD in the Trident D-5, the Navy’s current 

SLBM missile, because it is a very accurate system that is capable of 

destroying hardened missile silos and command bunkers.

 Targeting policies for American nuclear weapons are a product 

of nuclear weapon capabilities, national strategy, and organizational 

interests. These policies are established through a largely unguided 

bureaucratic search for what is technically feasible, what is militarily 

desirable, and what is politically acceptable regarding the potential 

use of nuclear weapons. But they are also the nation’s deepest, most 

well-guarded secrets, and thus on some level knowable to only a 

handful of government insiders. The public expression of these 

policies may be made intentionally misleading so as to protect the 

real policies from prying eyes, foreign and domestic. We can infer 

about motivations and try to understand actions, but we may never 

fully know what was intended or achieved strategically for nuclear 

weapons.

 By any measure SLBMs were a significant innovation, affecting 

in important ways several dimensions of U.S. strategic policy. They 

helped kill as unneeded a vast bomber force (our own), helped save 

the Navy from being marginalized in the assignment of the nation’s 

most vital security mission, and helped win the Cold War by making 

it impossible for the United States to lose. They also were largely 

unwanted both within and without the Navy. Civilians did not want 

the Navy to develop its own ballistic missile. The Air Force criticized 
124

the effort. The Army had to be pushed out of the way. And much of 

the Navy dreaded SLBMs.1

 Today SLBMs are the key component of 

our nuclear arsenal. 2

 The Difficult Road to Polaris

The U.S. Navy had great difficulty gaining a significant role in 

the sponsorship of nuclear forces. The Navy had only minimum 

involvement in the project to develop the atomic bomb, the most 

important weapon advance to come out of the World War II. It 

also lacked a viable weapon platform with which to challenge the 

nuclear weapon dominance that the newly created Air Force had in 

the early years of the Cold War. And it found that civilian officials 

had little interest in making the strategic mission competitive among 

the armed services.

The Navy was essentially frozen out of the Manhattan Project, 

the bomb project, because of a conflict an admiral had with the 

scientists who were helping to organize the effort to mobilize civilian 

science for the World War II. As the war drew near, the scientists 

offered suggestions for ways to improve the Navy’s anti-submarine 

capabilities through a committee of the National Research Council, 

but their ideas were rejected as superfluous by Rear Admiral Harold 

G. Bowen, who at the time was the technical aide to the Secretary of 

the Navy as well as head of the Naval Research Laboratory. Admiral 

Bowen told the scientists that the Navy already had a good plan 

to defeat the U-boats and, if they wanted to, they ought to put on 

uniforms. Offended, the scientists involved soon found an influential 

champion, Vannevar Bush, the key wartime advisor to President 

Roosevelt on science including the development of the atomic 

bomb. Bush saw to it that Admiral Bowen was relieved of his posts 

and given an unsatisfactory fitness report.3

 When the time came to 

organize the atomic bomb project, Bush gave the task to the Army 

Corps of Engineers, even though the Navy in the form of the Naval 

Research Laboratory was already involved in atomic research. Bush 

justified this decision by saying that naval officers, and especially 

those associated with the Naval Research Laboratory, did not know 

how to work effectively with civilian scientists.4 

 After the war the Navy sought a role in the delivery of nuclear 

weapons by building carriers big enough to launch and recover 
125

atomic bomb carrying aircraft, the so-called super carriers.5 The 

Truman administration in 1949, citing budget constraints, cancelled 

the program in favor of an increased investment in the Air Force’s 

B-36 strategic bomber. When the Navy took its case for the carriers to 

the Congress and the public, including making unproven accusations 

about corruption by Air Force officials and the bomber’s contractor, 

President Truman fired the Secretary of the Navy and the Chief 

of Naval Operations for insubordination in a scandal that became 

known as the Revolt of the Admirals.6

The Navy also did not fare well six years later when the 

Eisenhower administration reviewed available ballistic missile 

programs. President Eisenhower’s concern about winning the race 

to build strategic missiles was tempered by his fear that a prolonged 

mobilization of American society for the Cold War, as it seemed 

likely, might permanently harm the economy and create a garrison 

state unless weapon acquisition costs were limited.7

 Three Air Force 

projects (Atlas, Titan, and Thor) and one Army project (Jupiter) were 

given priority development approval. The best the Navy could do 

was to team with the Army to develop a sea-based version of the 

Jupiter intermediate range ballistic missile. 8 Given that the Navy 

wanted to use submarines as the launching platform for its ballistic 

missile, a teaming effort with the Army seemed quite undesirable 

from the Navy’s point of view. The Jupiter missile was both big and 

liquid-fueled. A big missile meant that few could be carried on a 

single submarine and that they would be difficult to launch. As later 

demonstrated in several Soviet disasters, volatile liquid fuels sloshing 

about on a submarine can create very dangerous conditions.

 Missile advocates within the Navy wanted their own program, one 

to develop a small, solid-fueled rocket. Studies showed that such a 

system was feasible provided expected advances occurred in several 

technologies including the design of smaller nuclear warheads.9

But because the Eisenhower administration was determined for 

budgetary reasons to limit the number of priority ballistic missile 

programs to four, the only way the Navy could gain approval for an 

independent development project was to do in the Army. The Navy 

soon did just that by voting with the Air Force in the Joint Chiefs of 

Staff to prevent the Army from having an independent requirement 

for a strategic missile. The Air Force saw the Army rather than the 
126

Navy as potentially the most difficult rival for the strategic mission. 

Once the Navy withdrew from the Jupiter program, the Army’s 

missile effort lost its status as a priority project. In its place, the Navy 

was given approval for accelerated development of the solid-fueled 

Polaris missile and its associated submarine system. Approval came 

in 1956. Four years later the first Polaris armed nuclear submarine 

went to sea.10

The Navy took a risk in continuing to pursue the strategic mission. 

Some naval officers thought the Air Force was destined to dominate in 

ballistic missiles just as the Air Force had in aircraft delivered nuclear 

weapons. It was better, they believed, for the Navy to concentrate 

on conventional forces. Avoiding the competition for the strategic 

mission would avoid another political defeat. Admiral Arleigh Burke, 

the Chief of Naval Operations during the Polaris decision, however, 

thought that the Navy had to be involved in the development of 

ballistic missiles and gain part of the strategic mission if it wanted to 

protect its share of the defense budget and protect its conventional 

warfare role. Burke, right on so many other issues, may have been 

wrong on this one because much of the program’s initial costs came 

out of the Navy’s base budget. In any case, the nation benefited from 

his bureaucratic miscalculation.11

Not surprisingly because of these internal fears, Fleet Ballistic 

Missile (FBM) proponents initially looked back at the U.S. Navy 

almost as much as they focused on the growing nuclear arms race 

with the Soviet Union in their statements about Polaris’ deployment 

and purpose. Although they were totally committed to submarine 

basing for Polaris, they tried to reassure others in the Navy that 

opportunities for them were not being totally closed off. Thus, 

the initial design of the FBM system included provisions to place 

Polaris launch tubes on surface ships - aircraft carriers and cruisers 

specifically - as well as submarines.12 This way, the major elements of 

the conventional navy could have a possible strategic role. Spreading 

Polaris missiles across the fleet might not be their best or most 

likely outcome, but such plans potentially could be used to justify 

the purchase of conventional forces in a policy environment that 

seemed certain to favor more strategic investments at the expense of 

conventional warfare investments. 
127

Defending Polaris

 Keeping the Polaris program viable in Washington’s competitive 

budgetary environment meant that the Navy had to devise effective 

supporting arguments as well as effective development strategies. 

The U.S. was going to build ballistic missiles, but not necessarily 

Polaris missiles. Just as the Jupiter missile could be pushed aside 

so could Polaris. The Eisenhower administration sought to impose 

budget ceilings on the military in order to limit the impact the 

Cold War mobilization was having on the American economy.13

Submarines are not cheap. The cost of putting an equivalent payload 

at sea was initially estimated to be four times that of a land based 

force.14 If the Navy had not offered a persuasive case for its FBM 

Program, the Navy’s formal name for its submarine launched 

ballistic missile system, Air Force ballistic missile programs would 

have been preferred to what could easily have been viewed as the 

Navy’s wasteful duplicating effort to gain a share of the strategic 

mission. 

 Polaris was built primarily on arguments that stressed the Navy 

system’s unique contributions to national security. Ballistic missiles, 

whatever their basing modes, were certain to be targets for enemy 

nuclear weapon attacks because of the threat they posed to an 

opponent. The blast and fallout effects of these attacks could be 

devastating to civilian populations and vital national infrastructure. 

Sea-basing, FBM advocates stressed took missile targets away from 

American shores, reducing the damage that an attack could inflict on 

the American homeland. Thus, the FBM system was sold in part on 

its unique damage limitation feature.15

 Submarine basing has particular advantages for strategic systems, 

not the least of which is that submarines are extremely difficult for 

opponents to counter. Submarines are mobile, stealthy platforms 

that are hard to locate and track.16 Nuclear-powered ones can stay 

submerged for months at a time. Defenders must be able to identify, 

follow and destroy missile carrying submarines in literally millions 

of square miles of ocean, much of which is likely to be patrolled by 

U.S. warships and aircraft.

Oskar Morgenstern, the great nuclear strategist, described the 

Navy’s position succinctly and positively in 1960, writing: “The 

United States can make its force invulnerable by hardening....But 
128

this has the simple consequence that these sites will come under 

correspondingly heavier attack...Indeed, we must go further and 

place the major part of the retaliatory force outside our country...

on the vast expanse of the world’s oceans, in fact under the waters. 

We then combine through the use of nuclear-powered, missilefiring Polaris submarines the tremendous advantages of mobility 

with invisibility; and we can distribute individual units randomly, 

thereby making surprise attack on any substantial part of that force 

impossible.”17

 The survivability of the system was also described as an advantage 

because it meant Polaris was unlikely to be viewed by the Soviets 

as a first strike weapon. A more vulnerable system could cause the 

Soviets to fear that it would be used preemptively and therefore 

could provoke their own preemption. Lurking safely in the depths, 

Polaris was the assured retaliation for an attack against the United 

States that underlay the mutual assured destruction doctrine and was 

vigorously promoted as such by some of its early naval advocates.18 

 Even the technical limits imposed by submarine basing of Polaris

were used to promote the FBM system. Accurate targeting of a 

ballistic missile requires accurate information about its precise launch 

point as well as the location of its target. Although improvements 

were made, navigation at sea was an imprecise science when Polaris

was being developed. At that time, missile guidance systems could 

not compensate for the inevitable errors. Also communication with 

submerged submarines was very difficult, ruling out the close 

coordination required for preemptive attacks.19 Taken together the 

accuracy limits and the communications problems meant that Polaris

was inherently a second strike weapon.20 Rather than a limitation, 

the retaliatory nature of Polaris was described as a strategic virtue. 

Polaris, the argument went, would help stabilize the arms race by its 

inability to do disarming attacks.

As a retaliatory system, FBM could be finite in scale and thus 

limited in cost. Proponents argued that this would free resources 

that conventional forces (especially the rest of the Navy) needed to 

meet likely Soviet inspired global probes that sought to extend the 

Cold World competition into other arenas.21 This assertion helped 

reassure skeptics in the Navy who worried that the expanding 

strategic forces would absorb most of the service’s budget and 

officer promotion opportunities as they were already doing within 
129

the Air Force. Staking out the retaliatory position signaled that the 

Polaris proponents had moderate ambitions. It also helped avoid 

continuing investments in strategic counterforce systems, such as 

the Air Force promoted, which fueled a wasteful arms race with no 

upper bounds.22 Polaris made nuclear deterrence finite both in terms 

of its impact on the Navy and its impact on society.

 As America’s ultra secure second strike, its invulnerable deterrent, 

the Polaris system was a significant constraint on Soviet nuclear 

aggression. If the Soviets wished to counter it at sea, they would be 

forced to build a navy of a scale to rival that of the U.S.. The resources 

required to do effective antisubmarine warfare were vast, especially 

against a technologically advanced opponent like the U.S.. Moreover, 

the Soviet Union, because of its geographic isolation from the sea, 

was at a particular disadvantage in any attempt to counter directly 

the Polaris threat. Pushing Polaris could push the Soviets financially, 

and certainly might entice them to allocate resources away from 

building and defending their own strategic forces.23

Technology and Morality

 During public debates about the relative merits of buying Super 

Carriers versus the B-36 bombers, naval officers raised questions 

about the morality of the Air Force position. By advocating the 

deployment of the B-36, they argued that the Air Force was advocating 

killing civilians because the B-36 would not be able to deliver bombs 

accurately. The B-36 would repeat the city destroying attacks of the 

World War II, but this time the near random devastation of strategic 

bombing would be greater because the B-36 would be dropping 

nuclear bombs. The intentional targeting of civilians, which a B-36 

raid necessarily would be, they noted, was immoral and harmful 

to national interest. In contrast naval aircraft attacking from the 

new carriers would be fighter-bombers capable of striking military 

targets with some precision.24 Naval officers did not mention that the 

Navy wanted the Super Carriers to launch larger aircraft needed for 

nuclear strikes of their own which were likely to cause considerable 

civilian casualties as collateral damage. 25

 But because Polaris like all early ballistic missiles was a city killer 

by necessity, naval officers advocating the development of the Polaris

had to ignore the moral objections to city attacks that the Navy made 
130

in the debate over the Super Carrier. To be sure, they cited Polaris’ 

potential for attacking military targets, specifically mentioning 

submarine pens and airfields, but this was in part to justify an 

independent naval requirement for a nuclear weapon delivery 

system and in part to mollify critics within the Navy who preferred 

conventional capabilities.26 The serious discussion of targets for 

Polaris quickly turned to the list of Soviet urban/industrial targets, 

cities and civilians. 

The retaliatory /deterrent aspects of Polaris were more than 

acknowledged, they were championed. The moral arguments were 

reversed. With Polaris it was virtuous to threaten the annihilation 

of civilian populations because the ability to cause such destruction 

would prevent war, not expand it.27Polaris, the invulnerable deterrent, 

would be the most effective way to do this. There was no need for a 

doctrine of massive retaliation. With a secure second strike, nuclear 

war would never pay.28 As Rear Admiral I. J. Galantin, later head 

of the FBM development effort, said: “[Polaris] will give assurance 

of retaliation and fulfill the new function of military force - that of 

preventing war - by being so attuned and adjusted to grand strategy 

requirements that battles do not occur.” 29

The Slide Away from MAD

Although a Joint Targeting Planning Staff for nuclear weapons 

was established in August 1960, the shape of the U.S. nuclear 

weapon programs remained very much influenced by uncoordinated 

service initiatives.30 The Navy in calculating the number of SLBMs 

(submarines) to acquire sought enough to attack all potential Soviet 

targets irrespective of the coverage of same targets by Air Force 

land-based ballistic missile and bombers.31 Both the Air Force and 

the Navy planned follow-on strategic systems independently of each 

other. And both services pursued vigorous technology improvement 

efforts to make their systems more survivable and more accurate. 

The Polaris had A-1, A-2 and A-3 versions and was succeeded 

by first the Poseidon and then the Trident D-4 and D-5 missiles. The 

Polaris A-2 achieved the range goals originally set for Polaris while the 

A-3 had increased range and multiple nuclear warheads that could 

thwart early Soviet anti-ballistic missile defenses. Poseidon increased 

the range still further, had improved accuracy, and added multiple 
131

independently targetable warheads that assured penetration of more 

advanced Soviet defenses. The Trident versions improved range and 

accuracy still further. By the time Trident D-5 was deployed, the hard 

target capabilities of the FBM, achieved gradually, were generally 

acknowledged.32

Within the Navy there was a debate between those who wanted 

technology improvements in the FBM system merely to protect its 

assured destruction role and those who wanted the Navy to gain 

significant counterforce capabilities.33 The long time director of the 

FBM’s development agency, the Navy’s Special Projects Office (later 

the Strategic Systems Projects Office), Vice Admiral Levering Smith, 

in particular, sought to constrain the push toward a hard target killing 

requirements for SLBMs that was advocated within the Navy’s staff 

and Secretariat. Smith thought that an invulnerable and guaranteed 

to succeed second strike was sufficient to prevent a Soviet attack.34

But not everyone agreed that Mutual Assured Destruction was 

the most desirable strategic doctrine. From the beginning, there were 

officers and officials in and out of the Navy who did not want to 

trust the nation’s fate to the logic of mutual hostage taking and the 

rational calculations of the Soviet leadership.35 Although debates 

raged over every effort to build ballistic missile defense, the Navy 

quietly pursued anti-submarine warfare with apparently great and 

persistent success. The Navy achieved operational dominance over 

Soviet submarines in the early 1960s and maintained it for more 

than two decades.36 Nominally focused on keeping the sea lanes to 

Europe open, this anti-submarine warfare capability obviously could 

be used against Soviet ballistic missile submarines; and it was. Here 

the argument was that our bombers and command facilities had 

to be protected against a surprise Soviet SLBM attack. As a Soviet 

ballistic missile submarine retreated under pressure back toward 

the apparent protection of Soviet shores, the U.S. anti-submarine 

effort followed. Indications are that the effort remained successful 

despite Soviet attempts to create Bastions for the safe operation of 

their missile carrying submarines. The Soviet submarines were in 

jeopardy no matter their mission. Although unadvertised, the Navy, 

in essence, had developed the ability to place the Soviet’s second 

strike continually at risk.37
132

 Without public declaration or full internal debate, the Navy had 

given the nation strategic options beyond MAD. The improvements 

obtained in SLBM accuracy, advances achieved in submarine 

communications, and the significant anti-submarine warfare 

advantage achieved by the Navy provided preemption and war 

fighting possibilities that earlier in the Cold War simply did not 

exist. Because MAD remained the official policy, it was quite rare 

and controversial for officials to discuss these new options openly 

and clearly.38 Yet, any fair assessment of the capacity of American 

strategic forces from the 1970s on could not ignore the reality. The 

U.S. had the capability to do more than absorb a nuclear attack and 

retaliate with a devastating counter strike.39

Technological opportunities were seized. Polaris was a very secure 

retaliatory system, the key component of a MAD strategy. Trident is 

all that plus the formerly unthinkable - the possibility of throwing 

a disarming first blow - a coordinated, preemptive strike against 

all Soviet strategic systems. The Soviet Union was attempting to 

respond by building quieter submarines and mobile land-based 

missiles when the Cold War ended with the collapse of Communism 

and the disintegration of the Soviet empire.

ENDNOTES - CHAPTER 3

1. For a detailed history of the Polaris development and the politics that lay 

behind it, see my Polaris System Development: Bureaucratic and Programmatic Success 

in Government, Cambridge, MA: Harvard University Press, 1972.

2. David Mosher, “The Hunt for Small Potatoes: Savings in Nuclear Deterrence 

Forces,” in Cindy Williams, ed., Holding the Line: U. S. Defense Alternatives for the 

Early 21st Century, Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 2001, pp. 119-140.

3. Harvey M. Sapolsky, Science and the Navy: The History of the Office of Naval 

Research, Princeton, NJ: Princeton University Press, 1990, pp. 11-19.

4. Ibid.

5. For a discussion of the Navy’s initial attempts to have a nuclear bomber, see 

John Hayward and C. W. Borklund, Bluejacket Admiral, Annapolis, Naval Institute 

Press: 2000.

6. Jeffrey G. Barlow, Revolt of the Admirals: The Fight for Naval Aviation, 1945-

1950, Washington, DC: Naval Historical Center, Department of the Navy, 1994; 

Paul Y. Hammond, “Super Carriers and B-36 Bombers: Appropriations, Strategy, 

and Politics,” in Harold Stein, ed., American Civil-Military Decisions, Birmingham, 

AL: University of Alabama Press, 1961. 
133

7. Andrew P. N. Erdmann, “’War No Longer Has Any Logic Whatever’: Dwight 

D. Eisenhower and the Thermonuclear Revolution,” in John Lewis Gaddis, ed., 

Coldwar Statesmen Confront the Bomb: Nuclear Diplomacy Since 1945, New York, NY: 

Oxford University Press, 1999, p. 109.

8. Sapolsky, The Polaris System Development, pp. 7, 21-24.

9. Sapolsky, The Polaris System Development, pp. 28-29; William F. Whitamore, 

“Military Operations Research―A Personal Retrospect,” Operations Research, Vol. 

9, March-April, 1961, p. 263.

10. Captain Dominic A. Paolucci, USN, Ret., “The Development of Navy 

Strategic Offensive and Defensive Systems,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, May 

1970, p. 215.

11. Desmond J. Ball, “The Counterforce Potential of American SLBM Systems,” 

Journal of Peace Research, Vol. XIV, No. 1, 1977, p. 25, citing interview with Admiral 

Burke. Also Sapolsky, The Polaris System Development, pp. 160-191.

12. The idea of surface ships as ballistic missile carriers persisted into the 1960s. 

See Thomas Connolly, “The Ballistic Missile Surface Force,” U.S. Naval Institute 

Proceedings, June 1964, pp. 41-47.

13. Robert R. Bowie and Richard Immerman, Waging Peace: How Eisenhower 

Shaped an Enduring Cold War Strategy, New York, NY: Oxford University Press, 

1998, pp. 41-52; Erdmann, “’War No Longer Has Any Logic Whatever’: Dwight D. 

Eisenhower and the Thermonuclear Revolution.” Note the objections, Commander 

Laurence. B. Green and Commander John H. Burt, “Massive Retaliation: Salvation 

or ―?” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, October 1958, pp. 23-28. 

14. Captain Dominic A. Paolucci, “Poseidon and Minuteman: Either, Or; 

Neither, Nor?” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, August 1968, p. 49.

15. Roy Beavers, “Seapower and Geopolitics in the Missile Age,” U.S. Naval 

Institute Proceedings, June 1959, p. 41; Hanson W. Baldwin, “Stalemate―Or? U.S. 

Naval Institute Proceedings, April 1964, pp. 48-55. “This line of argumentation 

continued even as SLBMs evolved. See Paolucci, “The Development of Navy 

Strategic Offensive and Defensive Systems,” p. 223.

16. Owen R. Cote, Jr., The Third Battle: Innovation in the U. S. Navy’s Silent Cold 

War Struggle with Soviet Submarines, Newport, RI: Naval War College Press, 2002; 

Paolucci, “Poseidon and Minuteman: Either, Or; Neither, Nor?”; Admiral Claude 

Ricketts, “Naval Power―Present and Future,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, 

January 1963, p. 38. Some claimed the advantage for all sea based weapons, those 

delivered by carrier aircraft or seaplanes as well as submarines, James H. Smith, 

Jr., “Mobile Sea Base Systems in Nuclear Warfare,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, 

February 1955, pp. 131-135.

17. Quoted in Norman Polmar and Captain Dominic A. Paolucci, USN, Ret., 

“Sea-based ‘Strategic’ Weapons for the 1980s and Beyond,” U.S. Naval Institute 

Proceedings, May 1978, p. 107.
134

18. Commander P. H. Backus, “Finite Deterrence, Controlled Retaliation,” U.S. 

Naval Institute Proceedings, March 1959, pp. 23-29; Commander Paul H. Backus, 

USN, Ret., “The Vulnerable Homeland,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, December 

1970, pp. 19-22. 

19. Sapolsky, The Polaris System Development, pp. 238-240.

20. Backus, “The Vulnerable Homeland”; Ball, “The Counterforce Potential of 

American SLBM Systems,” p. 24.

21. Commander Ralph E. Williams, “Task for Today: Security Through 

Seapower,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, March 1958, p. 24.

22. Backus, “Finite Deterrence, Controlled Retaliation,”; Lieutenant George E. 

Love, “Deterrence―The Next 20 Years,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, November 

1961, pp. 51-59. Naval officers were eager to take the challenge that a more flexible 

response strategy embraced. See Commander Malcolm W. Cagle, “Sea Power 

and Limited War,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, July 1958, pp. 23-27; Captain 

George L. Rearing, “The Atom, the Navy and Limited War,” U.S. Naval Institute 

Proceedings, February 1962, pp. 50-57; and Captain Carl H. Amme, “Naval Strategy 

and the New Frontier,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, March 1962, pp. 23-33.

23. Rear Admiral I. J. Galantin, “The Future of Nuclear-Powered Submarines,” 

U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, June 1958, p. 23, expresses an early version of the 

so-called competitive strategy of forces the Soviets to spend scarce resources on 

defensive measures. See also testimony of Rear Admiral Levering Smith, U.S. 

Congress, Senate, Committee on Armed Services, Undersea Long Range Missile: 

Hearings before the Ad Hoc Research and Development Subcommittee, 92nd Cong., 2nd 

Sess., March 23, 1972, p. 3211; testimony of Vice Admiral Philip Beshany, U.S. 

Congress, Senate, Committee on Armed Services, Undersea Long Range Missile: 

Hearings before the Ad Hoc Research and Development Subcommittee, 92nd Cong., 2nd 

Sess., March 22, 1972, p. 3143. 

24. Rear Admiral R. A. Ofstie, “Strategic Air Warfare,” U.S. Naval Institute 

Proceedings, June 1951, p. 59. These arguments persisted among naval officers 

well into the 1950s, see Commander Malcolm A. Cagle, 1957 Naval Institute Prize 

Essay, “A Philosophy for Naval Atomic Warfare,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, 

March 1957, pp. 249-258, which quotes favorably Rear Admiral Ofstie’s famous 

1949 testimony attacking Air Force strategy as immoral.

25. The quest for a nuclear capacity for naval aviation is described by participants 

in Jerry Miller, Nuclear Weapons and Aircraft Carriers: How the Bomb Saved Naval 

Aviation, Washington, DC: Smithsonian Institution Press, 2001; and Hayward and 

Borklund, Bluejacket Admiral: The Navy Career of Chick Hayward.

26. “Navy Views Polaris As Support Weapon,” Aviation Week, June 17, 1957, 

pp. 31-32.

27. Galantin, “The Future of Nuclear-Powered Submarines.” Note also Admiral 

H. D. Felt, “The Potential of Our Nuclear Age Navy,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, 

January 1958, pp. 110-113; Bernard Brodie, “Influence of Mass Destruction Weapons 

on Strategy,” Naval War College Review, June 1956, pp. 27-41.
135

28. Lieutenant George E. Love, “Neither Humiliation Nor Holocaust,” U.S. 

Naval Institute Proceedings, June 1963, p. 63.

29. Galatin, “The Future of Nuclear-powered Submarines,” p. 32. 

30. Henry S. Rowen, “The Evolution of Nuclear Strategic Doctrine,” in 

Laurence Martin, ed., Strategic Thought in the Nuclear Age, Baltimore MD: Johns 

Hopkins University Press, 1979, pp. 131-156. Note also Captain Linton F. Brooks, 

“Dropping the Baton,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, June 1989, p. 34, who notes 

the Air Force dominance of the Joint Strategic Targeting Planning Staff.

31. Sapolsky, The Polaris System Development, p. 161. 

32. Trident accuracy is discussed in D. Douglas Dalgleish and Larry Schweikart, 

“Trident and the Triad,” U.S. Naval Institute Proceedings, June 1986, p. 76: D. Douglas 

Dalgeleish and Larry Schweikart, “One Missile for the Triad,” U.S. Naval Institute 

Proceedings, August 1989, p. 74; Brooks, “Dropping the Baton,” p. 35.

33. Graham Spinardi, From Polaris to Trident: The Development of U.S. Fleet 

Ballistic Missile Technology, London, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1994. Also 

Graham Spinardi, “Why the U.S. Navy Went for Hard-Target Counterforce in 

Trident II, And Why It Didn’t Get There Sooner,” International Security, Vol. 15, No. 

2, Fall 1990, pp. 147-190.

34. This position is reinforced in John Craven, The Silent War. The Cold War 

Battle Beneath the Sea, New York: Simon and Schuster, 2001. 

35. John Lehman, Command of the Seas, New York: Charles Scribner’s Sons, 1988, 

pp. 198, 202; see also Scott D. Sagan, “SIOP-62: The Nuclear War Plan Briefing to 

President Kennedy,” International Security, Vol. 12, No. 1, Summer 1987, pp. 22-

51.

36. Cote, The Third Battle; Tom Stefanik, Strategic Antisubmarine Warfare and 

Naval Strategy, Lexington MA: Lexington Books, 1987.

37. Contrast Rowen, “The Evolution of Nuclear Strategic Doctrine,” p. 153. See 

also Barry Posen, Inadvertent Escalation. Conventional War and Nuclear Risks, Ithaca: 

Cornell University Press, 1992. Our significant ASW capabilities were not usually 

acknowledged. See James L. George, “START & the Navy,” U.S. Naval Institute 

Proceedings, April 1986, p. 38.

38. Ball, “The Counterforce Potential of American SLBM Systems,” in Spinardi, 

“Why the U.S. Navy . . .”.

39. Brooks, “Dropping the Baton,” p. 36.

137

CHAPTER 4

MAD AND U.S. STRATEGY1

Charles H. Fairbanks, Jr.

 From almost the very beginning of the Cold War, American 

nuclear strategy did not principally target Soviet cities. Most 

American nuclear weapons were aimed at military targets. 

Nonetheless, it was not until Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara’s 

address at the May 1962 NATO Ministerial and his subsequent 

public speech at the University of Michigan that the United States 

explicitly adopted a “city-sparing” nuclear strategy. Specifically, 

McNamara called for the creation of a meaningful Single Integrated 

Operational Plan (SIOP) that spared cities to the extent compatible 

with destroying enemy military targets.

 Through the 1960s, the Defense Department and successive 

presidential administrations allowed mutually assured destruction 

(MAD) to be perceived as strategic doctrine. And, indeed, MAD did 

have significant subsequent influence over plans and technology, 

blunting calls for greater weapons accuracy. However, MAD never 

became, in practice, America’s strategic doctrine. Moreover, the 

city-sparing aims of the Athens speech were never fully abandoned. 

This chapter aims to correct the perception that by 1964, McNamara 

concluded that his “no cities plan was a dangerous illusion,”2 and 

thus turned to rely on MAD.

MCNAMARA’S ATHENS AND ANN ARBOR SPEECHES

 Since the mid-1950s at RAND―where the most innovative 

thinking on nuclear strategy was going on―there was a desire to 

escape from the danger of spasm nuclear war. Those thinking about 

this problem at RAND considered MAD so absurd and terrible that 

they were skeptical that American or Soviet leaders would ever 

order such an attack.

 This doubt was reinforced powerfully by the situation in Europe. 

The bedrock of the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) was 

America’s promise to use nuclear weapons first to discourage a 
138

massive Soviet conventional attack. As the Soviets developed their 

own significant strategic nuclear force, the overwhelming bulk of 

these weapons were directed against Western Europe rather than 

the United States. As a result, many Europeans began to wonder 

whether the American promise to use nuclear weapons would be 

upheld and, if so, under what conditions. This European concern 

made it imperative to enhance the credibility of what were then 

called “type two” nuclear deterrents. These nuclear options were 

designed not to deter direct nuclear attacks, but rather to deter other 

unacceptable actions an aggressor might take.

 In addition, the need for a wider variety of nuclear options 

was also very powerfully bolstered by the experience of the long 

Berlin crisis. In fact, William Y. Kaufman, the analyst most directly 

involved in elaborating the Athens strategy, claims that Berlin was 

the most dangerous of all potential nuclear crises, more dangerous 

than Cuba. Even before the Berlin crisis, however, there was reason 

for Europeans to worry that the United States would not defend 

them. Certainly, Nikita Khrushchev’s missile bluff, which was 

underlined by the launch of Sputnik in 1957, powerfully reinforced 

European doubts about the American nuclear guarantee. What the 

Russian missile bluff made clear was that there was a Soviet strategy 

to extract concessions from the West over Berlin by using the West’s 

fear of Soviet ballistic missiles. While this turned out to be a bluff, it 

took 3 or 4 years for that to be clearly known.

 Throughout this period, from the late 1950s through the early 

1960s, ideas about nuclear deterrents were very much in flux. The 

idea of minimum deterrence or finite deterrence, by which nations 

would need only develop a small invulnerable nuclear force aimed 

at an opponent’s population centers, was put into circulation by 

the French and the U.S. Navy. The Navy was then promoting its 

submarine-launched ballistic missile fleet. This idea generated 

considerable interest. Just before President Kennedy entered office, 

the new Chief of Naval Operations predicted that an admiral would 

be the next NATO Supreme Allied Commander, Europe (SACEUR) 

because America’s nuclear deterrent was going to be the Navy’s 

responsibility.

 It was in this context that McNamara delivered his speech 

to the NATO Ministerial in Athens on May 6, 1962. It set forth a 
139

comprehensive statement of American policy on strategic nuclear 

war, but, importantly, only insofar as it affected NATO.

 The Athens speech was intended to stand on its own, but 

McNamara was so pleased with it that he asked for an unclassified 

version to be produced for an address to his Michigan alma mater, 

according to his assistant, Bill Kaufman. Kaufman claims that he 

refused to work on the Ann Arbor address because of the controversy 

he believed the Athens strategy would provoke if it were made 

public and taken out of its original intra-NATO context.

 The Ann Arbor speech ultimately was crafted by Adam 

Yarmolinsky, whose views were more dovish than those of 

Kaufman. It was only a third as long as the Athens address, having 

been trimmed of classified information. Another key difference 

between the speeches was that Athens was specifically designed 

both to address and evade various NATO sensitivities. The Allies 

were accustomed to a NATO process in which all changes of military 

doctrine took a very long time. To get the doctrine of flexible nuclear 

response accepted by NATO, for example, took years. The same was 

true of the Athens speech, which was never fulfilled, particularly on 

the conventional side.

 There were, however, several key similarities between the two 

speeches. In both, McNamara argued that, to the extent feasible, 

NATO should consider general nuclear war in much the same way 

that it approached more conventional military operations. NATO’s 

principal military objective in both cases should be the destruction 

of the enemy’s military forces. The speech at Athens went on to 

say that, under appropriate conditions, a nuclear strike confined to 

military targets on both sides might save 75 percent of the lives that 

would otherwise be lost in an offensive that combined an assured 

destruction attack plus counter force targets.

 Equally important, and much more explosive in terms of the 

NATO reaction, was what Kaufman and McNamara called the 

“indivisibility of control” over nuclear weapons. In the Athens 

speech, McNamara argued, “It is for these reasons I’ve laid such 

stress on unity of planning, concentration of executive authority, 

and central direction.” He ended this speech noting that, “Without 

them, general nuclear war means certain ruin. With them we have 

a chance of national survival.”3

 Small nuclear forces―like those 
140

the British and French developed―were judged to be expensive, 

prone to obsolescence, and lacking credibility as a deterrent. By 

McNamara’s standard of indivisibility of control, the British nuclear 

forces were less problematic than those of France, since the former 

were nominally integrated into America’s SIOP by the presence of 

a British officer on Washington’s joint strategic target and planning 

staff. The French, in contrast, were very proud of the independence 

of their nuclear deterrent and viewed McNamara’s Athens speech as 

an assault on Gaullist military doctrine.

 Somewhat more low-key was McNamara’s attack on the 

Multi-Lateral Force (MLF) which was a proposal to create a force 

of medium range ballistic missiles in the custody of the European 

NATO member states that would be launched from ships jointly 

manned by all the NATO countries. The MLF excited great derision 

in the Pentagon. It originally was developed by Professor Klaus Nor, 

then on the State Department’s planning staff, as a response to the 

growing European doubts about the credibility of NATO’s type two 

deterrents. McNamara made clear his reservations about the MLF 

in the Athens speech. “On the multilateral Medium Range Ballistic 

Missile Force,” McNamara noted, “we expect our allies will wish 

to consider very carefully the full implications of undertaking this 

venture.”

 Finally, the Athens speech culminated in a call for much larger 

conventional forces in Europe, which would have to be raised by 

the NATO allies. The conventional defense of Germany, which was 

not much more substantial than a tripwire, was to become a force 

capable of resisting Soviet Bloc attacks in order to void the question 

of escalation to the strategic nuclear level.

WHY THESE FORMULATIONS PROVED TO BE UNPOPULAR

Taken together, the Athens and Ann Arbor speeches constituted 

a major Pentagon strategic initiative. Yet, after the Ann Arbor 

address, none of McNamara’s proposals attracted much public 

discussion or debate. There were still plans for limited options being 

prepared in the Pentagon, and there was ongoing work on the SIOP. 

But, if one considers General Odom’s chapter in this volume, one 

can appreciate how limited the results of these efforts were.
141

 Why, then, were the Athens and Ann Harbor suggestions 

set aside? Some of the most popular explanations are not very 

persuasive. The first reason that is most frequently proffered is 

Soviet opposition. Soviet objections to the Athens and Ann Arbor 

speeches were, of course, inevitable, given the relatively small size 

of Russia’s nuclear forces. Yet, for all of Moscow’s grumbling, the 

Russians did not conduct a major public relations campaign against 

the Athens doctrine like they did against Star Wars in the 1980s or 

the Pershing II and ground-launched cruise missile deployments in 

the 1970s and 1980s. As such, the Pentagon hoped that the Soviets’ 

position would evolve, which indeed it did, albeit many, many years 

later.

 The second popular explanation is European opposition, which 

certainly proved a headache for McNamara and the Kennedy 

administration. It flowed from the asymmetry of the damage 

World Wars I and II inflicted against Western Europe versus the 

United States. There remained, particularly in the U.S. Air Force, an 

enormous interest in fighting and winning a nuclear war, whereas 

in Europe, most officials were interested in deterring war. The most 

thoughtful European strategic analysts, like Raymond Aron, Headly 

Bull, and Helmut Schmidt, were not unsympathetic to the Athens 

formulations. Instead, what worried them most was McNamara’s 

demand for substantially greater military spending and a meaningful 

conventional force capable of defending Western Europe.

 This European anxiety was best articulated by Raymond Aron 

in his book, The Great Debate. Aron argues that graduated response―

another name for counter force and assured destruction alternatives 

plus the conventional defense of Western Europe―had a two-fold 

function. The first was deterrence, and the second was actual use. 

Graduated responses put emphasis on the use of tactical nuclear 

weapons and the incontestable need after the initiation of nuclear 

operations to avoid immediate escalation led most Europeans to 

believe that deterrence of nuclear war was, at best, a secondary 

objective of the new formulations.

 In fact, Europeans viewed the Athens doctrine as being less 

effective as a nuclear deterrent than as a defense against nuclear 

hostilities in Europe spinning out of control into Soviet or American 

territories. Europeans certainly did not see the Athens formulations 
142

as a means to restore the plausibility of the American nuclear 

deterrent for Western Europe. Instead, their deepest fear, of which 

the Office of the Secretary of Defense was profoundly aware, was 

that the Athens doctrine signaled an American withdrawal of its 

strategic nuclear guarantee to Western Europe. Washington, they 

feared, would substitute this guarantee with a conventional defense 

of Western Europe and a tacit agreement with Moscow to spare 

the American and Soviet heartlands from ever being targeted with 

nuclear arms.

 With the massive nuclear forces and nuclear doctrines of the 

period, particularly on the Soviet side, European fears that only 

Europe would suffer if a general war broke out in their neighborhood 

were not very realistic, but they are easy to understand. Their 

anxiety in this regard was only aggravated by McNamara’s attack 

on independent nuclear deterrent forces, which was a head-on 

confrontation with Britain and particularly France. Nevertheless, 

none of Europe’s reservations against the Athens formulations had 

much impact in the short run because European officials tended 

either to go along with American strategic decisions or try to slow 

them down. The Kennedy administration certainly was more than 

willing to dictate to Europe. For example, Washington’s unilateral 

cancellation of Skybolt, a major U.S.-UK cooperative air-launched 

ballistic missile project surprised Prime Minister McMillan at the 

Nassau Summit, undercut the defense policy of the conservatives 

in Britain, and gave ammunition to the Labor Party. Still, Kennedy 

stood by his decision, and the British gave way.

 This, then, brings us to the real factors that unmistakably 

undercut support for the Athens doctrine. First, the weapons 

necessary to implement the Athens doctrine made the Office of 

the Secretary of Defense lose enthusiasm for its own proposal. 

After the Athens address, McNamara tasked the Services to specify 

what weapons would be needed to put it into practice. The results 

were quite substantial, particularly given McNamara’s penchant 

for defining precise criteria for selecting and sizing U.S. weapons 

hardware and military forces.

 To appreciate these requirements, it is essential to remember 

the climate at the time. There was considerable fear of nuclear war, 

constant development of new weapons, and highly publicized 
143

Russian missile bluffs. The United States had difficulties launching a 

satellite after Sputnik, and the bomber gap, which had already been 

a brief sensation in the mid-1950s, was followed by the missile gap, 

which, in turn, was a major factor in the 1960 presidential election. 

Internal RAND documents during this period claimed that the 

chance of nuclear war occurring within 10 years was approximately 

25 percent. Long-range ballistic missiles were just coming on line 

which fed the imaginations of weapons designers and the Air Force. 

Also, after Sputnik, fears of Soviet strategic nuclear weapons fed 

anxiety on the American side.

 There was much more worry in the early 1960s about nuclear 

war and how to deal with it than there had been in the mid-1950s. 

The massive targeting routines that the Air Force and the other 

services were using in the 1960s exacerbated these fears. These 

targeting schemes were designed to assure a very high percentage 

of certainty that any given target would be destroyed. As a result, 

American military planners almost always had to allocate multiple 

weapons to any single target. With the poor accuracies of American 

ballistic missiles, the only sure way to guarantee the destruction of 

a hardened Soviet silo, even a relatively soft one, was to allocate 4 

to 14 American missiles against it. The bulk of the strategic forces, 

moreover, still consisted of bombers. This created enormous 

demands for more weapons to suppress Soviet air defense bases, 

air defense interceptor aircraft, surface-to-air missile sites, and 

conventional anti-aircraft artillery batteries.

 As a result, after McNamara’s Athens address, there was a lot 

on the military’s shopping list. The first item, which the Office of the 

Secretary of Defense found hard to swallow, was the RS-70 Bomber, 

which was a reconfiguration of the B-70 Vulcan. The bomber was 

an extremely high altitude manned plane that was supposed to 

fly above Soviet air defenses. After the Soviet destruction of Gary 

Power’s U-2 in 1960, officials began to doubt that even the RS-70 

could fly high enough. This fear produced a rapid American shift to 

using B-52 bombers that flew at sufficiently low altitudes to evade 

Soviet radar detection.

 Beyond the RS-70, the U.S. Air Force and Army also requested a 

new version of the Titan intercontinental ballistic missile, the Titan 

II; a new solid intercontinental ballistic missile, the Minute Man I; 
144

a new medium-range ballistic missile; the Skybolt, an air-launch 

intercontinental ballistic missile; and the Nike-Zeus anti-ballistic 

missile system.

ASSURED DESTRUCTION AND MAD

The price tag for the weapons on this wish list was frightfully 

large. What dampened enthusiasm for non-MAD strategic postures 

even further were a series of RAND studies done by Colonel (later 

General) Glen Kent in the Pentagon’s deputy directorate of Defense 

Research and Engineering (DDR&E). These studies were published 

from July 1963 to January 1964 and applied systems analysis methods 

to evaluate various strategic nuclear postures in terms of American 

lives saved per dollar spent. For the purpose of these studies, Kent 

developed two accounting devices which were called “damage 

limiting,” and “assured destruction.” This is the formal origin of 

the term “assured destruction.” The term was first used publicly in 

1966 in the Defense Department’s fiscal posture statement that was 

prepared in March 1965.

 Many Air Force officers were angry at Kent because they thought 

his studies would kill support for counter force planning, and his 

work did tend to do this. The Athens formulations, after all, aimed to 

strengthen U.S. strategic nuclear deterrence and, in a narrow range 

of contingencies, to win wars. Yet these aims were not reflected in 

the criteria underlying Kent’s studies. More important, complete 

limiting damage―the elimination of damage to one’s society that 

might be caused by nuclear war―was impossible to achieve under 

the technical conditions that existed in the early 1960s. Any damage 

limitation scenario planners could paint had a terrible character.

 Pentagon officials were frustrated in their efforts to justify 

spending on damage limiting measures. Each measure suggested 

was very expensive and produced improvements that were not 

very grand. Starting in Fiscal Year 1965, tables printed in the 

Defense Department’s annual posture statements showed that, for 

each large increase of expenditure, the projected number of lives 

saved increased. The problem was the number of lives saved was 

unimpressive against the enormous projected number of casualties 

the United States would suffer even with the most expensive damage 

limiting capability in place.
145

 Also, it turned out that civil defense was critical to make any 

of the damage limiting scenarios even nominally attractive. But 

McNamara was never able to get Congress to support a substantial 

civil defense program. As a result, damage limiting, as Kent defined 

it, was a concept that eventually destroyed itself. Once damage 

limitation became the key goal and metric of success, it undermined 

support for sparing cities and focusing exclusively on counterforce 

targets.

 Finally, there were other technical feasibility problems. With 

the retirement of the B-47 bombers from the strategic inventory 

and the entry of large numbers of ballistic missiles, the combination 

of aims sought by the Athens statement was demanding. It was 

difficult enough to hit all of the counterforce targets such as Soviet 

arctic bases for the rebasing of Soviet bombers, surface-to-air missile 

sites, and the like. At the same time, it seemed impossible to avoid 

or minimize collateral damage to Soviet cities. This was true even 

though there was very little Soviet missile hardening. At every 

point, the lack of accurate weapons increased collateral damage 

not just against the Soviet Union, but the United States as well. It 

was estimated that a Soviet attack just on U.S. missile sites, many of 

them soft and therefore time-urgent targets for the Soviet strategic 

missiles and long-range aviation, would have inflicted very heavy 

damage to Denver, Colorado; Tucson, Arizona; Wichita, Kansas; 

Little Rock, Arkansas; Spokane, Washington; Abilene, Texas; 

Cheyenne, Wyoming; and Lincoln and Omaha, Nebraska. If one 

added U.S. strategic air command bases, Polaris ports, and command 

and control centers, the collateral damage was worse.

 Finally, during the Kennedy and the Johnson administrations, 

the military’s damage limiting shopping list was challenged by 

other non-nuclear priorities. These competing priorities included 

the urgent improvements required by conventional forces in Europe 

and later in Vietnam.

CONCLUSION: MAD’S HISTORICAL MOMENT

The doctrine that still survives under the name of MAD is the 

focus of considerable mythology. Today it is like the law of the 

Medes and the Persians, something eternal deriving from the very 
146

nature of nuclear weapons. In fact, assured destruction emerged 

almost as an accident. It was a coincidence borne of the connection 

of several different eras. The first was World War II, which taught 

both the United States and the Soviet Union that the world is very 

dangerous and that nations should err on the side of being extremely 

well-armed. This view, and the Korean War, resulted in a three-fold 

increase in the U.S. defense budget, which, in turn, made the Athens 

shopping list conceivable.

 The second was the post-World War II penchant of defense 

planners to rely on nuclear weapons. With Eisenhower’s New Look 

defense posture, there was an almost exclusive reliance on nuclear 

weapons and, in the view of the Air Force, a dearth of available 

nuclear weapons. Beginning in the mid-1950’s with the bomber gap, 

the launch of Sputnik, the Berlin Crisis, and Khrushchev’s missile 

bluff, public and government fears of nuclear war made nuclear 

weapons more abundant. This only whetted the demands of the Air 

Force for more strategic weaponry.

 America’s strategic doctrine had to catch up with these rapid 

changes. It was only in 1956 that Albert Wohlstetter defined the 

preconditions of second-strike deterrents in the famous RAND 

study, R-290. And, it was only after President Kennedy entered office 

that the implications of RAND’s thinking adequately worked out. 

From 1965 on, America’s preoccupation with nuclear war receded, 

at least slightly. It became clear that the missile gap was a myth and, 

following the Cuban Missile Crisis, there was a period of détente 

with the Soviet Union. Next, the Vietnam War rapidly turned public 

attitudes against the military. This foreclosed the possibility of 

making expensive strategic changes or improvements that required 

substantial public support. MAD is another artifact of this rapidly 

changing set of circumstances. Like the superiority of the offensive 

learned from Napoleon, or the superiority of the defensive, which 

lasted from about 1915 until sometime in the 1930s, MAD was the 

product of a passing moment in history, one that will never again 

appear.

ENDNOTES - CHAPTER 4

1. This chapter is based on a study done originally in the middle of the 1970s 

at RAND. I wrote it together with the late Donald Fortier, who was tragically 
147

taken away before he could fulfill his potential in the service of America’s national 

security.

2. This statement is made in CNN’s documentary, “Cold War,” but it is not 

supported by substantial oral interviews.

3. Ann Arbor Address, p. 13.

PART II

MAD IN PRACTICE

151

CHAPTER 5

SOVIET VIEWS OF NUCLEAR WARFARE:

THE POST-COLD WAR INTERVIEWS

John A. Battilega

INTRODUCTION

During the Cold War, many American specialists studied Soviet 

doctrine for nuclear warfare and the details of the Soviet nuclear 

force posture. From this protracted study, a conventional wisdom 

emerged in the United States. That wisdom loosely characterized 

the Soviet approach to nuclear warfare as “war fighting” to win, in 

comparison with the U.S. approach of “deterrence” via the threat 

of mutual assured destruction. Evidence that emerged in the years 

immediately following the fall of the Berlin Wall and the dissolution 

of the Union of Soviel Socialist Republics (USSR) sheds new light 

on the adequacy of this characterization and the Soviet approach to 

nuclear warfare. 

 From 1989-94, a team of American Soviet specialists headed by 

John Hines conducted numerous private discussions in Moscow 

with former Soviet officials, including high-ranking military officers 

who served on the General Staff and the Strategic Rocket Force.1 A 

rigorous interview process was used, involving multiple interviews 

with the same individual. These interviews were sponsored by 

Andrew W. Marshall, Director of the Office of Net Assessment of 

the U.S. Office of the Secretary of Defense.2

 The interviews were 

recorded and analyzed in a two-volume technical report prepared 

for the U.S. Government by the BDM Corporation (1995).3

 Twenty-two Soviet senior military personnel were interviewed. 

The interviews included repeated discussions with General Colonel 

Andrian A. Danilevich, the director of the authors’ collective that, 

from 1977-86, composed and refined the three-volume Top Secret 

Strategy of Deep Operations (Global and Theater). This document was 

the basic reference document for Soviet strategic and operational 

nuclear and conventional planning for at least the last decade of the 

Soviet Union.
152

 During the interview process, the subjects tended to contradict 

each other on details, but tended to agree with each other on the 

larger issues. Many of the interviews corroborate each other’s 

description of specific events. The Hines team, in their subsequent 

analysis, made judgments about the most significant differences. 

The team also concluded that the interview results generally were 

consistent with the Voroshilov General Staff Academy lectures, 

which were based on Soviet military doctrine as it was taught from 

1973-75.4

 The evidence from the Hines interviews, which surfaces 

several important issues, is not widely known. It has also not 

been fully integrated with other evidence about the Soviet Union. 

Consequently, this chapter has a very narrow objective; to briefly 

present Soviet views of nuclear warfare as presented in the report 

documenting the Hines interviews. Some of the views expressed 

in the interviews challenge U.S. conventional wisdom about Soviet 

views. 

 This chapter does not attempt to reconcile the differences; that 

will require careful research far beyond the scope of this chapter. 

Hopefully, subsequent work will integrate the evidence from 

the Hines interviews and other post Cold War evidence, with 

the conventional body of knowledge on the Soviet Union. Such 

integration will create a more complete picture of the actual Soviet 

approach to nuclear warfighting, and that picture will contribute 

to the understanding of mutual assured destruction as a Cold War 

concept. 

 The chapter is organized into four major sections and two 

appendices. 

• The first section summarizes Soviet military strategy over the 

duration of the Cold War. 

• The second section discusses several specific issues central to 

Soviet views of nuclear war fighting. 

• The third section tabulates Soviet bottom lines important to 

the topic of mutual assured destruction.

• The fourth section discusses work that needs to be done to 

fully integrate the interview material with other evidence.
153

• Appendix I lists the 22 Soviet personnel that were interviewed by the Hines team.

• Appendix II contains a bibliography of additional reference 

material in several categories.

A CHRONOLOGY OF SOVIET STRATEGY5

 The interviews resulted in a detailed chronology of Soviet 

strategy for warfare and how and why that strategy changed during 

the period 1945-91. That chronology falls into five major periods. 

The nearly verbatim description of the main characteristics of each 

period, as pieced together by the Hines team after the interviews, is 

as follows.

Full Mechanization (1945-50). 

 Soviet strategy emphasized the use of massive conventional 

armored land forces to obtain a three- to six-fold advantage over the 

opposing forces and to defeat them with rapid, decisive offensive 

ground operations. Air and naval forces were modernized but 

continued to play a supporting role.

Acquisition of Nuclear Weapons (1950-60). 

 Initially, nuclear weapons were viewed to be anti-city weapons. 

However, by 1955 nuclear weapons replaced the tank as the central 

strategic weapon. At the same time, the nuclear weapon was viewed 

within the existing World War II structure of military thought. As its 

predecessor the tank, nuclear weapons were to achieve a strategic 

breakthrough on the battlefield, to be exploited via massive mobile 

conventional forces. Strategic defensive plans did not exist.

Nuclear Euphoria (1960-65). 

 Under Khrushchev, a new strategy emerged. Nuclear weapons 

reached such a level of importance that the value of other weaponry 

was significantly reduced. The Strategic Rocket Forces were created 

as a separate branch of the armed forces, and conventional tactical 
154

aviation and artillery were reduced severely. The centerpiece of 

the nuclear strategy was preemptive global and theater nuclear 

use.6 Defense became only a tactical-level concept. The strategy 

would be executed in two phases: an intercontinental preemptive 

strike (a single massive salvo) against the United States, followed 

by a second phase consisting of a single strategic offensive along 

an entire European theater front. The second phase involved 

preemptive nuclear strikes followed by a decisive uninterrupted 

massive land offensive. A key to this strategy was the assumption 

that the U.S. opponent could be preempted from using nuclear 

weapons. The comparatively low level of missile technology placed 

a high premium on preemption because the time required to fuel 

the missiles and attach their warheads made a “retaliatory meeting 

strike” impossible and a purely retaliatory strike highly unlikely.

“Descent to Earth” and Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs) 

(1965-75).

 After Khrushchev, there was realization that the usefulness of 

nuclear weapons had been overestimated, and the opponent had a 

large number of nuclear weapons that could inflict “unrecoverable 

losses.” A search was undertaken for a more holistic approach to 

warfare with each type of weapon, including conventional weapons, 

having a distinct role. A new combined arms strategic operation was 

formulated for war in the European theater and the military concept 

of defense was gradually revived. At the same time, the view of war 

was dominated by the nuclear weapon, and a purely conventional 

war was not viewed as a realistic possibility. The growth in size 

of the nuclear arsenal, and the emergence of submarine-launched 

ballistic missiles (SLBMs), made it possible to plan multiple nuclear 

strikes instead of a single massive salvo. The Soviet leadership also 

began to appreciate the consequences of a strategic nuclear exchange. 

At a nuclear exercise in 1972, they saw the devastating results of a 

simulated U.S. first strike against the USSR, and the results shocked 

the leadership.7

 During this period, the Soviets also watched the development of 

new U.S. concepts of escalation and nuclear use, initially rejecting 

them. Prior to 1970, Soviet policy was to respond with a full 
155

nuclear attack. However from 1970-75, there was a shift towards a 

“controllable nuclear war” policy that was made possible by three 

doctrinal changes: (a) a preemptive strike was not the only option—

retaliatory-meeting8 and retaliatory strikes became valid options; (b) 

strikes were now developed for multiple conditions--either global or 

regional depending on the situation; (c) war was reshaped into four 

stages: a non-nuclear phase, a nuclear phase, follow-up actions, and 

concluding actions. The most important of these was the non-nuclear 

phase, gradually expanded for planning purposes from a few hours 

to 7-8 days. At the same time, intercontinental strategic operations 

remained nuclear.

Strategic Balance (1975-91).

 This was a long period of rough parity in strategic systems with 

the United States, rapid growth in the size of the strategic forces, and 

strong technological competition. Soviet doctrine underwent three 

major changes during this period. From 1975-80, limited nuclear 

war was officially rejected, however, it was considered possible 

for the war to remain conventional from beginning to end. From 

1980-85, limited nuclear was accepted and presented in planning 

documents presented to the political leadership. Different options 

were presented for the limited use of nuclear weapons: only on the 

battlefield, only against military targets, limited strategic strikes, 

and proportional retaliation to limited strikes (either with escalation 

or deescalation). Gradually, the projected length of the limited phase 

was lengthened from hours to several days. Finally, from 1985-91, 

there was the adoption of defensive doctrine and realization that a 

nuclear war cannot be won. Preemptive strike was ruled out, and 

only the retaliatory strike remained. If war must be fought, the new 

foundations of doctrine became deterrence, war prevention, and 

limited war.

ASPECTS OF SOVIET VIEWS OF NUCLEAR WARFARE

Embedded in the chronology of Soviet strategy are several 

important aspects of the Soviet approach to nuclear war fighting that 

were prominent in the interviews. These are briefly discussed below. 
156

The text closely follows that of the Hines report, with transition text 

added and occasional changes or amplification in wording for clarity 

in the context of this chapter. The topics featured are: 

• Soviet views of winning a nuclear war,

• Soviet fears of a U.S. first strike,

• Soviet first strike strategy,

• Soviet views of deterrence and mutual assured destruction,

• Soviet nuclear war fighting,

• Soviet military strategy in Europe, and

• Soviet views of the nuclear balance.

 Although the Hines interviews surfaced important details about 

many aspects of Soviet thought, material from the interviews related 

to these specific topics is central to conventional Western views 

about the Soviet Union in the context of mutual assured destruction 

(MAD).

No Winners in Nuclear War.

Conventional wisdom in the West was that the Soviets were 

working hard to try and create a military force posture that would 

enable them to attain victory in nuclear warfare. The interviews, 

however, create a somewhat different picture. At least by the early 

1970s, the interviews show that informed Soviet military leadership 

considered victory in a nuclear war to be unattainable in any 

meaningful sense.9

 Akhromeev stated that in practical terms, neither 

side would win a nuclear war.10 According to Tsygichko, the General 

Staff understood the devastation that would result from a nuclear 

war and therefore did not develop a working definition of victory. 

Military planners instead focused on the destruction that they could 

inflict on the enemy. They hoped that, in a nuclear exchange, some 

pockets of civilization inside the Soviet Union would survive.11

 From the interviews, it appears that the Soviet military command 

understood the consequences of nuclear war and was intent on 

preventing it. The General Staff, beginning in the 1970s, developed 
157

the idea that nuclear weapons were a political tool, with very limited 

military utility.12 This applied to both the strategic and theater use of 

nuclear weapons. By 1981, the General Staff concluded that nuclear 

use would be catastrophic as well as counterproductive in combating 

operations in the European theater.13

The Specter of a U.S. First Strike.

During the Cold War, U.S. declaratory nuclear policy was that of 

deterrence, popularly interpreted to be the use of nuclear weapons 

in a second strike mode. Nevertheless, virtually all interviewees 

emphasized that the Soviets perceived the United States to be 

preparing for a first strike. The Soviet memory of the June 1941 

surprise attack colored Soviet strategic planning throughout the 

Cold War period.14 This led Soviet leaders, most of whom had 

personally experienced the German invasion, to consistently 

interpret U.S. capabilities and actions in terms of their implications 

for a U.S. surprise attack with nuclear weapons. 

 The Soviets saw several indicators of this. The most frequently 

cited indicators included: the development of the highly accurate, 

multiple warhead MX missile system;15 programs to develop 

accurate multiple independently-targetable reentry vehicles (MIRV) 

warheads for existing missile systems (putting Soviet land-based 

ICBMs and control systems at risk);16 the relative vulnerability of 

U.S. missile silos and control centers to ground bursts; the large 

and diverse arsenal of tactical nuclear weapons in Europe; the 

consistent rejection by the United States of no first use doctrine; the 

deployment of the Pershing II missile and ground and sea launched 

cruise missiles capable of striking command and control targets in 

Soviet territory with little warning; and the issuance of Presidential 

Decision Memorandum 59 (PD-59), which the Soviets viewed to be a 

deliberate policy for launching a surprise decapitating first strike 

against the Soviet leadership.17

 Soviet analytic calculations also reinforced this perception. Soviet 

calculations demonstrated the vulnerability of their own ICBMs to 

ground burst. In turn, when Soviet satellite photography showed 

the proximity of U.S. ICBM silos to each other and to the launch 

control center, the General Staff concluded that the United States 
158

intended to launch the missiles first.18 This view was reinforced by 

Soviet intelligence about the U.S. Strategic Integrated Operations 

Plan (SIOP), which described the U.S. intent to launch nuclear force 

on strategic warning against Soviet forces.19 According to Dvorkin, 

Soviet modeling and testing was based on the assumption that the 

United States would strike first.20

Soviet First Strike Strategy.

In the conventional Western view, one important aspect of Soviet 

war-fighting strategy was the execution of a preemptive first strike 

against the nuclear forces of the West. In the view of Soviet officers 

interviewed, the 1960s doctrine of strategic nuclear preemption 

was designed to prevent a successful U.S. strike on Soviet territory. 

World War II veterans viewed a doctrine of retaliation to be 

equivalent to the Soviet exposure to surprise attack by Hitler in 

1941. Grechko reportedly said that he “wanted to avoid repeating 

the mistakes of 1941 by waiting to be struck on the head.”21 Soviet 

military leaders depended on preemption in the 1960s because of 

Soviet silo vulnerability, coupled with the length of time required to 

launch their ICBMs and pessimistic views of the survivability of their 

command and control system.22 By the 1970s, however, the Soviet 

political leadership, now more aware of the consequences of nuclear 

war, started to move away from preemption to a launch-underattack doctrine and, for the first time, considered retaliation.23

 According to Danilevich, even though theoretical writings, 

plans, and exercises included a first strike against the United States, 

the Soviet political leadership never discussed the possibility 

of launching a first strike. When Politburo members examined 

contingencies for nuclear use, they shied away from authorizing 

nuclear use.24 After 1972, the political leadership did not participate 

in a even a single military exercise involving nuclear weapons. The 

General Staff was left entirely on its own to develop scenarios for 

nuclear war.25

 The Hines team detected dual views within the General Staff 

about their strategic strike posture. This duality stemmed from a 

basic uncertainty about what was technically and bureaucratically 

possible in a crisis situation. The military leaders, convinced that the 
159

United States would strike first, prepared for all three possibilities--

preemption, launch-on-warning, and retaliation. However they did 

not like retaliation and did not believe that the Soviet command 

and control system had sufficient stability to guarantee an effective 

retaliatory strike. The military leaders also doubted that the political 

leadership could react fast enough in the face of a U.S. launch in 

progress. Nevertheless, the military acceded to political pressure to 

prepare for a retaliatory strike by hardening silos, resuming mobile 

missile programs, reducing missile launch times, and developing 

redundant command and control capabilities. As a result, by the 

mid-1970s, the necessary capabilities existed to execute a launch-onwarning doctrine. Nevertheless, the military leadership still held on 

to preemption as a possible option.26

Deterrence and Mutual Assured Destruction.

The Soviet nuclear strategy relied heavily on deterrence. But 

the Soviet concept of deterrence was based on the premise that an 

aggressor would receive crushing punishment in case of an actual 

or imminent nuclear attack in the form of strikes against strategic 

targets. However, these strikes could be preemptive, “retaliatorymeeting,” or purely retaliatory27 and would target both military and 

civilian installations.28

 The Soviets did not develop an elaborate doctrine of deterrence 

enhanced by various strategies of nuclear use, selective targeting, 

planned and deliberate escalation, etc. However, the logic of 

deterrence exerted a profound influence over Soviet leaders who 

intuitively acted to avoid nuclear war and to prevent the United 

States from using any nuclear weapons against Soviet forces and 

territory.29

 According to the interview of Marshal Akhromeev, the Soviet 

Union accepted the Soviet concept of nuclear deterrence by the late 

1960s.30 According to Iurri Mozzhorin, who served for 30 years as 

the Director of the Central Scientific Research Institute of Medium 

Machine Building, the Soviet Union accumulated enough ICBMs 

that it did not expect a U.S. attack. Brezhnev supported deterrence, 

despite opposition from Defense Minister Grechko. The principles 

of deterrence, in effect, were adopted as doctrine at a July 1969 
160

meeting of the Defense Council. It was decided at that meeting to 

manufacture survivable missiles rather than produce vulnerable 

missiles in large quantities.31

 Soviet strategists recognized that deterrence was, to some extent, 

mutual because each side was capable of launching a retaliatory 

strike and of inflicting unacceptable damage on the other.32 They 

nevertheless considered their nuclear power the only guarantee 

of security from war, and they never examined the question of 

mutually assured destruction as a condition that they should accept, 

much less pursue.33 The Soviet Union never embraced vulnerability 

as desirable.34 The Soviets also believed that, given the military 

uncertainties, mutually assured destruction was only a theoretical 

conclusion. This is because there was no guarantee in practice that a 

retaliatory strike would be launched or inflict unacceptable damage 

on the enemy.35

Soviet Nuclear War Fighting.

According to the interviews, in Soviet eyes the concepts of 

deterrence and war fighting were not mutually exclusive. The 

Soviets tried to build weapons that credibly could and would be 

used if nuclear war occurred. In this sense, the ability to fight a 

war was an integral part of Soviet deterrence strategy, despite the 

fact that the leadership did not accept the concept of a meaningful 

victory. However, the Soviets neither embraced the concept of 

fighting a limited nuclear war (confined to Europe, for example), or 

of managing a nuclear war by climbing the ladder of escalation.36

 In the event of nuclear war, the Soviet Union planned to try and 

strike a mix of cities, industrial centers, and military targets. The 

proportion of military to industrial targets depended on whether the 

USSR tried to preempt37 or launched second.38 A preemptive Soviet 

strike would target the enemy’s retaliatory forces, including ICBM 

silos, airfields, command centers, and naval bases. 39 A retaliatory 

strike would be aimed at soft military targets (such as airfields and 

C3 facilities), at U.S. infrastructure (such as transportation grids and 

fuel supply lines), and cities.40

 At the same time, Soviet military planners worried that 

weaknesses in their command and control systems might prevent 
161

timely and effective launches of retaliatory strikes. As a result, they 

designed and deployed a command missile system which carried 

well-concealed and hardened missiles. They were deployed near 

launch clusters, would be able to launch on command into near 

space and give the launch order to the adjacent cluster of ICBMs.41

The Soviets also investigated a near-automatic Dead Hand launch 

system, but the interviewees did not agree on whether that system 

had been deployed.42 They were also concerned with the possibility 

of unauthorized use. By the mid-1970s, the USSR introduced 

command and control systems that gave the General Staff confidence 

in centralized control over Soviet nuclear forces.43

Winning in Europe.

The inherent difficulties of nuclear war fighting notwithstanding, 

the Soviet military establishment was required to find a concrete 

operational solution to the problem of winning a general war 

in Europe. According to the interviews, the Soviet military’s

 confidence in the utility of nuclear weapons for securing this objective 

declined steadily throughout the period.44

 Part of Soviet reticence stemmed from the fact that the General Staff 

expected the battlefield use of nuclear weapons to be devastating.45

Soviet modeling in the 1970s predicted that the use of one quarter 

of the nuclear weapons in Europe would completely destroy 

operational formations, cause combat movement to virtually stop 

for several days, and produce an ecological disaster.46 As a result, the 

Soviet General Staff recommended to the Central Committee that 

theater nuclear force modernization cease. This was rejected by the 

political leadership’s orders that forced modernization to proceed, 

and that led the General Staff to prepare for war with the use of 

theater nuclear weapons.47

 A change in military doctrine was required to work out what the 

Soviets considered to be a viable military strategy. By the late 1970s, 

military doctrine shifted its emphasis to a prolonged conventional 

phase in a European conflict. At the same time, the Soviets assumed 

that a war in Europe could not be kept conventional for long and 

expected the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) to initiate 

nuclear use on the battlefield after initial losses.48
162

 In order to strengthen deterrence, Soviet leaders wanted the 

United States to believe that they would massively respond to any 

U.S. employment of nuclear arms. However, by the late 1970s, the 

General Staff considered limited nuclear options in the European 

theater. Some options were considered proportionate response, while 

others involved escalation or deescalation. The best response would 

be an equal number of strikes against analogous military targets such 

as troops, airfields, control centers, and missile sites.49 However, these 

discussion were limited to the General Staff. According to Kataev, 

the party leadership never considered selective use, even tactically.50

Nevertheless, the Soviets were capable of launching limited strikes.51

At the same time, the Soviets did not prepare any detailed plans for 

extended combat on a nuclear battlefield.52 They did not plan beyond 

an initial exchange of nuclear strikes on a tactical/operational scale. 

Neither did they plan for a massive response to a limited NATO 

nuclear strike against a Warsaw Pact country.53

 Although the Soviets developed limited nuclear options, they 

neither discussed nor exercised initiating selective nuclear use. 

Soviet military leaders also were very skeptical about the escalation 

control and expected the period of limited nuclear exchanges in 

theater to last at most for several days.54

 Soviet military strategists also developed a new conceptual 

framework for war in Europe that included new operational 

concepts such as the Operational Maneuver Group and a preemptive 

air operation coupled with the threat of launching the SS-20 to deter 

NATO initiation of nuclear use. By the mid-1980s, the Soviet General 

Staff considered it possible that Warsaw Pact forces could reach the 

English Channel quickly while avoiding a massive theater nuclear 

war.55

 Finally, even though the Soviets explored the limited use of 

nuclear weapons in Europe, the Soviet theater nuclear force buildup 

in Europe during the late 1970s and 1980s was primarily designed 

to reduce the likelihood of NATO nuclear use and keeping the war 

conventional. Simultaneously, changes in Soviet conventional force 

posture and employment concepts were designed to maximize 

operational effectiveness and obtain a decisive and quick success 

before reinforcements could arrive from the United States.56 A key 

component of this conventional strategy was the deployment of 
163

the SS-20 nuclear missile system. This gave the Soviets escalation 

dominance in Europe, and, hopefully, would deter NATO from 

escalating to nuclear use. In December of 1987, however, Gorbachev 

signed the Intermediate Nuclear Force (INF) Treaty and eliminated 

the SS-20, the enabling element of the new Soviet conventional 

strategy.57

The Importance of the Nuclear Balance.

The nuclear balance between U.S. and Soviet forces was an 

important factor in the development of the Soviet force posture. The 

Soviets felt that the only truly stable situation was one in which one 

side had clear superiority over the other. For them to feel secure and 

for the balance to be stable, the imbalance had to be in their favor. 

At the same time, Soviet strategists considered the nuclear balance 

to be unstable because technological advances and increases in the 

size of the arsenal could significantly augment the power of one 

side relative to another, thereby upsetting the balance. The Soviets 

believed that this situation induced both the United States and the 

USSR to constantly improve the technological characteristics of their 

nuclear forces in order to restore the balance. Beteween 1965-85, the 

Soviets tried to gain strategic superiority over the United States. 

Their primary goal was not to insure victory in a nuclear war, but to 

create a stable situation in order to enhance their general security.58

IMPORTANT SOVIET BOTTOM LINES

The overarching purpose for this chapter is to contribute to 

a discussion of Cold War views of MAD. The following Soviet 

viewpoints, expressed in the interviews and discussed above, are 

especially important in that context.

No Victory in Nuclear Warfare.

 Beginning at least in the early 1970s, the Soviet leadership did 

not believe in any meaningful concept of victory in nuclear warfare. 

Nevertheless, the Soviets were preparing to fight such a war and 

survive it if one occurred.
164

Psychological Fear of a U.S. First Strike.

A dominant psychological consideration was the Soviet fear of 

a surprise nuclear first strike by the United States against the Soviet 

homeland. This fear was deeply rooted in the Soviet experience 

of the German surprise attack in 1941. Virtually all interviewees 

emphasized that the Soviets perceived the United States to be 

preparing for a first strike.

Rejection of MAD. 

 The Soviets did not believe in the concept of mutual vulnerability 

as a basis for nuclear strategy. The MAD approach resurrected fears 

of the Soviet vulnerability that lead to the attack by Hitler. Hence 

even though concepts of assured retaliation eventually became a 

part of Soviet doctrine, these concepts did not stem from a deliberate 

shift to MAD. Rather, they came from what the Soviets saw as the 

inherent difficulty of successful military counters to a U.S. first 

strike. 

Rejection of Soviet First Strike.

The 1960s doctrine of strategic nuclear preemption was designed 

to prevent a successful U.S. first strike. By the 1970s, the doctrine 

shifted. Even though theoretical writings, plans, and exercises 

included a first strike against the United States, the political 

leadership avoided considering the possibility of a first strike. In fact, 

the General Staff operated independently in developing scenarios 

for nuclear war.

Deterrence, Soviet-Style.

Soviet strategy relied heavily on deterrence of a U.S. first strike. 

But the Soviet concept of deterrence was based on their ability 

to inflict significant damage to the aggressor by preemptive, 

“retaliatory-meeting,” or purely retaliatory strikes against both 

military and civilian targets. Which of these reactions materialized 

was strongly a function of the operability of the Soviet command 
165

and control system and the reaction time of the Soviet political 

leadership. 

Limited Military Utility of Nuclear Weapons.

 Beginning in the early 1970s, the General Staff increasingly 

believed that nuclear weapons had limited military utility in 

either strategic or theater use. Eventually Soviet military strategy 

for victory in Europe depended on maintaining nuclear escalation 

dominance in theater to deter NATO nuclear use, thus giving the 

Soviets time to win conventionally. 

Importance of the Nuclear Balance.

 Throughout the period 1965-1985, the Soviets tried to gain 

strategic superiority over the United States in nuclear forces. The 

primary goal was not to ensure victory in a nuclear war, but to create 

a stable situation in order to enhance their general security.

SOME UNANSWERED QUESTIONS

There are many interesting and important issues that surfaced 

in the Hines interviews. The points discussed above are no means 

complete. They were selected because of their centrality to the topic 

of MAD, and also because they are at variance with some popular 

Western conceptions of Soviet nuclear warfare. It is important to 

know the degree to which the interviews correspond to Soviet 

ground truth or whether they need to be filtered. 

 The interviews leave much work to be done and some major 

questions unanswered. For example, one question they raise is the 

degree to which the views expressed in the interviews are consistent 

with the details of the Soviet military force posture and operational 

concepts that were generated via classified and unclassified sources 

of evidence during the Cold War. A second question is the degree to 

which the interviews are consistent with evidence of Soviet strategy 

and nuclear warfighting concepts that became available at the end of 

the Cold War. A third question is what is the picture that results when 

all of these sources of evidence are considered simultaneously.
166

 It will take work to answer these questions. Careful research that 

works back and forth between the conventional wisdom about the 

Soviet Union, existing open source and intelligence documents that 

capture that wisdom, the Hines interviews, and other post-Cold War 

evidence will be required. To the extent that an understanding of 

actual Soviet military strategy, warfighting style, and the details of 

Soviet views of nuclear weapons and operations are important today 

and for the future, that effort is probably warranted. At a minimum, 

it appears to be worth the effort to set the historical record straight.
167

APPENDIX I

THE INTERVIEW SUBJECTS

 The following 22 senior Soviet military officials were interviewed by 

John Hines and his research team. 

 Sergei F. Akhromeev, Chief of the Main Operations Directorate of 

the General Staff (1974-1979), Chief of General Staff (1984-1988), Personal 

National Security Advisor to President Gorbachev.

 Dimitri Chereshkin, Department Head, All-Union Scientific Research 

Institute for Systems Studies (VNIISI).

General-Lieutenant G. V. Batenin, staff to MSU Sergei Akhromeev 

when the latter was Chief of the Main Operations Directorate, and then 

First Deputy Chief of the General Staff under MSU N. Ogarkov.

General-Colonel Andrian A. Danilevich, Deputy Director, General 

Staff Main Operations Directorate (to 1977), Special Advisor for Military 

Doctrine to the Chief of the General Staff (1977-1988), Director of the authors 

collective that composed and refined (1977-1986), the three volume Top 

Secret Strategy of Deep Operations (Global and Theater)―the basic reference 

document for Soviet strategic and operational nuclear and conventional 

planning for at least the last decade of the Soviet state.

General-Major Vladimir Z. Dvorkin, Director of TsNII-4, the Central 

Scientific Research Institute of the Strategic Rocket Forces.

 Army General Makhmut A. Gareev, Chief of the Tactical Training 

Directorate of the General Staff (1974-1977), Deputy Chief of the Main 

Operations Directorate for Training and Readiness of the General Staff 

(1977-1984), Deputy Chief of the General Staff for Scientific Work and 

Operational Readiness (1984-1989).

General-Colonel Igor V. Illarionov, Aide to MSU Ustinov in the 

Central Committee Secretariat (1965-1976), assistant to Ustinov for special 

assignments (1976-1984), specializing in Air Defense, Rocket Forces, and 

Aviation.

Aleksei S. Kalashnikov, Head of Strategic Rocket Force Committee 

on Science and Technology (5 years), Chairman of State Commission on 

Nuclear Testing at Semipalatinsk (10 years).

Vitali L. Kataev, Senior Advisor to the Chairman of the Central 

Committee Defense Industry Department (1967-1985).

General-Major Iurii A. Kirshin, Director, Institue of Military History 

(1985-1992), Former Chief of the Strategy Department of the Military 

Science Directorate of the Soviet General Staff.
168

General-Colonel Grigorii F. Krivosheev, Deputy Chief of the General 

Staff, Chief of the Main Directorate for Organization and Mobilization.

General-Colonel Varfolomei V. Korobushin, First Deputy Chief of 

Staff of the Strategic Rocket Force (10 years), Director of the General Staff’s 

Center for Operational and Strategic Research (TsOSI).

General-Lt. Nikolai V. Kravets, Strategic Rocket Forces officer with 

over 30 years experience in force design, systems acquisition, testing, and 

evaluation.

Petr M. Lapunov, Department Chief in TsOSI.

Iurii A. Mozzhorin, Director of the Central Scientific Research Institute 

of Machine Building (TsNIIMash) (30 years).

Vladimir A. Rubanov, Aviation Ministry Official.

Boris A. Strogonov, Missile technology expert, Central Committee 

Defense Industry Department (1955-1987).

Viktor M. Surikov, First Deputy Director, TsNIIMash, and assistant 

to the head of the Central Committee Defense Department, the party body 

responsible for force building, procurement, and arms control.

Vitalii N. Tsygichko, Head of the Theater Forces Modeling Department 

of the Scientific Research Institute NII-6 of the Main Intelligence Directorate 

(GRU) for the General Staff (1967-1977), Senior Analyst at VNIISI (1977-

1995).

Dimitry Volkogonov, Director, Institute of Military History. 
169

APPENDIX II

BIBLIOGRAPHY OF ADDITIONAL REFERENCES

 There is a large amouunt of Western literature on Soviet views of nuclear 

warfare. There is also a body of evidence on Soviet views of nuclear warfare that 

comes from Soviet source material that was written during the Cold War. Finally, 

there is source material that became available in the West after the collapse of the 

Berlin Wall or in the years following the end of the Soviet Union. A representative 

set of material in each of these categories follows. In addition to these classes 

of material, there also exist many formerly classified intelligence documents on 

related topics. 

Other Post-Cold War Materials.

 The sources cited below, as with the Hines interviews, have not been fully 

integrated yet into the conventional body of knowledge about Soviet views of 

nuclear warfare. There are also other sources of post-Cold War evidence not cited 

here. Additionally, there is probably significant material in the Russian archives 

that some day may become available to help create a coherent and consistent 

picture of Soviet views.

 Wardak, Ghulam Dastagir (compiler) and Graham Hall Turbiville, Editor, 

The Voroshilov Lectures: Materials from the Soviet General Staff Academy, Vols. I-III, 

Washington DC: National Defense University Press, 1989-92.

 Heuser, Beatrice, “Warsaw Pact Military Doctrines in the 1970’s and 1980’s: 

Findings in the East German Archives,” Comparative Strategy, Vol. 12, 1993, pp. 

437-457.

Soviet Primary Source Documents.

 The sources cited below contain translations of some of the basic Soviet source 

material related to nuclear warfare. The referenced material spans the 1960s and 

the 1970s. 

 Kintner, William R, and Harriet Fast Scott, editors, The Nuclear Revolution in 

Soviet Military Affairs, Norman: University of Oklahoma Press, 1968.

 Lomov, Colonel Gen N.A, editor, The Revolution in Military Affairs, Moscow, 

Military Publishing House, Ministry of Defense, 1993, translated and published 

under the auspices of the U.S. Air Force, Washington, DC: U.S. Government 

Printing Office, 1980.

 Scott, Harriet Fast, and William F. Scott, The Soviet Art of War: Doctrine, Strategy, 

and Tactics, Boulder: Westview Press, 1982.

 Sokolovskiy, V.D, Marshall of the Soviet Union, Soviet Military Strategy, Third 

Edition, Harriet Fast Scott, ed., New York: Crane Russak & Co., 1980.
170

 Yegorov, P. T., I. A. Shlyakhov, and N. I. Alabin, Civil Defense, Moscow, 

Publishing House for Higher Education, 1970, translated and published under the 

auspices of the U.S. Air Force, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 

1977.

Representative Western Assessments.

 The sources cited below contain a representative set of Western assessments. 

These collectively give the conventional wisdom in the West about Soviet views of 

nuclear warfare. 

 Berman, Robert P., and John C. Baker, Soviet Strategic Forces, The Brookings 

Institution, Washington, DC: 1982.

 Currie, Major Kenneth M., Soviet Military Doctrine: An Overview, Headquarters 

U.S.AF Intelligence Assessment, Department of Defense, Washington, DC: May 2, 

1983.

 Douglass, Joseph D., and Amoretta M. Hoeber, Soviet Strategy for Nuclear War, 

Hoover Institution Press, Stanford CA, 1979.

 Douglass, Joseph D., “Soviet Nuclear Strategy in Europe: A Selective Targetting 

Doctrine?,” Strategic Review, Vol. 5, Fall, 1977, pp. 19-32.

 Douglass, Joseph D., The Soviet Theater Nuclear Offensive, Washington, DC: U.S. 

Government Printing Office, 1976.

 Ermarth, Fritz W., “Contrasts in American and Soviet Strategic Thought,” 

International Security, Vol. 3, No. 2, Fall, 1978, pp. 138-155.

 Goure, Leon, Foy D. Kohler, and Mose L. Harvey, The Role of Nuclear Forces 

in Current Soviet Strategy, Miami: Center for Advanced International Studies, 

University of Miami, 1974.

 Pipes, Richard, “Why the Soviet Union Thinks It Could Fight and Win a 

Nuclear War,” Commentary, 1977, pp.21-34.

 Scott, Harriet Fast, and William F. Scott, The Armed Forces of the USSR, Second 

Edition, Boulder: Westview Press, 1981.

 Trulock, Notra III, “Soviet Perspectives on Limited Nuclear Warfare,” in Fred 

S. Hoffman, Albert Wohlstetter, and David S. Yost, eds., Swords and Shields: NATO, 

the USSR, and New Choices for Long-Range Offense and Defense, Lexington, MA: 

Lexington Books, 1987.

 U.S. Department of Defense, Soviet Military Power 1985, Washington, DC: U.S. 

Government Printing Office, 1985.

 U.S. Department of Defense, Soviet Military Power 1986, Washington, DC: U.S. 

Government Printing Office, 1988.

 U.S. Department of Defense, Soviet Military Power 1987, U.S. Government 

Printing Office, Washington, DC: 1988.

 U.S. Department of Defense, Soviet Military Power: An Assessment of the Threat, 

1988, Washington, DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 1988.

 Van Oudenaren, Deterrence, War-fighting and Soviet Military Doctrine, Adelphi 

Papers 210, Dorchester: International Institute of Strategic Studies, Henry Ling 

Ltd, The Dorset Press, 1986.
171

ENDNOTES - CHAPTER 5

1. The Hines team also repeatedly attempted to gain access, unsuccessfully, 

to relevant Central Committee and Ministry of Defense archives for the post-1960 

Cold War period. The oral testimony is what was possible. John G. Hines, Ellis 

Mishulovich, and John F. Shull, Soviet Intentions 1965-1985. Vol. I: An Analytical 

Comparison of U.S-Soviet Assessments During the Cold War; McLean, VA: The BDM 

Corporation, September 22, 1995, p. vi. (Hereafter referred to as Hines, Vol. I.)

2. One purpose of the interviews was to exploit to the short window of 

opportunity after the collapse of the USSR to gain a better understanding as to how 

key Soviet senior defense officials assessed the military balance and associated 

doctrines and forces postures, and how the Soviets developed and operated their 

nuclear arsenals. A. W. Marshall, “Introductory Memo,” Hines, Vol. I.

3. John G. Hines, Ellis Mishulovich, and John F. Shull, Soviet Intentions 1965-

1985. Vol. I: An Analytical Comparison of U.S-Soviet Assessments During the Cold 

War; Vol. II: Soviet Post-Cold War Testimonial Evidence, McLean, VA: The BDM 

Corporation, September 22, 1995, produced for OSD-Net Assessment under 

Contract MDA903-92-C-0147. Interviews were also conducted with senior U.S. 

defense officials, and a comparison of views made. Hines, Vol. I.

4. The Voroshilov lectures, published in the late 1980s by the U.S. National 

Defense University, are a compilation of the translated lecture notes of foreign 

officers who attended the Voroshilov General Staff Academy in the early 1970s. 

5. Extracted from Hines, Vol. I, pp. 72-76; and Interview with General-Colonel 

A. A. Danilevich, in Hines, Vol. II, pp. 54-57.

6. Marshall V. D. Sokolovskiy was the advocate of the new strategy. His ideas 

were published in his influential book, Modern War, and accepted as doctrine at a 

Ministry of Defense Conference held in 1962. They were put into practice in 1962-

63. Interview, General-Colonel Danilevich, in Hines Vol. II, p. 55.

7. The calculated effects of the U.S. first strike, using ground bursts, showed 

100 percent of the ground forces destroyed, 100 percent of nonstrategic aviation 

destroyed, 80 percent of strategic aviation destroyed, 100 percent of naval forces 

destroyed, and radiation contamination of 400-3,000 roentgens over European 

Russia. Hines, Vol. I, p. 74.

8. A “retaliatory-meeting” strike is the Soviet adaptation of the traditional 

meeting engagement in warfare. Two opposing sides are attempting to launch 

strikes; comparative command and control processes determine which side 

actually launches first, and whether or not the warheads of one side are landing 

during the launch of other side. If, for example, the side with the actual initial 

launch is the United States, and U.S. warheads are incoming or landing during the 

Soviet launch sequences, then the Soviet strike becomes a “retaliatory-meeting” 

strike.

9. Hines, Vol. I, p. 1.

10. Akhromeev, in Hines, Vol. II, pp. 5-6.
172

11. Hines, Vol. I, p. 26.

12. Akhromeev, in Hines, Vol. II, pp. 5-6.

13. Danilevich, in Hines, Vol. II, p. 24.

14. Hines, Vol. I, p. 2.

15. This was eventually deployed as the Peacekeeper missile.

16. These programs probably included the NS-20 guidance package for 

the Minuteman III, as well as improved U.S. SLBM warhead accuracy resulting 

from the global positioning system on the Navstar satellite combined with the 

development of the D-5 missile for the Trident submarine. Additionally, in 

traditional Soviet views, their land-based intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) 

force had political and domestic significance far beyond its military contribution, 

so the pending vulnerability of that force element could not be automatically offset 

by increases in other elements of the Soviet strategic triad.

17. Hines, Vol. I, p. 2.

18. Hines, Vol. I, p. 31.

19. Surikov, in Hines, Vol. II, p. 134.

20. Dvorkin, in Hines, Vol. II, pp. 70-71.

21. Mozzhorin, in Hines, Vol. II, p. 123. 

22. According to Danilevich, 5-6 hours were required to fuel the missiles 

and 2-3 hours to mate warheads. By this time, the U.S. strike would have landed, 

resulting in heavy damage to both the missiles and the command and control 

system. Danilevich, in Hines, Vol. II, p. 39. The Soviet measure of effectiveness 

for their own missiles was the ability of a missile, after an enemy attack, to be 

launched in the prescribed time and destroy its target. Thus launch impairment in 

any form as a result of the incoming U.S. attack would result in, in Soviet view, in 

the inability of the Soviet missile to perform its mission, in other words, a missile 

kill by the United States. Tsygichko in Hines, Vol. II, pp. 150-151.

23. Hines, Vol. I, pp. 28-29.

24. Danilevich, in Hines, Vol. II, p. 62.

25. Ibid., p. 69.

26. Hines, Vol. I, pp. 28-29.

27. Note that the strikes could be precipitated on strategic warning (“imminent 

nuclear attack”), and the deterrent strikes could be preemptive, retaliatory-meeting, 

or retaliatory, depending on the parameters of warning, missile preparation, the 

command and control system, and political decisionmaking.

28. Hines, Vol. I, p. 2.

29. Ibid., pp. 2-3.

30. Hines, Vol. II, p. 6.
173

31. Ibid., p. 125.

32. Ibid., p. 55.

33. Hines, Vol. I, pp. 16-17.

34. Hines, Vol. II, p. 19.

35. Ibid., p. 30.

36. Hines, Vol. I, p. 3.

37. Recall that the Soviet concept of preemption is the successful execution 

of a strike against a U.S. first strike that is imminent. Hence the United States has 

made the first move.

38. Hines, Vol. II, p. 31.

39. Hines, Vol. I, pp. 17-18.

40. Ibid., p. 18.

41. Kataev, in Hines, Vol. II, p. 100-101.

42. Hines, Vol. I, pp. 19-21.

43. Akhromeev, in Hines, Vol. II, p. 5.

44. Hines, Vol. I, p. 4.

45. According to Tsygichko, the Soviets predicted much higher battlefield 

attrition rates than the United States. This was because the Soviets had concluded 

that 7 pounds/square inch (psi) overpressure was sufficient to kill personnel, who 

were similar to dogs in their response to overpressure. Tsygichko, in Hines, Vol. II, 

p. 152. Nominal U.S. personnel lethality levels were 40 psi. Samuel Glasstone and 

Philip J. Dolan (eds.), The Effects of Nuclear Weapons, Washington: U.S. Department 

of Defense and U.S. Department of Energy, Third Edition, 1977. Cited in Hines, 

Vol. I, p. 43.

46. Tsygichko, in Hines, Vol. II, p. 142.

47. Tsygichko, Soviet Use of Mathematical Models to Support Strategic Decision 

Making: A Model of Strategic Operations in Continental Theaters of Military Action, 

cited in Hines, Vol. I, p. 44.

48. Hines, Vol. I, p. 4.

49. Danilevich, in Hines, Vol. II, p. 60.

50. Kataev, in Ibid., p. 101.

51. Analysis in the Hines Report points out that information obtained from 

the East German archives showed that certain Warsaw Pact exercises included 

selective nuclear strikes. See Beatrice Heuser, “ Warsaw Pact Nuclear and 

Conventional Strategy in the 1970s and 1980s: Findings in the East German 

Archives,” Comparative Strategy, Vol. 12, No. 4, November 1993, pp. 437-457, cited 

in Hines, Vol. I, p. 39.
174

52. Tsygichko, in Hines, Vol. II, p. 157.

53. Tsygichko, in Ibid., p. 144.

54. Danilevich, in Ibid., pp. 57-58; and Gareev, in Hines, Ibid., p. 72. Gareev 

was responsible for all exercises from 1974-88 from the tactical to the operationalstrategic level. He insisted that the Soviet military was forbidden to exercise first 

use of nuclear weapons in the absence of any indication of nuclear initiation by the 

enemy. 

55. Hines, Vol. I, p. 4.

56. Hines, Ibid., pp. 44-45.

57. Batenin, in Hines, Vol. II, p. 8.

58. Hines, Vol. I, p. 1.
175

CHAPTER 6

THE ORIGINS AND DESIGN OF PRESIDENTIAL DECISION-59:

A MEMOIR

William. E. Odom

 When President James Carter issued Presidential Decision (PD)-

59 in the late summer of 1980, it marked the culmination of a series 

of PDs―41, 53, 57, and 58―that effectively transformed U.S. strategy 

for the use of nuclear weapons. It retained the principle of assured 

retaliation with a large preplanned strike in the event the United 

States was attacked, but it fundamentally altered the options for 

using nuclear weapons in the event of a major North Atlantic Treaty 

Organization (NATO)-Warsaw Pact war. 

 The change, of course, was only on paper and never fully 

implemented in force structure and doctrine. Programmatic and 

operational adaptations could not be carried out in the last halfyear of the Carter administration, and the incoming Ronald Reagan 

administration was both slow to grasp what President Carter had 

directed and ill-disposed to admitting it. PD-59 was rewritten as a 

Reagan directive, National Security Decision Directive (NSDD)-13, 

carrying the general thrust of PD-59 but with less comprehension of 

what was needed. The result was a period of stalemate and stalling 

in the Defense Department. In fact, little or nothing of consequence 

was done to pursue this doctrinal change, yet a great deal of money 

was spent in programs intended to carry out parts of it, e.g., for 

“continuity of government,” but was simply wasted. By the end 

of the 1980s, as the Soviet Union began to disintegrate, little had 

changed beyond shrill rhetoric against “mutual assured destruction 

(MAD).” 

THE ANTECEDENTS OF CHANGE

 By the time Strategic Arms Limitations Talks (SALT) I were 

signed in 1972, Soviet strategic nuclear weapons programs were 

beginning to exceed the levels that Secretary of Defense Robert 

McNamara had led policy circles in the United States to expect. 
176

Introducing the concept of “assured destruction” as a metric for 

deciding how much U.S. nuclear capability should be maintained, 

he capped U.S. forces programs, declaring that preplanned nuclear 

targeting with the forces on hand effectively made the Soviet Union 

no longer a functioning political or military entity, and rendered 

it unable to continue a war in Europe or the Far East. Percentages 

of roughly classified target sets, e.g., command and control, war 

supporting industries, and population, were the measures for 

achieving “assured destruction.”

 This metric soon became a dogma: MAD, i.e., “mutual assured 

destruction.” Most U.S. officials believed that no defense against 

such an attack was possible. Thus, U.S. strategic defense programs, 

such as civil defense and antiballistic missiles, made no sense and 

should be discontinued. Most of the tactical nuclear forces deployed 

in Europe and the Far East in the 1950s for battlefield use were slowly 

decreased and withdrawn during the 1960s and 1970s. No country, 

insisted McNamara and a growing chorus of lay strategists, could 

escape the logic of this proposition. The Soviet Union inevitably 

would recognize it and see the pointlessness of building everlarger nuclear forces, not just for strategic operations but also for 

tactical and theater operations. Even before SALT I was signed, 

however, U.S. intelligence assessments recognized that Soviet 

nuclear weapons programs were not stopping at levels required 

for “assured destruction” of the United States. As a result, at least 

two problems arose in the minds of U.S. defense officials. First, in 

the event of another crisis like the one over Soviet missiles in Cuba 

in 1962, would an American president feel sufficient confidence 

to try to compel a Soviet leader to retreat? Would he be credible if 

he threatened to initiate a large preplanned nuclear attack on the 

Soviet Union, knowing that a large Soviet retaliation was inevitable? 

Second, was the U.S. commitment of a nuclear umbrella for Europe 

still credible? That is, was the United States willing to respond to a 

Soviet conventional attack on Western Europe with nuclear weapons 

if NATO conventional forces were unable to stop it? Some leaders in 

Europe expressed doubts.

 Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger tried to adjust U.S. 

weapons employment doctrine to deal with the growing Soviet 

forces. In addition to the large preplanned option, known as the 
177

Single Integrated Operations Plan (SIOP), which could be delivered 

as one huge strike in about 6 hours time (30 minutes for intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and sea launched ballistic missiles 

(SLBMs) but longer for strategic bombers), he called for “Limited 

Nuclear Options” (LNOs). That was the substance of National 

Security Decision Memorandum (NSDM)-242, issued in 1974. These 

much smaller strikes were supposed to be more “credible,” reassuring 

the NATO allies that the United States would not flinch from nuclear 

weapons first-use in the face of a defeat in a ground war in Europe. 

And they presumably would shore up the president’s courage in 

any future variant of the Cuban missile crisis. 

 NSDM-242 also called for “Regional Nuclear Options” (RNOs). 

They were meant to support regional military operations in the event 

of war. Leon Sloss, who helped prepare NSDM-242, has said RNOs 

were not meant to address a different problem: the use of nuclear 

weapons in support of the two military theaters where U.S. forces 

were deployed, Europe and Northeast Asia. In this respect NSDM242 anticipated PD-59, but LNOs did not. RNOs never gained the 

attention that LNOs did. Moreover, if RNOs for Europe had been 

emphasized, they would have created problems for “extended 

deterrence,” that is, the U.S. nuclear guarantee for Europe that it would 

treat a Soviet attack only in Europe as if it had also been an attack on 

the United States. The so-called “nuclear coupling” of Europe with 

the United States was a sensitive matter for Europe. Issues around 

coupling arose during the Carter administration in connection with 

Soviet SS-20 forces. These were intermediate range nuclear forces 

that Germany in particular believed were tilting the Euro-strategic 

balance against NATO. In any event, RNOs were receiving even less 

planning attention than LNOs when I began investigating the White 

House procedures for nuclear weapons command and control in the 

spring of 1977.

 Precisely how LNOs were to work was never made clear. Judging 

from the rhetoric at the time, both from the Defense Department and 

outside analysts, LNOs were to provide the president with choices 

having less devastating consequences than launching the entire 

SIOP. By responding in a crisis with a limited nuclear strike, a very 

small one, it hoped that a halt could be negotiated before things 

escalated to the SIOP level. The rhetoric of the time was “escalation 

control.” 
178

 With the Carter administration, Soviet nuclear weapons began 

to exceed U.S. capabilities in “megatonnage” of explosive power 

and numbers of warheads. Soviet civil defense also was expanding. 

Air defenses were increasing against low flying bombers and cruise 

missiles, and the antiballistic missile (ABM) system around Moscow 

was growing apace. The forecasts were grim enough to prompt 

Secretary of Defense Harold Brown to support three initiatives: a 

study of Soviet civil defense; the B-2 bomber program in place of 

the B-1 bomber (as a counter to the surprisingly effective Soviet low 

altitude air defenses); and the deployment of another U.S. ICBM, the 

so-called “MX.” Brown came to his post an avowed proponent of the 

assured destruction school of strategic thought, but when he learned 

what Soviet force builders were actually doing and how they were 

conducting practice exercises, he began to rethink his assumptions.

 In late February 1977, Presidential Review Memorandum (PRM)-

10 was issued. It called for a comprehensive net assessment of how 

the United States was doing vis-à-vis the Soviet Union, not just in 

the military area but also in all categories of power and in all regions 

of the world. It also directed a military force structure review. Thus 

two studies emerged, PRM-10 Comprehensive Net Assessment (a 

lineal descendant of National Security Council (NSC)-68 and NSC162) conducted by the NSC, and PRM-10 Force Posture Review 

conducted in the Defense Department. Based on these studies, PD-18 

was approved in August 1977. It outlined a comprehensive national 

strategy and military capabilities required to support it. A few items, 

however, were left undecided for further analysis. Strategic nuclear 

weapons employment doctrine was one of them because there was 

no consensus about how to deal with the issues that prompted the 

NSDM-242 policy in the early 1970s. Thus, PD-18 left the big nuclear 

issues to be decided later. Arms control played a key role in how 

the issue would be decided, and how much cooperation Moscow 

would offer in that arena was still an open question. Also, disputes 

over intelligence assessments of Soviet military programs needed to 

be resolved before deciding whether or not to change U.S. nuclear 

employment doctrine.

 These are the major antecedents that led to the changes in policy 

that President Carter would make; however, other contributing 

factors also had emerged in the first year of his presidency.
179

COMMANDING AND CONTROLLING U.S. NUCLEAR 

FORCES: FANTASY VERSUS REALITY

 In 1977, a number of events impacted the thinking at the White 

House and the NSC staff about nuclear weapons employment 

doctrine. The first was a test of the president’s command and control 

system for responding to an imminent nuclear attack. The White 

House Military Office handles the president’s physical movements 

and assures the availability of his “Black Book” for directing the use 

of nuclear weapons. In February 1977, the president’s assistant for 

national security affairs, Dr. Zbigniew Brzezinski, tested this system 

one evening about 9 p.m. He called in the Director of the Military 

Office and told him to assume that an attack was in progress and to 

execute the White House Emergency Procedures (WHEP). Things 

did not go well. As a result, he directed me, his military assistant 

on the NSC staff, to review the WHEP, including the command and 

control links from the Pentagon to the Strategic Air Command (SAC), 

that controlled all of the strategic nuclear forces. 

 Over the next year, I explored the system, tracking the lines of 

communication and control to the J-3 of the Joint Spectrum Center 

(JSC) Staff in the Pentagon and on to SAC in Omaha, Nebraska. 

This led to other issues, namely transportation and protection of the 

president during a nuclear attack, the survivability of the military 

command and control structure for all U.S. forces, not just nuclear 

forces, and securing the survival and continuity of U.S. Government 

operations on the civil front in the event of a nuclear attack. Four 

results from this exploration are noteworthy.

 First, the communications link to the president from the North 

American Air Defense Command (NORAD) and SAC was reliable. 

The commander of SAC expressed grave doubts that he could “get to 

the president in a crisis.” This proved less a technical problem than an 

expression of his disappointment that Hugh Carter, the President’s 

cousin, was placed in charge of the White House Military Office 

rather than an air force officer. The episode did, however, clear up in 

my mind the realities of the communications from NORAD to the J3/JSC, SAC, and the White House. They were excellent, although not 

secure from foreign intelligence interception. Moreover, American 
180

Telephone and Telegraph (AT&T) provided and managed them 

for the Pentagon. They were only marginally under the control of 

the Defense Department. In the 1950s, when such communications 

were being arranged in anticipation of growing Soviet nuclear 

forces, AT&T hardened many of its switching centers, putting them 

in deep underground bunkers, and creating a highly redundant 

and, therefore robust, nation-wide telecommunications network. 

Neutralizing it posed a very complex and large targeting problem 

for an enemy.

 Second, SAC and the Air Force began expressing doubts about 

Carter’s interest, accessibility, and willingness to address issues of 

nuclear weapons. Charges were made to me that SAC was being 

neglected. They wanted their “command and control people to 

fix the problems in the White House” because no one else could 

do it, certainly not an army officer. This prompted me to focus 

White House attention to SAC, which it probably did not want. 

Dr. Brzezinski accepted my suggestion to visit SAC and become more 

familiar with SAC’s war plans. This allowed him to understand in 

much greater depth how the system worked. To be sure, he attended 

all of the presidential briefings on nuclear weapons control before 

the president assumed the office and several presented after his 

inauguration. Moreover, I talked to him frequently as a result of 

my continuing review of the system. But in light of the problems 

I was uncovering, a “hands on” experience was essential for him 

to view my memoranda as credible. At times I simply could not 

believe what I was being shown and told, causing me to doubt 

my own comprehension. It was an unnerving experience for me 

personally, and made me feel very diffident about my analysis and 

conclusions.

 In the list of questions I prepared for him to ask at SAC, the 

most important one was “Now that I have heard your war plan 

for D-Day, what is your plan for D+10, D+30, and longer?” The 

SAC commander and his staff had no answers. They talked about a 

“secure reserve force”―which did not exist―and a few other things, 

such as “damage assessement,” but it became obvious to Brzezinski 

that they had no effective plans beyond executing the SIOP. Things 

would just cease in their world about 6 to 10 hours after they 

received the order to execute the SIOP. What Brzezinski reported 
181

to the president about this experience I do not know, but its impact 

on Brzezinski was palpable. Apparently it inspired him to get the 

president directly involved.

 The third result soon followed. President Carter decided to 

participate in an exercise simulating a massive nuclear attack on 

the United States. The Pentagon and SAC scrambled to arrange 

secure telephone lines for the exercise because they did not want 

to risk exposing what might be said in the conference call to hostile 

intelligence. Thus an impetus was created for secure communication. 

More immediately, as I listened to the exercise, I realized that all the 

unified commanders with nuclear weapons that would be used in the 

SIOP were nervous and impressed that the President was engaging 

them with questions. The SIOP and strategic nuclear weapons had 

always been more an academic than a real operational responsibility 

in the minds of all but the SAC commander.

 Fourth, the so-called “Black Book,” which provides the president 

a written and graphic view of his alternatives for executing the SIOP, 

was thoroughly redesigned. No president before him practiced these 

emergency procedures, and therefore, no president had ever given 

the J-3 in the Pentagon guidance as to what the president desired. 

The J-3 had for years simply guessed what he might want. President 

Carter found the Black Book too complex and confusing. The 

simplifications and clarity introduced thereafter were a significant 

improvement.

 Some time later, the president participated in a second exercise 

to verify that the changes he directed had been made and to assure 

himself of being able to handle his own responsibilities no matter 

what time of the day or night. 

 By late spring 1977, I discovered that the Limited Nuclear Option 

issue was not just a policy matter, but also an operational one. The 

J-3 staff officers responsible for nuclear weapons complained that 

they could not get “political guidance” for designing LNOs. Thus 

they picked out six to eight small target sets requiring six or eight 

or a dozen weapons to destroy, and developed the preplanning 

information so that SAC could program them for execution. I asked 

myself what “political guidance” would look like. Pondering this 

question for only a short time will make any sensible person wonder 

how such an absurd task could ever be taken seriously. How could 
182

launching a dozen nuclear weapons at any place in the Soviet Union 

provoke anything but a quick and massive retaliatory strike? This 

was the very thing it was supposed to prevent. Was I in a house for 

the mad? (The pun unintended.)

 This discovery was the zenith of many awakenings I was 

experiencing as I reviewed the entire nuclear command and control 

system. The first was the idea of deciding to go to war in 10-12 

minutes based on NORAD warnings of incoming missiles. I had 

heard much about “deterrence theory” as a student at Columbia 

University, but I quickly dismissed it as nonsense because of my 

earlier training as a tactical nuclear targeting officer at the Armored 

School in Fort Knox, Kentucky. There I learned detailed information 

about nuclear weapons testing results against armor-protected and 

entrenched infantry troops. I learned enough nuclear physics at West 

Point to recognize both the gravity of nuclear effects and how they 

could be mitigated. I served in the first Pentomic division formed in 

Germany in the 1950s. I knew that destroying the entire world with 

nuclear weapons was not feasible with the arsenal the United States 

possessed, although staggering damage would occur. There would 

be a “day after,” and millions of Americans would be around to face 

the post-strike realities. To pretend that the U.S. Government could 

simply ignore addressing this responsibility was inconceivable. Yet 

the command and control system and the SIOP did not include any 

consideration of post-strike realities.

 Having reviewed everything available in open Soviet sources 

about nuclear weapons, I had seen nothing to suggest that the Soviet 

General Staff saw nuclear weapons the way SAC or the academic 

deterrence theorists did. In 1964, Marshal V. D. Sokolovskii’s 

edited volume, Voennaya strategiia (Moscow, 1963), struck me as a 

sober and realistic assessment of what nuclear weapons meant for 

modern warfare. These Soviet military officers addressed nuclear 

weapons within the intellectual context of Clausewitz’s philosophy 

of war: that war is a political phenomenon with all the uncertainties, 

friction, and psychological dimensions of human conflict. Nuclear 

weapons do not rule out war. They complicate it. Wars still can 

only be understood as political phenomena, fought with politically 

chosen war aims to achieve political purposes.
183

 Looking at the SIOP and its executive plan, I realized that this 

was a war plan that did not allow for choosing specific war aims at 

the time and in the context of the outbreak of hostilities. It was just 

a huge mechanical war plan aimed at creating maximum damage 

without regard to the political context. I concluded that the United 

States had surrendered political control over nuclear weapons to 

a deterministic theory of war that depoliticized the phenomenon 

outright and ensured an unprecedented devastation of both the 

Soviet Union and the United States. Not even a finger would be 

raised to allow more Americans to survive; a highly immoral act 

in my view. And the president would be left with two or three 

meaningless choices that he might have to make within 10 minutes 

after he was awakened from a deep sleep late some night.

 This disturbing discovery caused me to investigate NSDM242 and LNOs with new curiosity. Was there a way out of the 

absurd SIOP approach to war? My discussions at staff levels in the 

Pentagon yielded more confusion rather than clarity. Frustrated, I 

sent Brzezinski a memorandum for his signature, addressed to the 

Secretary of Defense and the Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff 

(JCS). The memorandum asked them to come to the White House 

and personally explain to the president how LNOs worked, not 

in theoretical terms but in the most practical sense. For example, 

where should the president be when he directed the launch of an 

LNO? Should he be in the White House, his airplane, or perhaps 

in an underground bunker? What about press guidance and 

communications with Moscow, and so on?

 My hope was that a conversation among the principals 

responsible for making decisions would bring some sense to 

this Alice in Wonderland planning world. Brzezinski sent the 

memorandum, but the invitation was ignored. In its place, a long, 

confusing memorandum was sent explaining that LNOs were meant 

to increase U.S. credibility since the size of Soviet forces made it less 

attractive to threaten to execute the SIOP in a crisis. I was puzzled. 

Why would a half-dozen nuclear weapons launched at any target in 

the Soviet Union be less likely to provoke a large retaliatory nuclear 

response if coupled with a Soviet invasion of Western Europe? I 

tried to imagine President Carter sending Brezhnev a message over 

the Washington-Moscow Hotline, telling him that an LNO would 
184

soon be coming, and not to panic because it consisted of only six 

weapons and was intended to underscore U.S. credibility and lead 

to deescalation. And suppose Brezhnev responded, “I understand. 

I recognize your ‘credibility’ problem, but now I have a credibility 

problem. So I am launching only four nuclear weapons at Seattle. 

Do not panic. Additional strikes will not follow before we begin to 

negotiate.” What could the president do at this point? What guidance 

would he give his press secretary for explaining this nuclear exchange 

to the White House press corps? Would the press secretary ask the 

rest of the country to pray for those people in Seattle? How would 

he explain to the large surviving public that it had no civil defense 

capability? Polling at the time indicated that a large majority of 

Americans believed that as much as $6 billion was spent annually 

on civil defense. Was I in a MAD house? (The pun intended.)

 This may sound like a caricature of the situation at the time, but 

I do not believe it is. On the contrary, it understates the realities. 

Not only was there no civil defense that supported programs for 

disasters other than natural ones, e.g., hurricanes and tornados, but 

there was no assurance that telecommunications could survive more 

accurate Soviet warheads. “Continuity of government” operations 

in crises had been allowed to deteriorate after President Richard 

Nixon dismantled the Office of Emergency Preparedness in 1972. 

The Pentagon ran a war game requiring mobilization of manpower 

and industry a couple of years later. It produced deeply disturbing 

results and showed how unprepared both the military and the 

defense industrial sector were.

 The sense of unreality was difficult to exaggerate. If the SIOP was 

no more than a bluff, a plan that would never be executed, then why 

had SAC been allowed to keep it finely honed and ready to launch 

without any of the other critical capabilities for World War III? Why 

was the President practicing the execution procedures? The SAC and 

other nuclear commands seemed to believe it was a genuine option.

THE TARGETING AND C3I STUDIES

 When PD-18 postponed dealing with nuclear employment 

doctrine, at least two studies were initiated in the Pentagon. In 

the Office of the Secretary of Defense (OSD), Leon Sloss led a 
185

nuclear targeting study, ably assisted by Colonel Joachim Schulz. 

In addition, William Bader managed a review of C3I capabilities, 

emphasizing the “intelligence” part of C3

I. By 1978 these studies 

were either completed or reaching some preliminary conclusions.

 The C3I study caught my attention because one of my duties on the 

National Security Council (NSC) staff was to over see the White House 

Situation Room and its connections to the Intelligence Community. I 

became reasonably well-acquainted with our technical surveillance 

capabilities that penetrated the Soviet Union as well the rest of the 

world. I also became familiar with the Defense Intelligence Agency’s 

(DIA) support of SAC’s targeting efforts. Imagery intelligence was 

most important because it provided precise location data for aiming 

nuclear warheads. Signals intelligence and human intelligence helped 

but seldom did they provide adequate geo-location coordinates.

 Thinking about alternatives to the SIOP and ways to escape 

the predicament in which it placed the president, I considered how 

to lessen our dependency on locating all targets before a conflict. 

With preplanned targeting, once a war broke out, no adjustment 

for changing target sets was possible because “real time” imagery 

over the Soviet Union was assumed not to exist. Technological 

advances, however, were beginning to change that. The shift from 

silver nitrate film, which requires recovery from a satellite and then 

development and printing―a lengthy process―to electro-optical 

imagery, which can be transmitted in digital form directly from a 

satellite and printed almost instantly, made rapid discovery of new 

targets possible anywhere inside Warsaw Pact territory. 

 The implications were exciting. Nuclear weapons were 

considered useless for striking mobile military forces once they 

deployed into field positions because precise locations were difficult 

to determine and could change significantly over a few hours. When 

it became possible to look for targets and provide precise location 

data to SAC in an hour or two, perhaps less, and then to strike those 

targets with ICBMs in less than an hour, this radically changed 

possible targets. Conventional military forces already deployed 

to invade Western Europe could be hit with enough precision to 

cripple them and dramatically slow their offensive operations. 

 The destruction of traditional SIOP target sets, such as high-level 

command and control, population, and war-supporting industry, 
186

would not hinder the movement of large Warsaw Pact armored 

forces attacking westward into Germany, the BENELUX, and France. 

If a war broke out, the SIOP could do vast damage to the Soviet 

Union, but it could not stop a Soviet ground offensive from reaching 

the Atlantic coast. We could lose Europe as we wreaked massive 

destruction on the Soviet homeland. Would that be a favorable 

outcome? In the long recovery period following, Soviet forces might 

be able to rule Western Europe and the United States unable to take 

it back. 

 If nuclear weapons were used, I asked myself repeatedly, why 

should they not be used to affect the outcome of the war favorably 

for the United States? How does the SIOP contribute to that? I could 

see no way that it did and began to believe that it could make the 

situation highly unfavorable to the United States. Critics, of course, 

would accuse me of pure fantasy analysis because they believe that 

life would essentially cease to exist as we know it after a large U.S.-

Soviet nuclear exchange. Moreover, they do not believe it would 

happen because “mutual assured destruction” makes it impossible 

for a war to start. Perhaps, but as long as human beings have a degree 

of “free will,” we cannot assume that all leaders will be deterred. As 

long as that prospect is possible, even if highly improbable, military 

officers and their commander-in-chief, the president, must consider 

their alternatives if deterrence fails. Are they not morally bound, as 

well as legally responsible, to plan for that contingency? The critics, 

of course, retort that such plans make nuclear war more likely 

because leaders will begin to believe they can fight and win nuclear 

wars. 

 Obviously this debate cannot be resolved because critics do not 

accept new evidence that undercuts the assumption that a major 

nuclear war will not end human existence. Acceptance would 

compel them to admit that prudent planning for the failure of 

nuclear deterrence is justified. We will never resolve this debate 

because this is a matter of faith, not of evidence. We must make a 

choice as to which course is more prudent. 

 Because massive use of nuclear weapons is horrible to 

contemplate, I have never had difficulty in choosing to prepare 

for the failure of nuclear deterrence. How far to carry such 

preparations, of course, is the next most important question, and the 
187

economic impact of such programs certainly has to be considered. 

That, however, is qualitatively a different kind of question. Costeffectiveness comparisons between civil defense and counterforce 

targeting on Soviet nuclear forces showed that a dollar spent on 

civil defense bought much more damage limitation than a dollar 

spent on offensive nuclear forces. Some mix of passive defense and 

offensive nuclear forces, therefore, makes a lot more sense than total 

dependence on the latter.

 In any event, technological advances in intelligence collection 

systems convinced me that a nuclear weapons employment policy 

based entirely on preplanned targeting was no longer essential and 

that a flexible targeting system analogous to that for artillery and 

tactical air support was possible. This amounted to a basic paradigm 

shift, not unlike the one Copernicus caused by shifting from 

Ptolemy’s geocentric view of the solar system to a heliocentric view. 

Deterrence theorists defined nuclear war in a way that removed it 

from the realm of politics, and, apparently, rendered Clausewitz’s 

instrumental philosophy of war irrelevant. 

 Yet Clausewitz also considered “absolute war.” In theory, he 

argued, any war should logically escalate to the “absolute” level, but 

in practice, “friction” slows down operations and prevents escalation 

from reaching “absolute war.” Deterrence theorists never addressed 

the prospect that what Clausewitz identified as friction could limit 

the effects of large preplanned nuclear attacks, such as described in 

SIOP. Soviet writings on the subject always struck me as implicitly 

embracing the role of friction in wars involving nuclear weapons. In 

fact, it always seemed unlikely to me that the Soviet General Staff 

would risk launching several thousand nuclear weapons at once. 

What if a large number did not work? Would it be better to try a few 

and observe the success rates for different delivery systems? After 

all, flawless technical performance was never a Soviet trademark. 

 In any event, new technology brought the use of nuclear weapons 

back into the realm of real war, where it could be an instrument of 

policy to impose one’s will on an enemy by disarming him, by 

destroying his military forces. SAC’s ICBMs, bombers, and SLBMs 

could be used to support theater campaigns in Europe and East Asia, 

not just to smash cities and factories deep inside the Soviet Union. 
188

Moreover, attacking military forces inside of such civil and economic 

targets made a lot more sense from the viewpoint of winning a war 

rather than simply preventing the enemy from winning.

 What were the implications for “counterforce” targeting? The 

idea of a disarming nuclear strike at an opponent’s strategic nuclear 

forces, a strike powerful enough to destroy all or most of the enemy’s 

delivery systems, always enjoyed a central place in theoretical debates 

about deterrence. The Soviet buildup coupled with hardening and 

dispersal of mobile capabilities, especially in submarines, made such 

a strike highly problematic if not downright fanciful. The logic of 

MAD converted invulnerability of nuclear forces into a desirable 

condition as long as both sides had it. By that logic, acquiring a 

counterforce striking capability was destabilizing. Thus, accurate 

ICBM warheads that could destroy silo-based nuclear-armed missiles 

were not desirable to possess. 

 My view on this issue was both simpler and more complex. 

As Clausewitz said, “war is a gamble.” It is imprudent to bet on 

achieving a fully disarming counterforce strike in the emerging 

conditions of a war, but that does not mean that all counterforce 

targeting should be discontinued. The question is how much and 

in what priority vis-à-vis other targeting, especially in light of the 

deployment of conventional forces in Europe or East Asia. Targeting 

silos made sense only if they had missiles in them. A large strike at 

a missile silo field might hit only empty silos. The Soviet military, 

however, built reusable silos, so their destruction could be useful in 

any event. Still, counterforce strikes could not be the only thing of 

importance, even in a first strike. They had to be combined within an 

overall campaign plan dealing with the realities and political aims of 

a nation’s commitment to war. Flexible reconnaissance and targeting 

of strategic nuclear forces is essential for any effective campaign 

plan. 

 My discussions with Leon Sloss about his study revealed that 

I was not alone in such speculations and suspicions about the 

wisdom of the SIOP and LNOs. If the president resorts to nuclear 

weapons, why not commit them to support the theater of conflict in 

conventional military campaigns? Why adapt targeting and harness 

it to the political aims of the war? Why should the president have 

only nuclear options that are unconnected to war aims for the conflict 
189

at hand? At the time, Sloss was not as ready to break fully with large 

preplanned nuclear options as I was, but he did not discourage the 

line of reasoning that events had driven me to follow. 

 If new intelligence capabilities permitted real-time location of 

military forces in the field, targeting could be dictated by traditional 

military criteria: to destroy the enemy’s armed forces instead of cities 

and factories and civilian population. 

FEDERAL EMERGENCY MANAGEMENT AGENCY AND PDs―

41, 53, 57, AND 58

 The implications, of course, were far wider than nuclear targeting 

policy. Any attempt to give the president less than catastrophic and 

politically meaningless options (the SIOP) required addressing 

several other large issues. When one considers the U.S. Government’s 

responsibilities once nuclear weapons are used, civil defense 

immediately comes to mind. So, too, does the survival and continuity 

of government operations―civil and military. If military forces are 

deployed worldwide as well as within state and local governments 

in the United States, the survival of telecommunications within the 

United States is essential. And in the longer run―not just weeks but 

months after the use of nuclear weapons―industrial mobilization for 

war production is also essential.

 In the year after the issuance of PD-18, two developments 

occurred that addressed some of these implications. The NSC 

launched an interagency study (PRM-32) to investigate civil defense 

and to make recommendations for changes to U.S. civil defense 

policy. The civil defense program had dwindled to about $120 million 

annually, enough money to keep alive the thinly staffed Defense 

Civil Preparedness Agency located within the Department of the 

Army. (President Nixon had disbanded the Office of Emergency 

Preparedness (OEP) in about 1972.) Another part of OEP, responsible 

for “continuity of government,” was parked inside the General 

Services Administration (GSA). A third part, responsible for disaster 

assistance, was put in the Commerce Department. All three sets of 

responsibilities were given very low priority and left to decay. This 

was the organizational context in which the review of civil defense 

took place.
190

 In August 1978, the results from the civil defense review prompted 

the issuance of PD-41, setting a new civil defense policy, stating that 

both defensive and offensive capabilities were part of the overall 

strategic balance with the Soviet Union. As a policy document, PD41 specified neither a particular funding level, nor a specific strategy 

for civil defense (e.g., shelters in place versus population dispersion 

in emergencies). Its main purpose was to legitimize civil defense and 

other forms of strategic defense in principle. Only a modest increase 

in civil defense was sought thereafter, but the important change was 

that Civil Defense went from neglect to serious attention.

 Somewhat fortuitously, President Carter’s “Presidential Reorganization Project” addressed a reform that would create the Federal 

Emergency Management Agency (FEMA). I noticed a draft bill from 

the House of Representatives that directed restoration of the three 

parts of OEP. State and local governments preferred to deal with 

one federal agency on programs split among the three pieces of the 

former OEP. The draft law would effectively recreate OEP. And OEP 

was the last vestige of the war mobilization bureaucracy from World 

War II. Believers in MAD saw no need for it. That was probably 

one of the reasons it was disbanded. MAD was certainly logically 

consistent with disbanding OEP.

 Seeing a strong national security need to restore OEP, I took the 

draft law to the staff members of the President’s Reorganization 

Project (PRP) and suggested that they support it, listing several 

security reasons for doing so. They gave me a hearing but showed 

no enthusiasm for the project. A month or so later, they appeared in 

my office, asking me to repeat the national security arguments that 

favored reorganization. They felt political pressures from members 

of the Congress to support the reorganization. Their attitude changed 

from indifference to serious interest. The coincidental joining of 

parochial political pressures and public national security interests 

was apparent. The PRP soon made it one of its projects, and FEMA 

was the outcome.

 Not only did FEMA provide a better home for a national civil 

defense program, but its existence emphasized the importance of 

continuity in government (COG) programs. I started an interagency 

review of COG which, a year later lead to the issuance of PD-58.
191

 Parallel to PD-41 and 58, Colonel Charles Stebbins, a member 

of the NSC staff, chaired an interagency working group on military 

industrial stockpiling and wartime mobilization plans. FEMA, of 

course, had these responsibilities as well. PD-57 resulted from his 

working group’s proposals.

 The missing piece in this set of new policy directions was 

communications. The complexity of the issue is more than this 

chapter can describe, but entangled in the telecommunications 

deregulations policy debate was how funding for Defense 

Department communications would be handled. Absent in the 

debate was a “requirement,” set at the national level, for how much 

and what kind of telecommunications were needed for military and 

COG purposes. Was a level capable of controlling conventional 

military operations in a non-nuclear environment adequate? Or was 

it essential to control forces in the event of nuclear war? And if it was 

the latter, was it enough to enable the president only to launch the 

SIOP? Or should he be able to retain control through initial attacks 

and for longer periods of weeks and months thereafter? When the 

Carter administration disbanded the Office of Telecommunications 

Policy, putting most of its function in the Commerce Department, 

it discovered that the 1934 telecommunications law made “crisis 

management” of the electromagnetic spectrum a responsibility 

of the White House. This was a responsibility that could not be 

pushed off on a cabinet department. Thus “national security 

telecommunications policy,” the euphemism for allocating 

frequencies in a crisis, was given to the NSC staff. When staff 

members of the PRP came to discuss this option with me, I was 

puzzled at first but realized that having this responsibility might be 

an advantage in setting communications requirements in the event 

of a nuclear attack. Brzezinski agreed, and the PRP shifted the task 

of telecommunications management to the Special Coordination 

Committee of the NSC because it was designated to deal with “crisis 

management.”

 As I surmised, putting emergency management of the 

electromagnetic spectrum into the NSC Staff was advantageous. As 

the Commerce Department pushed for deregulation and the break 

up of the AT&T monopoly, I began to understand that the military 

did not operate its own communications above the level of tactical 
192

units. Rather it “outsourced” its communications needs to AT&T, 

which spent large sums hardening its switching centers and creating 

a robust network. Most of the costs of these features were defrayed 

by spreading the cost among all customers, including those in the 

private sectors. Deregulation would remove AT&T’s power to cover 

the costs in this manner. To improve the national network to meet 

the challenge of Soviet nuclear weapons capabilities would cost 

large sums that would have to be appropriated by Congress. 

 Initially, Commerce Department officials understood this better 

than I did, but a very able Army captain, Thomas Laney, with a 

graduate degree in economics from Harvard University, worked 

for me as an intern during the summer of 1979. He investigated 

telecommunications issues and sorted things out quickly. Based 

on his analysis, I decided that we should separate the cost issue 

from the policy issue. We tried to get consensus on a presidential 

directive from several agencies, including Defense, State, and Central 

Intelligence. The Directive established a standing “requirement” for 

adequate communications to support the president’s command and 

control. The cost issue was separate and could be handled either by 

keeping AT&T as a monopoly or by proceeding with deregulation 

and seeking the money from Congress. I suspected that the actual 

costs to AT&T were much less than if they had to be appropriated by 

Congress. The transaction costs could be much higher through the 

appropriations route. AT&T officials, however, refused my several 

requests for comparisons based on their internal figures. Thus I could 

not produce analyses to help defend it against deregulation, but I 

was able to secure interagency support for a presidential directive. 

PD-53, signed in 1979, included very demanding requirements for 

management of military forces and the country for months after an 

attack by hostile nuclear forces.

 By late 1979 and early 1980, directives and guidance were in 

place on all of the key fronts that had to be addressed if the United 

States was serious about dealing with the advent of the failure of 

nuclear deterrence. No one working on these issues, as far as I could 

tell, suffered illusions about fighting and winning a nuclear war. No 

one seemed to take that as the primary aim. In my case, the rationale 

was plain. A modicum of effort was necessary in order to prepare 

for failure of deterrence. This was the barest minimum a responsible 

president could afford to do.
193

PD-59

 By 1980, the Carter administration was wholly absorbed with 

the hostage crisis in Iran and the Soviet invasion of Afghanistan. 

Finishing PD-18, a nuclear employment policy, seemed unlikely. In 

the summer of 1980, however, Dr. Brzezinski directed me to begin a 

dialogue with the Defense Department on a presidential directive to 

set this policy. 

 I suspected that Brzezinski and I would soon be in a deadlock 

with the Pentagon on the draft, given the earlier views of Harold 

Brown and his primary aide, Walter Slocombe, on nuclear weapons 

issues. Brown’s views alternated, depending on accumulated 

intelligence on Soviet capabilities, nuclear exercises, and other 

evidence of their policy for use of nuclear weapons. His change on 

the civil defense issue was the first major shift that I noticed.

 In the event, the dialogue went quickly. My initial draft was 

revised beyond recognition. I responded with a compromised 

version, explaining the need for commanders to have the 

capability of launching nuclear weapons attacks on conventional 

forces. I removed the apparent misunderstanding that I favored a 

“counterforce” strategy of destroying Soviet strategic forces before 

they could be launched against the United States. To me, this was 

not feasible and, at best, a very high-risk tactic. Prevailing in our 

defense of Western Europe ought to come first. If Slocombe accepted 

this notion of flexible and limited use of nuclear weapons, I would 

not try to eliminate the SIOP entirely, as my first draft did. 

 Brown not only accepted this, but he also accepted linking 

procurement policy to employment policy, which had never been 

done in directives on nuclear employment policy. Thus the design of 

our nuclear forces and C3I for managing them was locked into paths 

created by procurement agencies. Past changes in employment policy 

had no affect on procurement, effectively making them irrelevant.

 Brown also added an important description of the purpose of 

PD-59. He described it as a “countervailing” strategy. In fact, that is 

precisely its rationale. And his term was a brilliant way to convey 

publicly that the United States was committed to blunting and 

defeating any attack in Europe or East Asia. At the same time, it was 
194

ambiguous, giving no details on just how strategic nuclear forces 

could be used to help NATO “countervail.”

 This concept was also consistent with President Carter’s 

emphasis in NATO on increasing conventional military capabilities 

to counter the Warsaw Pact’s continuing buildup that reached 

disturbing levels by the late 1970s. At the NATO summit in May 

1978, he persuaded the allies to commit to 3 percent annual increases 

in defense spending. He also reversed 10 years of declining U.S. 

defense spending, which began in 1968 and totaled 38 percent by 

1977. In August 1980, the president signed PD-59.

CONCLUSION

 A major question arises from this account. What did President 

Carter really think of this series of PDs on nuclear weapons issues? 

I do not know his real views because Brzezinski dealt directly with 

him on all of these issues. I just know that the President read the 

rationales for each PD and that he signed them. I suspect that his 

reaction to the experience of participating in SIOP drills was not 

unlike my own: “launch on tactical warning” or even an immediate 

retaliatory strike is an absurd and irresponsible way to go to war. He 

gave no hint in those drills of how he might act if an attack were real. 

I suspect that he realized the choices given him made no political 

sense. I also suspect that he would not have directed the execution of 

the SIOP in a crisis. By the time those drills took place, I had already 

learned enough about the system and the attack options to conclude 

that implementing the SIOP would be the height of folly.

 If that were true, then the question was what options should 

replace the SIOP alternatives? There was no way to escape terrible 

consequences, but if one were going to use nuclear weapons, it 

made more sense to aim them at military forces engaged in offensive 

operations against NATO forces or U.S. and allied forces in the 

Far East than to attack empty Soviet ICBM silos, cities, leadership 

facilities, and factories. Perhaps this far more limited use―less than 

a dozen weapons in a single strike―would be answered by massive 

attacks against the United States, but it would at least allow one more 

chance for the Soviet side to reconsider and not escalate. From my 

study of Soviet military thinking, I thought the United States should 
195

avoid resorting to massive attacks. Everything in Soviet nuclear 

weapons policy reflected a lack of understanding and interest 

in western deterrence theory. I also doubted that Soviet nuclear 

forces commands had adequate computer power to organize and 

deconflict massive targeting of the kind required for the U.S. SIOP. 

Finally, many years later, when I interviewed Soviet officers about 

their doctrine of nuclear weapons employment, I learned that they 

gravitated towards limiting nuclear use to the European theater and 

avoiding nuclear attacks on the other’s homeland. This approach 

held primacy beginning in the late 1970s as Soviet strategic forces 

gained rough equivalence to U.S. forces.1

 In other words, under PD59 the targeting of Soviet forces in East Europe probably would not 

have prompted an immediate Soviet strike on the United States. For 

the general staff, Europe was an accepted nuclear battleground after 

1979.

 On the official record, President Carter consistently supported 

reducing the numbers of nuclear weapons and doing everything 

possible to control or totally eliminate them. This image is at odds 

with the image one gains from seeing his signature on all of the PDs. 

I do not see the two images as incompatible. The PDs, including PD59, offered a way to avoid a SIOP decision on short notice. Perhaps it 

was not much better than the choice to launch the SIOP, but it certainly 

was a responsible attempt to make massive nuclear exchanges of 

thousands of nuclear warheads less probable. Moreover, with what 

we have learned after the fact about Soviet high-level military views 

of nuclear use after 1978, PD-59 options look far more credible than 

the awful choices presented by the SIOP.

 Public reaction to PD-59, when word of its promulgation 

leaked out, was disapproving. The Directive was described as a 

new “counterforce” doctrine aimed at killing virtually all of Soviet 

strategic forces before they could be launched. This, of course, was 

absolutely untrue. It also was described as a “nuclear warfighting” 

doctrine, which in a sense it was. But the purpose was not primarily 

to fight and win nuclear wars. It was created as a last resort if 

deterrence failed. This resort was designed to limit the geographic 

areas of nuclear use and to make their use support theater military 

operations to “countervail” in the two major theaters of war where 

U.S. and Soviet forces could conceivably go to war against one 

another. 
196

 With the dissolution of the Soviet Union and the emergence 

of unipolarity in the international balance of power, the PD-59 

approach makes as much, and probably more, sense than it did 

during the U.S.-Soviet Cold War stand off. If nuclear weapons 

capabilities are retained in the U.S. military arsenal, they should not 

be dedicated to large preplanned nuclear options but rather designed 

for limited targeting to support regional military operations. That 

includes primarily small yield and particularized nuclear warheads 

and delivery means, target acquisition means for near real time 

operations, and staff capabilities in the unified commands that 

can develop targeting missions in support of regional military 

operations. Even in this role, it is difficult to conceive of scenarios 

where nuclear weapons are essential. Other advanced weapons and 

technologies are likely to prove far more desirable for use in war.

ENDNOTES - CHAPTER 6

1. William. E. Odom, The Collapse of the Soviet Military, New Haven: Yale 

University Press, 1998, pp. 69-70.
197

CHAPTER 7

FRANCE’S NUCLEAR DETERRENCE STRATEGY:

CONCEPTS AND OPERATIONAL IMPLEMENTATION

David S. Yost*

This essay offers a survey of operational implementation issues in 

France’s nuclear deterrence strategy since the late 1970s.1

 The survey 

begins with a brief account of the development of France’s nuclear 

posture. It then turns to the political and strategic purposes of the 

posture. While the French have consistently upheld basic objectives 

such as ensuring the nation’s decision-making autonomy and its 

security from aggression by major powers, they have modified 

a number of operational principles and priorities. In some cases, 

they have signified these modifications by introducing new terms to 

describe their strategic conceptions. They have usually abandoned 

the previous terms without fanfare or explanation, and only 

specialists have taken note of the evident adjustments in strategic 

policy. The insistence that France’s strategy remains one of non-use 

enables the French to minimize the potential awkwardness of certain 

issues, including relations with allies and potential adversaries and 

the strategy’s moral and political legitimacy.

____________

* The views expressed are the author’s alone and do not represent those of 

the Department of the Navy or any US government agency. Special thanks 

are owed to Antoine Azaïs, Thérèse Delpech, Michel Picard, and Bruno 

Tertrais, among others, for their comments on earlier drafts of this essay. 

Portions of this essay draw on the author’s previous works, particularly 

France’s Deterrent Posture and Security in Europe, Part I: Capabilities and 

Doctrine and Part II: Strategic and Arms Control Implications, Adelphi 

Papers no. 194 and 195 (London: International Institute for Strategic 

Studies, Winter 1984/85); “French Nuclear Targeting,” in Desmond Ball 

and Jeffrey Richelson, eds., Strategic Nuclear Targeting (Ithaca, New York: 

Cornell University Press, 1986); and “Nuclear Weapons Issues in France,” 

in John C. Hopkins and Weixing Hu, eds., Strategic Views from the Second 

Tier: The Nuclear Weapons Policies of France, Britain, and China (San Diego, 

California: Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, University of 

California, San Diego, 1994).
198

New international circumstances have been more important 

than technical factors in leading the French to modify their strategic 

priorities and operational concepts since the late 1970s. Concepts of 

“proportional deterrence” and “anti-cities” targeting occupied center 

stage in French strategic discourse when the main object of France’s 

nuclear posture was the Soviet Union. During that era, several 

arguments against flexible targeting carried the day: above all, the 

limitations of French means in any contest with the Soviet Union. 

However, while the utility for France of targeting flexibility options 

was implausible vis à vis the USSR, in post-Cold War circumstances 

more discriminate nuclear options have gained importance in 

French analyses of contingencies involving regional powers armed 

with weapons of mass destruction (WMD). The history of French 

nuclear employment policy has been a gradual movement away 

from underscoring “anti-cities” threats with massive demographic 

effects to a greater emphasis on administrative, political, and 

military targets. The French have nonetheless continued to uphold 

the principle of non-use, thereby expressing their rejection of nuclear 

“war-fighting” concepts and their confidence that their threats of 

punishment will deter their adversaries and that actual nuclear 

strikes will not be required.

Indeed, French commentators have at times implicitly praised 

Paris for developing a strategy of non-emploi — that is, of non-use — 

and have contrasted the French approach with that of Washington 

and Moscow, accused of designing strategies for the operational use 

of nuclear arms. France’s nuclear deterrence strategy has nonetheless 

obviously had operational dimensions, because a nuclear posture 

incapable of being employed operationally would deter no one. The 

French have made substantial investments in capabilities for the 

practical implementation of their strategy. Technical and operational 

credibility is intended to reinforce deterrence and thereby ensure the 

continuing relevance of the non-use principle.

The French rarely employed the American term “assured 

destruction” to describe their strategy during the Cold War but they 

endorsed the principle of deterring aggression and preventing war 

by maintaining survivable second-strike forces capable of causing 

massive damage to enemy cities. The French repeatedly accused 

Washington and Moscow of developing and maintaining arsenals 

far in excess of what would be required for deterrence via threats to 
199

attack cities. The policies of the two largest nuclear powers, French 

commentators said, stood in contrast with the strict “sufficiency” 

sought by Paris. The French have for decades held, however, that 

their strategy is not constrained by an “all or nothing” rigidity. 

Operational flexibility has become more important since the early 

1990s as the French have adapted their strategy to deter WMD-armed 

regional powers while retaining capabilities that constitute a hedge 

against the emergence of a new major-power threat.

France’s Nuclear Posture

The French instituted their nuclear weapons program through 

a complex process that included the contributions of the French 

scientists associated with British, Canadian, and U.S. efforts during 

World War II, General de Gaulle’s establishment of the Commissariat 

à l’Énergie Atomique in 1945, the series of limited decisions during 

the Fourth Republic (1946-1958), and the wide-ranging decisions of 

the Fifth Republic (1958 to the present) on specific weapons designs, 

delivery systems, and deterrence strategies. France conducted its 

first nuclear explosive test in February 1960 in Algeria, then under 

French rule, and its first thermonuclear explosive test in August 1968 

in French Polynesia. The French have not conducted any nuclear 

explosive tests since the series of six tests in 1995-1996.2 

Aircraft and standoff missiles. France’s initial delivery means, from 

1964 on, consisted of Mirage IV bombers, each carrying a single 

bomb. In the late 1980s 18 more advanced models of these aircraft 

were equipped with ASMP standoff missiles, each with a single 

warhead and a nominal range of 300 km; and these 18 ASMP-armed 

aircraft remained in service until 1996. From 1972 to 1991 several 

types of aircraft were equipped with “tactical” AN-52 gravity bombs. 

ASMP standoff missiles, with warheads of a reported yield of 300 kt, 

began to replace the gravity bombs in the late 1980s. Today most of 

France’s ASMP missiles are allocated to 45 Mirage 2000N aircraft. In 

contrast with Britain, Russia, and the United States, France continues 

to maintain nuclear weapons for its surface fleet: ASMP missiles for 

Super-Étendard aircraft on the aircraft carrier Charles de Gaulle. The 

warhead on the improved 500 km-range ASMP-A missile, which 

is to be deployed on Mirage 2000Ns in 2007, will reportedly have 

a more “robust” design, to compensate for the lack of testing; and 
200

the missile itself will be capable of diverse trajectories to enhance 

its prospects of defeating air defenses. Beginning in 2008 Rafale 

aircraft, both ground and carrier-based, will also be armed with the 

ASMP-A.

Land-based missiles. From 1971–72 to September 1996, when they 

were deactivated, France maintained 18 ballistic missiles on the 

Plateau d’Albion with a range of 3,000 to 3,500 km. Each missile 

carried a single warhead with a reported yield of about a megaton. 

From 1974 to 1992, the French army had 30 Pluton missile launchers 

(not counting spares and training launchers), and a stockpile of 

120 km-range Pluton missiles. 30 follow-on Hadès missiles, with 

a published range of 450 km, were produced in the late 1980s and 

early 1990s, but never operationally deployed. In February 1996, 

President Jacques Chirac announced that the Hadès missiles, then 

still in storage, would be dismantled.

Submarine-based missiles. The first generation of French SSBNs 

entered service between 1971 and 1980. France’s first SLBMs carried 

single warheads, but the M-4 SLBMs introduced in 1985 carry 6 

independently-targeted warheads, each with a reported yield of 150 

kt. A new SLBM type, the M45, also equipped with 6 warheads, 

entered service in mid-1996, on Le Triomphant, the first of France’s 

four new-generation SSBNs. In 1996, it was announced that the 

successor SLBM, the M51, will have almost double the range of the 

M45 — that is, the M51 will have a range of over 8,000 km — in 

the interests of increased target coverage and SSBN survivability.3

The M51 will reportedly have greater throwweight to accommodate 

penetration aids as well as larger and heavier warheads of a more 

cautious and “robust” design. Rather than devices with highly 

efficient yield-to-weight ratios verified through explosive testing, 

the TNN warheads that are to replace the TN 75 on the M51 SLBM 

in 2015 may have more shielding, high explosive, fissile material, 

and safety features. Current plans call for the fourth and final newgeneration SSBN, Le Terrible, to enter service in 2010, equipped with 

the first M51 SLBMs. 

Current capabilities. Since September 1996, France’s operational 

nuclear forces have consisted solely of four nuclear-powered 

submarines, each equipped with 16 MIRVed ballistic missiles, plus 

aircraft equipped with ASMP standoff missiles. In addition to the 

force cutbacks, alert rates have been modified for air-delivered 
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systems and submarines. For example, from January 1983 to June 

1992, the French maintained three SSBNs on station at sea at all times. 

From June 1992 to February 1996, two were on station at all times. 

Since February 1996, at least one has been on station at all times; and 

France is capable of maintaining two on station, if necessary. France 

could even deploy three “during a crisis, after a certain delay, if need 

be.”4

In January 2000, President Chirac reviewed the unilateral 

reductions in France’s nuclear posture in the course of reaffirming 

long-standing principles of French nuclear deterrence policy:

The place of our nuclear deterrent is simple and central. Our 

nuclear forces, reduced to a level of strict sufficiency, are the 

ultimate guarantee of the survival of our nation. They threaten 

no one, but they assure whoever might wish to attack our vital 

interests that he would in return suffer unacceptable losses, out 

of proportion with the stakes of a conflict. France must therefore 

have reliable and safe nuclear weapons. This objective necessitated 

the conduct of six tests in 1995 and 1996 which provided us with 

the scientific and technical data that we lacked before committing 

ourselves definitively to the path of simulation. We have reduced 

the size of our nuclear forces by withdrawing from service, in 

particular, [the intermediate-range ballistic missiles on] the 

plateau d’Albion and the [shorter-range] Hadès missiles. France 

has signed and ratified the comprehensive test ban treaty, and has 

dismantled its test center. France has stopped producing fissile 

materials and has undertaken the dismantling of its production 

facilities. And we invite our partners to follow this example. But 

no one should make any mistake about it. As long as risks persist 

and we have not achieved a general and verified disarmament, 

which does not concern nuclear weapons alone, France will retain 

the capability to protect itself from any threat to its vital interests, 

which might come notably from countries armed with weapons 

of mass destruction. To deal with the diversity of situations 

with which we might be confronted in the course of the coming 

decades, France must have a credible and properly designed 

nuclear arsenal, offering a maximum of flexibility.5

Chirac’s reference to “a maximum of flexibility” raises the 

question of operational employment concepts. Owing in part to 

France’s relatively modest capabilities (in relation to those of the 
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Soviet Union or Russia) for extended nuclear operations — in terms 

of numbers of weapons, delivery accuracy, and survivable command 

and control — the French have historically been reluctant to endorse 

operational concepts that might be seen as “licensing” limited 

nuclear strikes. French discussions of nuclear operations during 

the Cold War usually emphasized a “single salvo” of warning to an 

aggressor, to be delivered by shorter-range nuclear systems, prior 

to the unleashing of France’s full strategic nuclear arsenal against 

the enemy’s population centers, economic assets, and administrative 

control system. 

However, as suggested earlier, in post-Cold War conditions 

the French have increasingly emphasized the utility of nuclear 

deterrence threats against WMD-armed regional powers; and these 

threats imply a willingness to conduct limited nuclear operations. 

At the same time, the French have refined capabilities and nuclear 

employment concepts inherited from the Cold War and intended 

to counter any major-power threats that may emerge. This shift in 

policy is examined below: a brief overview of the policies in the 

period from the late 1970s to the end of the Cold War in 1989-1991 

sets the scene for the post-Cold War preoccupation with devising 

policies capable of deterring regional powers equipped with WMD.

Operational Employment Concepts during the Cold War

From 1964 to 1971, France’s sole means of delivering nuclear 

weapons to the Soviet Union consisted of Mirage IV bombers, each 

armed with a single sixty-kiloton bomb. With these capabilities, the 

French concluded, they had little choice but to aim at Soviet population 

centers as a deterrent. President Charles de Gaulle argued in 1964 

that the disproportion in destructive capabilities between Paris and 

Moscow was irrelevant: “[O]nce reaching a certain nuclear capability 

and as far as one’s own direct defense is concerned, the proportion of 

respective means no longer has absolute value. In fact, since a man 

and a country can die but once, deterrence exists as soon as one can 

mortally wound the potential aggressor and is fully resolved to do 

so, and he is well convinced of it.”6

French proportional deterrence theory, or the “deterrence by 

the weak of the strong” (la dissuasion du faible au fort),7

 holds that 

France could deter a much stronger power, such as the Soviet Union 
203

or Russia, through the “equalizing power of the atom” (le pouvoir 

égalisateur de l’atome). The argument is that France could deter a 

stronger power because the damage France could cause would 

exceed what the aggressor would stand to gain in conquering or 

destroying France. 

As late as the 1970s and early 1980s, this was often defined in 

mainly demographic terms. In 1980, in a rare use of the American 

term “assured destruction,” Prime Minister Raymond Barre referred 

to France’s ability to cause an aggressor “the assured destruction 

of a notable part of his cities and of his economy.”8

 In 1981 Prime 

Minister Pierre Mauroy said that France’s anti-cities strategy aimed 

“to be able to inflict on the aggressor . . . damage judged superior to 

the stake that the vital interests of the country represent for him.”9

General Jeannou Lacaze, then Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces, 

specified that the adversary would suffer “damage ‘judged superior’ 

to the demographic and economic potential that we represent,” and 

that deterrence is “a matter of persuading him that such an action 

would present unacceptable risks because of the losses in human 

lives that he could suffer.”10

It was nonetheless around 1980 that French declaratory policy 

began to place greater emphasis on threatening to destroy the 

infrastructure of the Soviet economy and administration than on 

targeting the population.11 Expositions of official policy that year 

suggested that the shift was motivated by the prospective deployment 

of multiple-warhead M-4 SLBMs as well as a determination to 

respond to Soviet civil defense programs:

The neutralization of the adversary [state’s] administrative, 

economic, and social structures, the destruction of the framework 

of life and activity of millions of persons constitute damage that 

would be difficult to accept, even if a part of the population 

concerned by these destructions escapes immediate death. Let us 

imagine, for example, the situation of the USSR with 100 or 150 of 

its largest cities destroyed, some tens of millions of people killed, 

and as many persons displaced who must be taken in charge by a 

state emptied of its substance.12

The response is undoubtedly to be sought in the multiplication 

of targets and selectivity, the aim being to reduce to nothing the 

structures and the “vital works” [oeuvres vives] of the adversary 

state, even if part of the population of the objectives targeted 
204

escapes destruction. Thus one differentiates between an “anticities” strategy and a strictly “anti-demographic” strategy. This 

strategy will without doubt lead to obtaining an important number 

of medium-yield warheads, preferred over megaton yields. In 

this respect the M-4 program constitutes a remarkable increase in 

the value of our nuclear armament.13

 This decision to respond to Soviet civil defense programs by 

targeting the infrastructure of Soviet administrative control as well 

as industrial and economic assets was referred to as “an enlarged 

anti-cities strategy,”14 and described as “a concept of the same 

strategic nature but more complete and, therefore, more operational 

and credible.”15 Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, President from 1974 to 

1981, reported in his memoirs that he had approved “as the objective 

for our strategic strike ‘the destruction of 40% of the economic 

capabilities of the Soviet Union on this side of the Urals, and the 

disorganization of the country’s leadership apparatus.’ To be sure 

of obtaining this result, we had to be able to reach the totality of 

Moscow’s industrial region, including its extensions to the east.”16 In 

1981 Defense Minister Charles Hernu said, however, that the force 

modernization decisions in prospect did “not imply any change in 

our anti-cities strategy, corollary of deterrence by the weak of the 

strong.”17

 Furthermore, French officials rejected concepts of counterforce 

strikes in any conflict with a major power like the Soviet Union. 

As Prime Minister Barre put it, “For our country, the problem of 

choosing between an anti-forces strategy and an anti-cities strategy 

does not arise.”18 As an exposition of the official strategy noted, only 

an anti-cities strategy conformed to France’s means:

We aim at the adversary’s cities because these targets are easy 

to reach, without great accuracy in the missiles required, and 

especially because one can thus cause important damage with 

a limited number of weapons. . . . It is only in the framework 

of an anti-cities strategy that the desirable level of damage can 

be guaranteed with the means that remain in proportion to the 

scientific, industrial, and economic possibilities of France. Any 

other strategy would necessitate much more important means, 

without doubt beyond our reach, and could not but weaken 

deterrence.19
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In short, beyond France’s lack of means for a counterforce strategy, 

it was argued that an anti-cities posture would maximize the 

probability of successful deterrence. French officials reasoned that 

implying that France would not respond as massively as possible 

could undermine the deterrent and invite Soviet aggression. General 

Guy Méry, the Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces, condemned as 

“totally stupid” any suggestion of limited, initial counterforce strikes 

against the USSR by France: “even if we had sufficiently accurate 

weapons, we would destroy only a truly minor part of his entire 

order of battle, and we would then be assured of his immediate 

retaliation.”20 In other words, as another French official noted, the 

“equalizing power of the atom no longer applies in counterforce 

actions.”21

In an actual crisis, it was envisaged that France would undertake a 

“deterrent maneuver” intended to reach a political resolution short of 

war. From this perspective, France’s nuclear employment planning 

during the Cold War (like NATO’s) was “more oriented toward the 

political management of crises than toward military effectiveness.”22

To achieve these political results, France would rely on capabilities 

complementing its strategic nuclear forces aimed at Soviet cities. In 

1981 Defense Minister Robert Galley said that “This strategy relies 

in the first place on strategic nuclear forces capable of inflicting 

unacceptable damage [des dommages insupportables] on any possible 

aggressor in the very heart of his territory. It also relies on tactical 

nuclear forces and conventional forces which, by allowing France 

not to find itself driven into an ‘all or nothing’ situation, enhance 

the deterrent impact of the strategic nuclear forces.”23 Without 

such capabilities, Prime Minister Mauroy indicated in 1982, France 

could be driven to “either premature use or non-use of our strategic 

armament.”24

France’s “tactical nuclear” capabilities provoked extensive 

doctrinal and political discussions in France and NATO, particularly 

vis à vis the Federal Republic of Germany and the United States 

during the Cold War.25 Various concepts of tactical nuclear 

employment — including battlefield use, “testing” enemy intentions, 

signaling resolve, and warning the enemy of France’s readiness to 

employ its strategic arsenal — coexisted and competed until the late 

1970s. It was in this context that President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing 

declared in 1976 that such weapons were “not only an instrument 
206

of deterrence, but also an instrument of battle.”26 After the debate 

in the late 1970s the predominant view of French political-military 

authorities was that such weapons were “not a ‘super-artillery,’ for 

we refuse nuclear battle,” in the words of Defense Minister Hernu in 

1982.27 Indeed, the French added the term non-bataille (non-battle) to 

their strategic lexicon, a corollary of the term non-emploi (non-use). 

As on the strategic nuclear level, France’s means were too limited to 

contemplate combat with tactical nuclear arms. Concepts for large 

numbers of tactical nuclear weapons for battlefield use were rejected 

as likely to lead to undermining deterrence, a loss of political control 

of the escalation process, and a battle in which the superiority of 

Soviet numbers would give the enemy victory.

 In an effort to clarify the role of France’s non-strategic nuclear 

weapons, Hernu in October 1984 directed that the term armements 

pré-stratégiques (pre-strategic weapons) replace the expression armes 

nucléaires tactiques (tactical nuclear weapons).28 The intention was to 

make clear that any use of these weapons would constitute a threat 

of almost immediate escalation to strategic nuclear strikes. Although 

the term “pre-strategic” remained in use until the early 1990s, it fell 

into official disfavor in the late 1980s. In 1987 President François 

Mitterrand reportedly said, “I do not believe at all in the utility of 

pre-strategic weapons. To tell the truth, they should rather be called 

post-strategic weapons, because their use would necessarily signify 

that the Russians were already in Germany and one would find 

oneself beyond the moment when strategic deterrence should have 

worked.”29 

While Mitterrand nonetheless continued to use the term “prestrategic,” he increasingly favored the term arme d’ultime avertissement

(weapon of final warning). In 1988, Mitterrand said that France’s 

“final and unique warning” strike would be delivered solely against 

“strictly military targets.”30 During the late 1980s and early 1990s 

Mitterrand and other officials became more consistent in avoiding 

the term “prestrategic” and instead employing the term “final 

warning.” In September 1991, for example, Mitterrand said, “the 

targets of what is called the ‘final warning’ are military targets.”31

Jacques Chirac, who served as Prime Minister under Mitterrand 

in 1986-1988, said in 1988 that the “warning” strike “must be precise, 

effective and limited, because we refuse to enter into a cycle of repeated 

nuclear exchanges which would be the negation of deterrence. It 
207

must also be able to be carried out as far as possible in the depth 

of the adversary’s deployment.”32 Chirac specifically referred to the 

possibility of using highly accurate S-4 IRBMs (then scheduled to 

replace the S-3 IRBMs after 1996) to perform the “function of final 

warning against the ‘sanctuary’ of a potential aggressor.”33 President 

Mitterrand also evoked the potential limited use of “strategic” 

systems for the “pre-strategic” purpose of “ultimate warning” in the 

late 1980s.34

 The preoccupation with the forces capable of strategic attacks 

was understandable, because the capability to hold Soviet assets 

at risk — the USSR’s population centers, economic and industrial 

facilities, and administrative control mechanisms — was considered 

the bedrock basis of security through deterrence. France’s interest in 

keeping Soviet and (after 1991) Russian cities vulnerable to French 

SLBMs was apparent in (a) France’s support for the ABM Treaty 

until the U.S. withdrawal took effect in June 2002 and (b) French 

investments in multiple warheads, penetration aids, and other 

measures intended to defeat ballistic missile defenses.35

Adjustments in Declaratory Strategy Since the End of the Cold War

As Bruno Tertrais of the Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique 

pointed out in 2000, “Since the mid-1970s, the foundations of French 

nuclear doctrine have remained unchanged in the speeches and 

public remarks of the political authorities.”36 Certain rationales 

for maintaining France’s nuclear arsenal have been consistently 

restated: preventing war, maintaining national independence and 

decision-making autonomy, protecting the nation’s vital interests, 

and making an indirect contribution to the security of France’s allies 

by complicating the decision-making calculus of adversaries.

While these fundamental rationales have remained constant over 

the past quarter-century, some noteworthy adjustments have been 

made since the end of the Cold War in 1989-1991. 

As suggested above, the distinctions between aircraft and missiles 

with “strategic” or “pre-strategic” or “final warning” missions 

became increasingly vague in the late 1980s and early 1990s. Since 

September 1991, all the nuclear-capable means in France’s air force 

(including the ASMP missiles on Mirage 2000Ns previously described 

as equipped with “prestrategic” weapons) have been under the 
208

command of the Forces Aériennes Stratégiques. Since the early 1990s 

the terms “prestrategic” and “final warning” have disappeared from 

official discourse; and the French have accordingly considered all 

their nuclear weapons strategic.37 The government has nonetheless 

retained the idea that France could employ signaling options short 

of an all-out strategic nuclear attack. For example, in 1997 an 

Armed Forces Staff document noted that, “If the adversary was not 

convinced of France’s determination and went ahead, the President 

of the Republic, who alone can order the commitment of the nuclear 

forces, could signal to him without ambiguity at that time that he 

considers the vital interests of our country at stake, thus recalling his 

determination to safeguard them.”38

During the Cold War, following the statements in 1967-1968 by 

President de Gaulle and General Charles Ailleret, then the Chief of 

Staff of the Armed Forces, the French declared at times that their 

nuclear deterrent had an “all points of the compass” (tous azimuts) 

orientation. No references to the Soviet Union or the Warsaw Pact as 

the potential adversary appeared in the multi-year military programlaws while de Gaulle was President (1958-1969), and the explicit 

references to the Warsaw Pact and the Soviet Union as potential 

adversaries in the military program-laws in 1976 and 1983 were 

considered exceptional and newsworthy. The more typical wording 

during the Cold War was to refer simply to “the adversary” and 

to discuss the situation of a “medium power” (France) deterring a 

“great power” (the Soviet Union). 

In 1990, when the Cold War was coming to an end, the French 

Ministry of Defense employed the Gaullist approach of declining 

to identify Moscow or any other foreign capital as a “designated 

enemy” of France. “The French nuclear deterrent is not directed 

against anyone in particular. France has no designated enemy. Our 

deterrent is at the service of our independence.”39 In 1992, Pierre Joxe, 

then Minister of Defense, said that the tous azimuts concept “today 

finds its full meaning after the fading away of the potential Soviet 

adversary.”40 As some French experts have pointed out, rather than 

saying that France’s deterrent is aimed at “all azimuths,” it would be 

more accurate to say that it is currently directed at “no azimuth in 

particular.”

In September 1997, President Jacques Chirac announced that, given 

the dismantlement of the IRBMs on the Plateau d’Albion, “none of the 
209

nuclear means of the French deterrent force is henceforth targeted.”41

This brought French declaratory policy into line with that adopted 

by Britain, Russia, and the United States in 1994. This implied no 

change in the fundamental rationales for France’s nuclear deterrent 

noted above, however.

Since the end of the Cold War, it has become apparent that the 

French discern two categories of threats to be deterred with their 

nuclear forces: a possible reappearance of a major-power threat, even 

one such as the USSR once constituted, and regional powers armed 

with weapons of mass destruction. According to the July 1992 draft 

military program-law for 1992-1994, “It is today difficult to discern 

clearly the types of threats that we might have to face — a return 

of the previous threat, [or] the emergence of new threats for which 

an anti-cities strategy would not necessarily be appropriate. It is 

therefore necessary, while remaining faithful to the concept of strict 

sufficiency, to seek means to respond to a broader range of scenarios 

than in the past and therefore to think about a new structure for our 

nuclear forces.”42

The February 1994 defense white paper raised the possibility that 

in the next twenty years, a new threat of major aggression against 

Western Europe could emerge “from a state or coalition of states with 

large nuclear and conventional forces.” If such a threat emerged, its 

military capabilities would include “means for selective or massive 

nuclear strikes, high-technology conventional forces, and means of 

internal subversion.” France must therefore maintain nuclear and 

C3I capabilities suitable for dealing with “the possibility of the reappearance of a large threat comparable to that which the Soviet 

Union represented.”43 Such a major-power threat in Europe could 

not have come from a country other than Russia, so the discussion 

of the potential “resurgence of a major threat to Western Europe” in 

the 1994 white paper was among the last implicit public references 

to a specific country as a target of French nuclear deterrence 

capabilities.44

The major-power threat is in abeyance in the foreseeable future, but 

its potential reemergence has been repeatedly recalled in conjunction 

with the more immediate threat posed by regional powers armed 

with weapons of mass destruction (WMD). This significant shift in 

emphasis since the end of the Cold War has been evident in remarks 

on the utility of France’s nuclear arsenal in deterring WMD use. As 

Chirac put it in February 1996,
210

Nuclear deterrence remains the fundamental element of our 

strategy. Certainly, it no longer constitutes, as in the past, the 

expression of a defense organized essentially to meet a permanent 

and identified threat, but it remains the ultimate guarantee 

against any threat to our vital interests, whatever might be the 

origin and form [of the threat]. . . . the clearly identified, massive, 

and permanent nuclear threat that prevailed during the period of the 

East-West confrontation has gone away, but during the same period 

other types of dangers capable of threatening our vital interests 

have appeared. Uncertainty persists about the balances that will 

be established in eastern Europe and therefore about the risks for our 

own security. On other continents there already exist weapons of mass 

destruction, nuclear or of other kinds, and it cannot be excluded that 

they might someday also affect our vital interests. In these conditions, 

nuclear deterrence remains a fully imperious necessity. It alone can 

avert the worst scenario. It is still today a determining factor of 

peace in Europe and for Europe.45

Chirac’s statement combined the persistent “uncertainty . . . 

about the balances that will be established in eastern Europe” 

(presumably a reference to Russia and possibly additional postSoviet states) with the weapons of mass destruction already present 

“on other continents” in the arsenals of regional powers. The military 

program-law for 1997-2002, adopted by the French legislature in July 

1996, used almost the same terms in explaining the importance of 

nuclear deterrence for France:

France’s very survival is no longer threatened by the presence, in 

the immediate proximity of our frontiers, of considerable nuclear, 

air-ground, and chemical forces. But the threat, for long years 

yet, of thousands of nuclear weapons in the arsenals inherited 

from the Cold War, and the appearance of other types of dangers 

capable of threatening our vital interests, notably the development 

on other continents of weapons of mass destruction, mean that 

nuclear deterrence remains a fully imperious necessity. It must 

be capable of being adapted with flexibility to the uncertainty that 

surrounds the nature of the future threats and risks.46

Prime Minister Lionel Jospin also referred to both categories of 

threats in September 1997:

To deal with proliferation hazards that might get out of hand 

and with the risk of a resurgence of a major threat, France has 
211

maintained a credible deterrent force but at a level of strict 

sufficiency, inferior to that during the cold war. Moreover, in 

a world still dominated by the play of power relationships, its 

nuclear status is one of the elements that allows France to maintain 

its freedom of action and assessment on the international scene.47

Jospin’s vague allusion to “the risk of a resurgence of a major 

threat” was consistent with a trend since the late 1990s to note that a 

“major power” threat to France could take forms other than Russia’s 

reconstitution of capabilities approximating those of the Soviet 

Union. French observers have noted, for instance, that China’s 

developing arsenal might threaten France in some circumstances. 

However, of these two categories, the WMD proliferants — the 

regional powers equipped with nuclear, chemical, and/or biological 

arms — present the more immediate and novel challenges for French 

nuclear deterrence strategy.

Challenges in Deterring WMD Proliferants

Prior to the 1990s France’s public discourse gave little attention to 

possible threats arising from regional powers armed with weapons of 

mass destruction. Despite some official references in 1977 to possible 

use of what the French then called “tactical nuclear weapons” in 

situations outside Europe,48 concern promptly arose regarding the 

potential “devaluation” of nuclear threats through such concepts:

Do we have the right, in order to support distant actions which 

would not put our vital interests into question, to envisage 

recourse to the atom, at the risk of desacralizing it, creating a 

customary phenomenon? Is it not necessary to reserve nuclear 

weapons to the immediate defense of our territory?49

This concern evidently led the French to emphasize that the “tactical 

nuclear weapons” deliverable by carrier-based aircraft had the “same 

vocation” as France’s other tactical nuclear forces — that is, possible 

employment in deterrence maneuver actions intended to protect the 

national homeland.50

President François Mitterrand was therefore upholding a longstanding policy when, during the 1990-1991 Gulf War, he ruled 

out any nuclear retaliation for Iraqi use of chemical or biological 

weapons:
212

We must not use chemical weapons. We have conventional means 

that will permit us to defend ourselves and to make law triumph, 

but we must not succumb to this will to reply on the same level. . .

I exclude it. Neither chemical, nor bacteriological, nor nuclear 

arms. . .To use arms of these types would be a retreat towards 

barbarism that I refuse.51 

In explaining Mitterrand’s policy, Foreign Minister Roland Dumas 

emphasized a distinction between deterrence for the protection of the 

homeland — the “hexagon,” as the French call it — and the security 

of forces projected overseas.52

In contrast with chemical weapons, nuclear weapons cannot be 

battlefield weapons, and cannot be used except as the ultimate 

recourse when the national territory is threatened. We are not in 

this hypothesis. The Gulf war is taking place in a theatre distant 

from the hexagon [that is, France]. The national patrimony is not 

directly threatened. The risk of world war, as the President of the 

Republic has said, does not exist. Therefore, to use the nuclear 

weapon now, and in this context, would constitute a sort of 

repudiation of ourselves, of our doctrine, and therefore a political 

and strategic error.53

The Mitterrand decision was sharply criticized at the time by 

some center-right political leaders — including Jacques Chirac 

— as likely to undermine nuclear deterrence. Since he became 

President in May 1995, Chirac has differentiated his approach to 

deterrence from that of Mitterrand in several ways. For one thing, 

the distinctions Mitterrand made about the circumstances in which 

nuclear deterrence might apply have been blurred. In August 1995, 

for example, Chirac made this simple statement:

Responsible before the nation for the future and the security of 

our country, it is my duty to remind the French that only the 

[nuclear] deterrent force guarantees France against the possible 

use of weapons of mass destruction, of whatever type they may 

be. The notion of deterrence in the face of threats from wherever 

they may come retains — and will retain for a long time to come 

— all its meaning.54

Similarly, Admiral Jacques Lanxade, then the Chief of Staff of the 

Armed Forces, in June 1995 also underscored the broad relevance of 

France’s nuclear deterrence posture:
213

We will henceforth have to take two new considerations into 

account: on the one hand, [nuclear] deterrence will have to apply 

in much more varied and complex situations than in the past; 

on the other hand, conventional forces, called upon much more 

than in the past, will have to play a strategic role in their own 

right. The role of our nuclear weapons will nonetheless remain 

unchanged: that is, they will continue to exert the threat of 

unacceptable damage against any aggressor that might threaten 

our vital interests, whatever might be the circumstances, the form, 

and the origin of the threat.55

The current outlook seems to be that vague nuclear threats may 

help to deter regional powers from using WMD, not only against 

“the hexagon” of France but also against the nation’s armed forces 

overseas. The threats remain imprecise because there is some concern 

that excessively explicit or specific threats could help to provoke WMD 

proliferation. This concern applies both to declaratory doctrine and 

to the weapons procured. For an example of the linkage between 

the doctrine for deterrence and the policy intended to advance nonproliferation goals, one might consider the statement by Alain Juppé, 

then Prime Minister, in September 1995:

Our nuclear doctrine must be concerned with being 

compatible with the objective of non-proliferation. That is 

why it seems right to me to underline once again that France 

has ruled out the development of miniaturized weapons for 

employment, which would furnish a pretext for clandestine 

nuclear programs.

56

The French have nonetheless consistently affirmed that they retain 

the right to employ nuclear weapons to defend their vital interests. 

For example, in April 1995, Alain Juppé, then the Foreign Minister, 

articulated France’s negative security assurances in the context of 

the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT).

France reaffirms that it will not use nuclear weapons against nonnuclear-weapon states party to the NPT, except in the case of an 

invasion or any other attack conducted or supported by such a 

state, in alliance or in association with a nuclear-weapon state, 

against it, its territory, its armed forces or other troops, or against 

its allies or a state with which it has a security commitment. The 
214

new formulation of our assurances is. . . circumscribed since it 

refers only to states party to the NPT, which is consistent with 

our will to favor the universality and indefinite extension of this 

treaty.

Juppé proceeded to add the following reservations:

. . . security assurances are compatible with our strategy of 

deterrence for three reasons. The first is that our strategy of 

deterrence has a strictly defensive character: France rejects 

the threat or use of nuclear weapons for aggressive purposes; 

our nuclear strategy is a strategy of non-war, based on nuclear 

capabilities limited to the strictly necessary level. . . . Secondly, 

our declarations regarding security assurances naturally do not 

affect in any way our inalienable right to self-defense as defined by 

article 51 of the United Nations Charter. . . . Finally. . . the French 

deterrent’s purpose is the protection of our vital interests, whose 

definition is up to the President of the Republic. It is obvious that 

our deterrent covers any challenge to our vital interests, whatever 

the means and origin of the threat, including of course that of 

weapons of mass destruction produced and used despite the 

international prohibitions that concern them. No one can doubt. . . 

our will and our capability to inflict unacceptable damage on an 

adversary in such circumstances.57

In other words, if the French President decided that an adversary 

armed with chemical or biological weapons — or anything else, for 

that matter — had threatened France’s vital interests, the negative 

security assurances would not apply.

The French have, however, exercised some caution in articulating 

threats of nuclear retaliation against WMD-armed regional powers, 

apparently for at least two reasons. First, explicit nuclear threats 

could encourage and/or “legitimize” nuclear proliferation in some 

cases. The French theory of deterrence by the weak of the strong 

(la dissuasion du faible au fort) has already provided an example and 

strategic rationale of interest to certain proliferant states. In relation 

to some proliferants France may be the power targeted by “the weak.” 

Second, making such nuclear threats explicitly, to say nothing of 

carrying them out, could erode the legitimacy of nuclear deterrence 

in Western societies for the primary function of war-prevention.58

Some French observers have advanced a third rationale for restraint 

in making and carrying out nuclear threats. Conducting such strikes 
215

would break the “nuclear taboo” and might undermine France’s 

general position that nuclear weapons support a strategy of “nonwar” (non-guerre) and that they should not be used operationally. 

By this logic, it would be preferable and more prudent to maintain 

the equation that nuclear deterrence means non-use (non-emploi). 

In addition to perhaps demonstrating that nuclear weapons have 

political-military utility, the results of actual use might also convey the 

impression that the effects of nuclear weapons use are “manageable” 

or “sustainable.” If governments concluded that the consequences of 

nuclear weapons use are sustainable, at least in some circumstances, 

with genuine political-military utility, they might increasingly regard 

nuclear arms as suitable for operational employment. This might 

in turn promote the further proliferation of nuclear weapons, and 

raise the probability of actual use in subsequent conflicts. Various 

French observers have for years argued that it is imperative for these 

reasons to uphold and maintain the nuclear taboo as long as possible. 

Retired Admiral Marcel Duval, for example, wrote in 1995 that it is 

proper 

to prepare for the eventuality of a conflict with an adversary 

armed with primitive nuclear weapons, with regard to whom the 

deterrent — that is, the threat of massive nuclear retaliation — 

would be inappropriate, psychologically ineffective, or morally 

inadmissible. It is prudent to conceive of other strategies, weapons 

systems, and means of protection for these eventualities. Emerging 

technologies, without recourse to nuclear weapons, might enable 

us to respond to these eventualities, because it is imperative in our 

view to preserve the ‘taboo’ against using nuclear weapons which 

is the basis of their peace-preserving effect. . . The banalization of 

nuclear weapons would not fail to lead to their use and then to the 

end of their peace-preserving effect.59

These arguments remain potent in French analyses in some 

circles, yet the French government evidently discerned a need in the 

late 1990s to prepare a new statement of nuclear strategy. President 

Jacques Chirac’s June 2001 speech deserves careful reading for its 

strategic implications and for what it reveals about the enduring 

French emphasis on non-use (non-emploi).
216

Chirac’s June 2001 Articulation of France’s Current Strategy

While some recent adjustments in British deterrence policy have 

evidently derived in part from reactions to the terrorist attacks 

against the United States on 11 September 2001, the French have 

made few modifications in the declaratory policy announced in 

June 2001, three months before those attacks. In his speech of 8 June 

2001 President Jacques Chirac revealed the results of decisions made 

over a period of almost three years in a series of around ten secret 

meetings involving members of the Conseil de Défense, including 

the President and the Prime Minister.60 According to Chirac,

Deterrence must also enable us to deal with the threats to our 

vital interests that regional powers armed with weapons of 

mass destruction could pose. I mentioned a short while ago 

the development by certain states of ballistic missile capabilities 

that could one day give them the means to threaten European 

territory with nuclear, biological, or chemical weapons. If they 

had hostile intentions toward us, the leaders of these states must 

know that they would expose themselves to damage that would 

be absolutely unacceptable for them. In this case, the choice would 

not be between the total annihilation of a country and doing nothing. 

The damage to which a possible aggressor would be exposed would be 

directed above all against his political, economic, and military power 

centers. Naturally, nuclear weapons are essentially different, and 

people understand this. I assure you that France, while faithful to 

its concept of non-use, has and will retain the means to maintain 

the credibility of its [nuclear] deterrent in the face of all the new 

threats. . . Our nuclear capability relies on two types of means 

with different and complementary technical characteristics: 

ballistic missiles equipping the oceanic component, carried on 

submarines, and air-launched missiles for the airborne component. 

The renovation and modernization of these forces, as well as the 

advancement of the simulation program, designed to compensate 

for the abandonment of nuclear tests for the maintenance of our 

capabilities, constitute the principal objectives of the next military 

program-law in this domain. These means have been defined, in 

their quantity and characteristics, at a level of strict sufficiency 

determined as a function of the political and strategic context. 

In the application of this principle, France has always taken care 

to define the lowest level of capability possible that is, of course, 

consistent and compatible with its security. While restricted to 

a level of strict sufficiency, our nuclear deterrent is therefore, 
217

more than ever, at the heart of our country’s security. In France’s 

geographic and political situation, it is the best guarantee against 

the threats born of proliferation, whatever the delivery system.61

Chirac’s speech made clear an evolution in policy that had been 

underway for years. During the Cold War, as noted earlier, the 

French referred repeatedly to “deterrence by the weak of the strong” 

(la dissuasion du faible au fort) — that is, France’s ability to deter the 

Soviet Union by posing a threat of unacceptable damage, despite 

the asymmetry in French and Soviet capabilities. In post-Cold War 

circumstances, as was noted in the 1994 defense white paper, France’s 

nuclear deterrent could also be expected to prevent aggression 

against the country’s vital interests by WMD proliferants — powers 

in relation to which France was not the “weak” party. However, some 

French policy statements implied that the retaliatory threat could be 

of the same nature as that which had been directed during the Cold 

War against the Soviet Union — strikes against cities (des frappes 

anti-cités). This impression prevailed despite the abandonment of 

the term “anti-cities” and the use in the 1994 defense white paper of 

the term “unacceptable damage” (des dommages inacceptables).62 It is 

noteworthy that President Mitterrand, as late as May 1994, said that 

France was capable of destroying “the vital forces” (les forces vives) 

of a superpower, an expression reminiscent of the Cold War “vital 

works” (les oeuvres vives) requirement.63

Chirac’s June 2001 speech revealed, as a French journalist put it, 

the government’s decision to acquire “more accurate, less powerful, 

and longer-range [nuclear] weapons, in order, as the President of 

the Republic explains, to reach ‘above all the political, economic, 

and military power centers of a possible aggressor.’ To be capable, 

for example, of destroying Saddam’s bunker without completely 

destroying Baghdad.”64 In other words, experts in Paris have 

observed, the objection that some commentators have advanced 

— that “political, economic, and military power centers” are in fact 

cities — is ill-founded, because the French are seeking nuclear means 

with greater accuracy and more limited and controllable effects. 

The journalist’s formulation should nonetheless be qualified in 

some respects. To begin with, the French evidently intend to acquire a 

wider range of options, and not simply lower yield or “less powerful” 

weapons capable of being delivered with greater precision, because 
218

some targets (including targets not located in cities) might call for 

higher yield weapons and greater precision while others might 

also require greater ranges. The clear move away from the “anticities” strategy, historically based on the “deterrence by the weak of 

the strong” concept, to the acquisition of a wider range of options, 

including more precise and more discriminate strike capabilities, 

explains why Chirac said that “the choice would not be between the 

total annihilation of a country and doing nothing.”65 Moreover, the 

journalist’s reference to a weapon suitable for attacking a bunker in 

Baghdad is probably not a reliable indication of French procurement 

or targeting priorities, for several reasons, including (a) the doctrinal 

shift away from an “anti-cities” strategy; (b) the interest in such a 

contingency in avoiding collateral damage, such as the radioactive 

contamination of a city; and (c) the emphasis on targeting an enemy 

regime’s instruments of power, not its leaders. By this logic, the 

French would be more likely to target assets distant from cities, such 

as military installations or oil extraction or refining facilities, than 

cities or leadership command bunkers. At the same time, French 

observers note, the enemy regime’s leaders could well be included 

in targeting directed against political “power centers.”66

According to an analysis by Bruno Tertrais, a former Ministry of 

Defense official,

It is a question in this regard of adapting the deterrent threat 

to the stakes of the conflict, which would not be our national 

survival in dealing with a regional power. It is therefore no longer 

possible to sum up the French concept with the idea of an anticities deterrence, an expression which moreover had long ago 

disappeared from our public language. . . . While conventional 

forces contributed, in the Cold War scenario, to avoiding the 

‘circumvention’ of deterrence, henceforth the reverse may be 

true: in external operations, in regional crises, nuclear deterrence 

will guarantee the freedom of action of the political authorities by 

enabling France to avoid being subjected to blackmail placing its 

vital interests at risk.67

Chirac’s speech also included an adjustment in French policy on 

ballistic missile defense. Chirac announced that he had directed 

French authorities to study “the possibility of equipping our forces, 

within a period corresponding to the emergence of new ballistic 
219

missile threats, with a defense capability against theater missiles.”68

According to French observers, in supporting missile defenses for 

deployed forces overseas, Chirac was deliberately vague as to whether 

these forces would also be protected by the nuclear deterrent as part 

of France’s “vital interests.” Despite the reference in Chirac’s speech 

to “European territory” as the possible target of WMD proliferants 

that could provoke France’s nuclear retaliation, France’s military 

forces deployed outside Europe could also be covered among the 

country’s “vital interests,” because the definition of these interests 

depends on the President.69 It should nonetheless be noted, as 

Thérèse Delpech has pointed out, that missile defense protection for 

forces deployed overseas will be “increasingly necessary” since the 

legitimacy of relying on nuclear deterrence alone for this purpose will 

“be contested because vital interests will not be clearly at stake.”70

In June 2001 the French government continued to hold, in 

Chirac’s words, that pursuing strategic missile defenses outside 

ABM Treaty constraints “would open the way to new uncontrolled 

competitions.”71 Instead of seeking strategic missile defenses for the 

protection of the homeland to gain freedom of action against WMD 

proliferants in regional conflicts, the French emphasized a redefined 

and more precise nuclear retaliatory threat as the source of their 

freedom of action. Some French observers even reaffirmed the 

traditional French doctrine that missile defenses for the protection of 

national territory and population would be unaffordable and would 

tend to weaken the credibility of retaliatory deterrence, in that such 

defenses would imply that threats of nuclear retaliation might fail to 

deter.

In mid-2002, however, U.S. withdrawal from the ABM Treaty 

took effect without leading to any U.S.-Russian confrontation or 

“new uncontrolled competitions,” to use Chirac’s phrase. Indeed, in 

the May 2002 Moscow Treaty Russia and the United States agreed on 

extensive reductions in their operationally deployed strategic nuclear 

warheads. Moreover, Washington and Moscow (and NATO and 

Russia) agreed in the same month to initiate (or carry forward) a wide 

array of collaborative activities, including dialogue and cooperation 

on missile defense. At the same time, missile proliferation trends 

have underscored the potential utility of missile defenses for the 

protection of national homelands. These circumstances may have 

contributed to France’s support for NATO’s November 2002 decision 
220

to conduct “a new NATO Missile Defence feasibility study to examine 

options for protecting Alliance territory, forces and population 

centres against the full range of missile threats.”72 In French expert 

circles, however, some skepticism persists about strategic missile 

defenses, owing in part to their cost and uncertainties about their 

operational effectiveness, and a conviction that the probability of a 

failure of nuclear deterrence is quite low. In June 2003, General Henri 

Bentégeat said, “The only true response to an emerging nuclear threat 

from ‘rogue’ states is the nuclear deterrent, for the simple reason that 

nobody can count on an anti-missile defence system — which is just 

as costly to build as a nuclear arsenal — being 100% effective.”73

While the greatest innovation in French nuclear deterrence 

strategy concerns dealing with WMD proliferants in regional crises, 

the original focus of the strategy remains — protecting the country 

against a major military power. In his June 2001 speech, President 

Chirac said,

Our [nuclear] deterrent guarantees, in the first place, that France’s 

survival will never be placed into question by a major military 

power with hostile intentions and ready to employ all means to 

give them concrete expression. As long as considerable arsenals 

still exist or are being developed in diverse parts of the world, this 

guarantee remains fundamental for us.74

Authoritative French observers have indicated that the phrase “a 

major military power with hostile intentions and ready to employ 

all means to give them concrete expression” could apply to Russia, 

China, India, or other states, depending on the circumstances.75

Some French observers have said that Prime Minister Lionel Jospin’s 

October 1999 reference to “distant” threats as also covered by 

France’s nuclear deterrent was in fact an allusion to such remote 

contingencies:

The strategic situation’s rapid evolution, the pursuit by certain 

powers of significant efforts in the nuclear domain, and the 

proliferation of weapons of mass destruction, notably ballistic 

missiles, justify France’s continuing to maintain a range of 

modern deterrent weapons. . . . The nuclear weapon is the basis 

of an essentially deterrent strategy. This strategy is guided by 

the strictly defensive conception of our policy. It guarantees that 

the survival of our country will not be placed into question by 
221

a hostile power. It allows us to deal with the risks linked to the 

existence of weapons of mass destruction and ballistic delivery 

systems, while preserving our freedom of action in the face of a 

threat to our vital interests. It contributes in this way to Europe’s 

security. In the current strategic situation, which is fluid, with 

many constrasts, and marked by the appearance of new risks, 

nuclear deterrence is based on autonomous capabilities that enable us 

to oppose the materialization of a threat to our vital interests, whatever 

might be its origin — even if it is distant — its nature or its form. 

We will therefore see to the modernization and adaptation of a nuclear 

arsenal which, while remaining limited in volume, in conformity with 

the principles of strict sufficiency that we uphold, must henceforth take 

into consideration the weapons of mass destruction and ballistic missiles 

that certain powers are acquiring.

76

Some observers have related this intention to hedge against “distant” 

and “major” threats to the acquisition of the M51 SLBM, with its 

range of over 8,000 km.

Despite various indications that France’s nuclear deterrent 

posture will remain strictly under national control and dedicated to 

guaranteeing the country’s security, President Chirac in June 2001 

repeated long-standing French convictions that France’s nuclear 

forces also contribute to the security of NATO and the European 

Union:

Finally, it is France’s wish that our nuclear deterrent also contribute 

to Europe’s security. It thus participates in the overall deterrent 

that can be exerted by the democracies joined together by the 

treaty of collective security concluded, over fifty years ago, by 

Europe, the United States, and Canada. In any case, it is up to the 

President of the [French] Republic to assess the harm that might 

be done to our vital interests in a given situation. This assessment 

would naturally take into account the growing solidarity of the 

countries of the European Union.77

 President Chirac then recalled, without using the previous 

French “pre-strategic” or “final warning” formulas, France’s longstanding policy of being prepared to use nuclear weapons to signal 

France’s resolute willingness to defend its vital interests:

I wish finally to remind you that our concept of [nuclear] 

deterrence, founded on the principle of oneness, does not exclude 

the capability of showing a possible adversary, when necessary, 
222

that our vital interests are at stake and that we are determined to 

safeguard them.78

The French word unicité is translated here with the word “oneness,” 

although it is often rendered as “uniqueness,” because the word 

also carries the connotations of “oneness,” “wholeness,” or “all of a 

single piece.” In other words, France’s nuclear deterrence posture 

constitutes a whole at one with the nation’s vital interests: any threat 

to France’s vital interests could oblige Paris to use its “capability of 

showing a possible adversary . . . that our vital interests are at stake.” 

Paris could thus choose to employ nuclear means, presumably 

in a fashion short of comprehensive strategic nuclear strikes, to 

communicate its determination to “safeguard” those interests.

In short, Chirac announced “the modernization and adaptation” 

of the nuclear arsenal to be able to strike a regional adversary’s 

“political, economic, and military power centers” in a comparatively 

discriminate fashion. While some critics have argued that such targets 

sound like cities, French officials clearly view the new policy as a step 

toward limited and controllable nuclear employment options that 

may reinforce deterrence by informing adversaries that France has 

usable options between “all or nothing.” However, it is noteworthy 

that Chirac reaffirmed in the same speech that France will remain 

“faithful to its concept of non-use,” an expression of confidence in the 

effectiveness and reliability of France’s nuclear deterrence posture 

and a confirmation of France’s rejection of nuclear “war-fighting” 

concepts. 

In November 2002, the Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces, General 

Henri Bentégeat, who served as President Chirac’s military adviser 

during the formulation of the new articulation of nuclear deterrence 

strategy in the president’s June 2001 speech, testified as follows to 

the National Assembly’s Committee on National Defense and the 

Armed Forces:

The Americans judge that deterrence does not work with “rogue 

states” that are considered irrational. However, the leaders of 

these states are sensitive to threats exerted against their center of 

power. Our doctrine and our means have therefore been adapted. 

France must have the nuclear capabilities that forbid any sort of 

blackmail. The countries that would threaten its population and 

its vital interests must know that they would expose themselves 

to damage that would be unacceptable to them, that is, notably to 
223

their power centers. Deterrence has been adapted to remain credible 

within the enduring framework of a non-use policy. Nuclear weapons 

are not battlefield weapons for us. We have only acquired the 

means to oppose aggressors of a new type with a reliable and 

logical response.79

Similarly, in January 2003 the military program-law for 2003-

2008 stated that France’s nuclear deterrence strategy “remains 

characterized . . . by a concept of non-use.”80

France’s concept of non-use should not be construed as signifying 

a policy of “no use” or “no first use.” The concept reflects, as noted 

above, confidence in the reliability of France’s deterrent posture 

as well as a refusal to regard nuclear arms as banal “battlefield” 

weapons. The French are nonetheless fully prepared to conduct 

nuclear operations, if necessary. In June 2003 General Bentégeat 

referred in the same article to France’s “doctrine of non-use of 

nuclear weapons” and to its ability “to deliver nuclear weapons, in 

the event of a failure of deterrence, rapidly and with a maximum of 

autonomy of action.”81 Indeed, Bentégeat confirmed that France’s 

threat of nuclear retaliation applies to enemies armed with chemical 

and biological weapons as well as to nuclear powers:

If a dictator in a ‘rogue’ state understands that any attack on a 

French city with chemical or biological weapons would lead 

instantly to the destruction of his power centres and military 

capacity, he will desist. . . . France’s deterrent has the precision 

and diversity tailored to meet any degree of threat. . . . We don’t 

intend to develop battlefield weapons as the force de frappe is a 

political deterrent; instead, we rely on a diversified payload that 

can spare an adversary’s population and cities.82

Advantages of the Non-Use Concept

Insisting that the strategy remains one of non-use enables the 

French to avoid possible discomfiture regarding certain issues, 

including relations with allies and potential adversaries and the 

strategy’s moral and political legitimacy.

Non-use and relations with allies. France’s decision to acquire nuclear 

arms involved multiple motives in addition to reservations about 

relying on U.S. nuclear commitments. When de Gaulle said that 
224

“France, by acquiring nuclear arms, is performing a service for the 

world equilibrium,”83 he evidently had in mind France’s autonomy 

and international status and the political balance within the Alliance, 

as well as broader strategic purposes, such as enhancing deterrence 

by obliging Moscow to face an additional center of nuclear decisionmaking in Europe. France’s ability to “nuclearize” a conflict 

independently would, it was argued, underscore the risks to the 

Soviet Union in committing aggression. In the early 1960s, when 

the United States proposed that NATO adopt a strategy of “flexible 

response,” de Gaulle interpreted the new strategy as a U.S. attempt 

to weaken what he considered an already dubious nuclear guarantee 

by advertising America’s unwillingness to use nuclear weapons 

through an emphasis on strengthening conventional military forces. 

De Gaulle refused to accept the new strategy; and the other allies 

did not adopt it until 1967, after de Gaulle withdrew France from the 

Alliance’s integrated military structure in 1966.

The other allies could not establish the Nuclear Planning 

Group (NPG) until late 1966, after France’s withdrawal from the 

integrated military structure. While Britain has made its nuclear 

forces available for Alliance planning since 1962, subject to national 

command and control and sovereign employment decisions, France 

has never participated in the NPG or associated NATO bodies for 

consultations regarding nuclear strategy and deterrence. Since the 

early 1960s, France has insisted on the distinctness and autonomy of 

the French approach to nuclear deterrence strategy in relation to U.S. 

and NATO concepts. While France participated in the Alliance’s 

1990–1991 and 1997-1999 Strategic Concept reviews and approved 

the 1991 and 1999 documents, the French are excluded from two of 

the key paragraphs referring to nuclear deterrence.84

In currently foreseeable circumstances, there is no likelihood of 

France participating in the NPG’s deliberations. It would be difficult 

for France to join the NPG because the French themselves have made 

it a symbol of American “hegemony” and of the “subordination” they 

consider to be implicit in Alliance institutions such as the NPG, the 

Defense Planning Committee, and the integrated military structure. 

French absence from the NPG has correspondingly become a symbol 

of national autonomy and strategic independence. Aside from the 

French lack of interest in formal common planning, nuclear weapons 

have become identified with France’s sovereignty and status; and 
225

participation in NPG deliberations would be portrayed by critics 

of the government, on the left and the right, as undermining the 

nation’s autonomy.85 

In this respect, as in some others, the French reveal the continuing 

tension between maintaining a strictly national nuclear deterrent 

policy and professions of solidarity with NATO and the European 

Union. France alone will decide whether and how to use its nuclear 

forces on behalf of its own security and/or in defense of broader 

NATO and/or EU security interests, and (to date at least) it has 

remained France’s policy to do so without participating in NATO’s 

Nuclear Planning Group. No analogous EU group for nuclear 

deterrence matters has yet been constituted, for various reasons 

in addition to French policy principles. Yet the view that France’s 

nuclear deterrence posture contributes to the security of the Atlantic 

Alliance (a judgement repeatedly endorsed by France’s NATO 

allies, most recently in the 1999 Strategic Concept) has enabled 

the French, in conjunction with the avowed policy of non-use, to 

minimize the potential awkwardness of France’s abstaining from 

consultations about nuclear weapons employment policy in the 

NATO framework.86

Moreover, the French have not excluded consultations about 

nuclear deterrence in other frameworks. In February 1986, President 

Mitterrand expressed a willingness to consult with the Chancellor 

of the Federal Republic of Germany regarding possible use of 

French nuclear weapons on German soil.87 In July 1993, President 

Mitterrand and British Prime Minister John Major announced a 

decision to make permanent an Anglo-French Joint Commission on 

Nuclear Policy and Doctrine, a body that had been established on 

a provisional basis in November 1992. In October 1995, Major and 

Chirac declared that they would “deepen nuclear cooperation. . . 

while retaining the independence of our nuclear forces.” They added 

that “We do not see situations arising in which the vital interests of 

either France or the United Kingdom could be threatened without 

the vital interests of the other also being threatened.”88 In the years 

1995-1997 French officials suggested that France and other members 

of the European Union might discuss dissuasion concertée, a phrase 

that might be translated as “deterrence supported by continuing 

consultations and substantive consensus.” While the dissuasion 

concertée initiative had few results, evidently owing to political 
226

obstacles within the European Union and France itself,89 it reflected 

a long-standing French conviction that France’s nuclear forces serve 

European security interests. In the words of the 1994 defense white 

paper, “National independence and that of Europe in the future are 

without any doubt linked to the possession of such weapons.”90

Non-use and international legitimacy. The broader utility of the 

non-use policy in international politics involves more speculative 

judgements, given the multiplicity of audiences and circumstances. 

The French have consistently and even emphatically noted that 

non-use does not mean “no first use,” but rather confidence in the 

reliability of their nuclear deterrence posture and rejection of a 

nuclear “war-fighting” strategy.91 At the same time, the French have 

tried to derive political benefit from their deterrent and non-use 

orientation. For example, France’s official reaction to the July 1996 

advisory opinion of the International Court of Justice on the legality 

of the use or threat of use of nuclear weapons included the following 

observation:

France’s nuclear doctrine has an exclusively deterrent and 

defensive character. The French deterrent is oriented toward warprevention. For France, nuclear weapons could not constitute 

instruments of coercion or combat arms. The nuclear deterrent 

aims to prevent any placing into question of our vital interests as 

they are defined, in the final analysis, by the chief of state.

The French deterrent constitutes a factor of stability and 

contributes to the maintenance of international peace and security. 

It is inseparable from the resolute action of our country in favor 

of collective security, arms reductions, and non-proliferation of 

nuclear weapons, as the President of the Republic noted in his 

recent speeches before the IHEDN [Institut des Hautes Études de 

Défense Nationale] on 8 June 1996, and then before the members 

of the Conference on Disarmament on 11 June 1996.92

Even during the Cold War, it was exceptional for official French 

policy statements to refer explicitly to the Soviet Union as the target 

of France’s nuclear deterrence posture. In post-Cold War conditions, 

official references to specific countries as possible targets of French 

nuclear retaliation have become practically nonexistent. It would 

be politically awkward to refer publicly with any specificity to the 

scenarios that could arise with regional powers armed with weapons 
227

of mass destruction. French officials have accordingly chosen to 

speak of such countries as a general category and to emphasize 

the merits of flexibility in the nuclear posture while reaffirming the 

concept of non-use.

 It should be noted that France’s reservations about the negative 

security assurances it has extended in the NPT context are linked to 

its interpretation of its disarmament obligations under Article VI of 

the NPT.93 Because France’s “vital interests” could be threatened by 

biological, chemical, or conventional attacks, France cannot exclude 

responding with nuclear weapons to such attacks. This deterrence 

policy is consistent with the nation’s disarmament policy: that is, 

France could not consider nuclear disarmament in the absence of 

complete and general disarmament. As Hervé de Charette, then the 

Foreign Minister, noted in 1997,

France supports the objective of the final elimination of nuclear 

weapons in the framework of general and complete disarmament. 

From now until the realization of this objective . . . France intends to 

maintain in all circumstances the credibility and the effectiveness 

of its nuclear deterrent force.94

Non-use and domestic legitimacy. Discussions of nuclear operations 

have been comparatively rare in France. Far more emphasis has 

been placed on the idea that nuclear deterrence has made France 

an invulnerable “sanctuary” that no aggressor would dare to attack. 

Nuclear weapons have become associated with national independence 

and security against another world war and, more broadly, with de 

Gaulle’s efforts to restore France’s honor and international status 

after France’s humiliating defeat in 1940. In the early 1990s, when 

some French politicians, military officers, and experts conducted 

a semi-public debate about developing more flexible nuclear 

employment options (with more accurate delivery systems and 

low-yield warheads with confined effects), they discovered that the 

mainstream consensus in France remains opposed to such options if 

they appear to increase the likelihood of conducting actual nuclear 

operations.95 

Some French observers are concerned that planning and preparing 

for such employment options could undermine the domestic political 

legitimacy of France’s nuclear forces by implying that the principles 
228

of “no war” (non-guerre) and “no battle” (non-bataille) in French 

nuclear deterrence strategy could be overturned by aggression. 

French politicians and experts have traditionally maintained that 

discussions of nuclear operations are irrelevant and potentially 

dangerous because they imply that France’s deterrent posture could 

fail. The long-standing French doctrine has accordingly been that 

nuclear forces are “weapons of non-use” (armes de non-emploi); 

and this doctrine has been reaffirmed in official discussions of the 

strategy and posture modifications announced by President Chirac 

in June 2001.96 As noted above, even in discussions since June 2001 

of France’s more flexible and discriminate capabilities designed to 

deter WMD-armed regional powers, French officials have regularly 

restated the “non-use” principle and their corresponding confidence 

in the effectiveness of the nation’s nuclear deterrent posture. 

The high level of confidence in the probable success of France’s 

nuclear deterrence strategy promotes the strategy’s domestic 

legitimacy. In the words of the 1994 defense white paper, France’s 

“strategy remains essentially defensive. The refusal of war or of 

conventional and nuclear battle that the doctrine of deterrence is 

based on will continue to inspire it. It remains one of the bases of the 

indispensable national consensus in defense matters.”97 In the 1980s 

Pierre Hassner offered the following critique of French strategy:

[I]f one accepts the logic of the French doctrine, the search for 

discrimination and proportionality, the classic just-war criteria, 

would mean the acceptance of limited war, and hence of the 

failure of deterrence. . . . When challenged on these grounds the 

usual French response has been to dismiss the moral problem 

altogether in the name of deterrence (nuclear weapons are 

moral since they are meant to prevent war, not to wage it) and 

of retaliation (since France will never be the attacker, it bears no 

moral responsibility for what it might have to do in response 

to aggression or blackmail). . . . A critic of the doctrine, Pierre 

Lellouche, has pointed out that what made the French posture 

acceptable was precisely its lack of operational credibility, which 

reassured potential pacifists that French nuclear weapons were 

not meant to be used.98

French experts have pointed out that Hassner’s critique applied 

above all to France’s Cold War nuclear strategy, when the Soviet 

Union was the principal adversary and Paris emphasized “anti-
229

cities” threats. Since the early 1990s, the preoccupation with deterring 

WMD-armed regional powers has led the French government to seek 

forces capable of much greater “discrimination and proportionality” 

and to reaffirm the traditional purpose of successful deterrence and 

war-prevention.99

It is significant in this regard that President Chirac in June 2001 

repeated that France will remain “faithful to its concept of non-use” 

while modifying the country’s declaratory strategy and revealing 

improvements in force characteristics in the direction of greater 

operational usability — that is, listing more specific targets and 

seeking more discriminate and controllable weapons.

Despite uncertainties about the operational utility of France’s 

nuclear weapons in dealing with specific threats, the consensus 

behind nuclear deterrence in France remains comparatively robust. 

As noted above, the strategy articulated by President Chirac in June 

2001 was formulated with the concurrence of Lionel Jospin, then 

France’s Prime Minister and the leader of the Socialists. The French 

generally deem nuclear weapons an insurance policy in an uncertain 

and unstable world, and a guarantee of France’s political and 

strategic autonomy. All the major parties, including the Socialists, 

are committed to maintaining nuclear deterrence as a means of 

war-prevention and thus support the strategy of non-use and the 

operational instruments necessary to uphold it. As Lionel Jospin 

observed in September 1998,

The evolution of the strategic context has permitted a reduction 

in the number of weapons and in the alert level of the forces, but 

nuclear deterrence remains at the heart of our defense. It manifests in an 

explicit fashion the adherence of our country to a strategy of preventing 

war and testifies to our will to protect the supreme interests of our country 

with autonomous capabilities. France is therefore maintaining its 

effort in the nuclear domain, but adapting the level of its arsenal 

and its posture. For France, as for European security, so long as 

general and complete disarmament has not been achieved, nuclear 

weapons remain a necessity.100
230

ENDNOTES - CHAPTER 7

1. For a valuable discussion of the intellectual origins and objectives of France’s 

nuclear capabilities up to the late 1970s, see the chapter by Bruno Tertrais in this 

volume.

2. The 1995-1996 test series had three purposes: the final certification of the 

TN75 warhead, the validation of robust warhead designs, and the acquisition of 

data for simulation. See Jacques Bouchard, Directeur des Applications Militaires, 

Commissariat à l’Énergie Atomique, testimony before the Commission de la 

Défense Nationale et des Forces Armées, Assemblé Nationale, 20 February 1996, 

Compte rendu no. 27, p. 2. Since the 1995-1996 test series France has relied entirely 

on its simulation capabilities. France has dismantled its test site in the South Pacific 

and has ratified the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty.

3. The M51 SLBM was attributed a range of 9,200 km in Le Monde, 9 June 2001. 

According to a dossier published by the Documentation Française (and prepared 

by a non-governmental organization, the Centre de Documentation et de Recherche 

sur la Paix et les Conflits, Observatoire des Armes Nucléaires Françaises), the M51 

SLBM will have a range of 8,000 to 10,000 km, and the ASMP-A air-launched missile 

will have a high-altitude range of 500 km. See www.ladocumentationfrancaise.fr/

dossier_international/nucleaire/etat_lieux/france.shtml.

4. Bruno Tertrais, The French Nuclear Deterrent After the Cold War, P-8012 (Santa 

Monica, California: Rand, 1998), p. 37.

5. Jacques Chirac, interview in Armées d’Aujourd’hui, no. 246, January 2000, p. 

8.

6. Charles de Gaulle, press conference of 23 July 1964, in Discours et messages, 

vol. IV, Pour l’effort, Août 1962-Décembre 1965 (Paris: Plon, 1970), p. 233; italics 

added.

7. The French word dissuasion is normally translated into English (by the 

French themselves and others) as “deterrence.” The French do not have a word 

for “dissuasion” with the meaning attributed to the term in the U.S. Quadrennial 

Defense Review in 2001, and therefore employ formulas such as la dissuasion de 

l’acquisition des capacités militaires to describe the U.S. concept in the 2001 QDR.

8. Raymond Barre, “La politique de défense de la France,” Défense Nationale, 

November 1980, p. 12.

9. Pierre Mauroy, “La cohérence d’une politique de défense,” Défense Nationale, 

October 1981, p. 21.

10. Jeannou Lacaze, “La politique militaire,” Défense Nationale, November 1981, 

pp. 11, 12.

11. This declaratory policy may have expressed aspirations more than thencurrent capabilities. It is not clear whether France’s capabilities at that time could 

support this declaratory strategy.
231

12. Guy Lewin, “La dissuasion française et la stratégie anti-cités,” Défense 

Nationale, January 1980, p. 27.

13. Guy Lewin, “L’avenir des forces nucléaires françaises,” Défense Nationale, 

May 1980, pp. 17-18.

14. Raymond Tourrain, Rapport d’information par la Commission de la Défense 

Nationale et des Forces Armées sur l’état et la modernisation des forces nucléaires 

françaises, no. 1730 (Paris: Assemblée Nationale, October 1980), p. 206.

15. Pierre Riou (the pseudonym of a high-level Ministry of Defense official), 

“La force des choses,” Défense Nationale, July 1980, p. 17.

16. Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, Le pouvoir et la vie, vol. II, L’affrontement (Paris: 

Compagnie 12, 1991), p. 180.

17. Charles Hernu, “Répondre aux défis d’un monde dangereux,” Défense 

Nationale, December 1981, p. 15.

18. Raymond Barre, “La politique de défense de la France,” Défense Nationale, 

November 1980, p. 14.

19. Guy Lewin, “La dissuasion française et la stratégie anti-cités,” Défense 

Nationale, January 1980, pp. 24, 31.

20. Guy Méry in Le Monde, 19 November 1980, p. 12.

21. Guy Lewin, “La dissuasion française et la stratégie anti-cités,” Défense 

Nationale, January 1980, p. 28.

22. Ivan Margine (the pseudonym of a high-level Ministry of Defense official), 

“L’avenir de la dissuasion,” Défense Nationale, April 1978, p. 29.

23. Robert Galley, speech at the Institut des Hautes Études de Défense Nationale, 

3 February 1981, p. 13 of text furnished by the Délégation à l’Information et à la 

Communication de la Défense.

24. Pierre Mauroy, “Vers un nouveau modèle d’armée,” Défense Nationale, 

November 1982, p. 24.

25. For a valuable discussion, see Bruno Tertrais, “La coopération militaire 

depuis 1969: La France, l’OTAN et la question nucléaire,” in Maurice Vaïsse, 

Pierre Mélandri, et Frédéric Bozo, eds., La France et l’OTAN, 1949-1996 (Brussels: 

Éditions Complexe, 1996).

26. President Valéry Giscard d’Estaing, “Allocution,” Défense Nationale, July 

1976, p. 15.

27. Charles Hernu, “Face à la logique des blocs, une France indépendante et 

solidaire,” Défense Nationale, December 1982, p. 16.

28. Hernu’s change in terminology was analyzed by Jacques Isnard in Le Monde, 

31 October 1984, p. 9.

29. Mitterrand statement of 17 December 1987 to Hans Jochen Vogel, reported 

in Pierre Favier and Michel Martin-Roland, La décennie Mitterrand, vol. 2, Les 

épreuves (1984-1988) (Paris: Éditions du Seuil, 1991), p. 645.
232

30. Mitterrand speech of 11 October 1988, reported in Le Monde, 13 October 

1988, p. 9.

31. Mitterrand press conference of 11 September 1991, text furnished by Service 

de Presse, Présidence de la République, p. 11.

32. Jacques Chirac, “La France et les enjeux de la sécurité européenne,” Défense 

Nationale, February 1988, p. 16.

33. Chirac quoted in Le Monde, 9 March 1988, p. 14.

34. Mitterrand quoted in indirect discourse in Le Monde, 22 October 1987, p. 4.

35. For background, see David S. Yost, Soviet Ballistic Missile Defense and the 

Western Alliance (Cambridge, Massachusetts: Harvard University Press, 1988), 

especially pp. 170-183.

36. Bruno Tertrais, “La dissuasion nucléaire française après la guerre froide: 

continuité, ruptures, interrogations,” Annuaire Français de Relations Internationales

(Bruxelles: Bruylant, 2000), p. 760.

37. Some French observers have linked the disappearance of the terms “prestrategic” and “final warning” to the disappearance of the USSR. It is not clear 

whether the abandonment of the terms was influenced by British arguments (a) 

that calling the initial nuclear use a “final warning” was dangerous because it 

would oblige France to engage in larger follow-on strikes if that “final warning” 

failed to achieve the intended results and (b) that it would be wiser to maintain 

uncertainty (and political and operational latitude) about the magnitude of initial 

and follow-on strikes.

38. Division Emploi de l’État-Major des Armées, Concept d’emploi des forces, 

Lettre no. 827/DEF/EMA/EMP.1, 23 juillet 1997 (Paris: Service d’Information et 

de Relations Publiques des Armées, Ministère de la Défense, 1998), p. 18. 

39. Ministère de la Défense, La Défense de la France: Une action inscrite dans la 

durée (Paris: Service d’Information et de Relations Publiques des Armées, October 

1990), p. 13.

40. Pierre Joxe, interview with Le Progrès-Le Journal de la Saône-et-Loire, 21 

February 1992, in Propos sur la Défense, January-February 1992, p. 90.

41. Discours prononcé par M. Jacques Chirac, Président de la République, à 

l’Institut d’État des Relations Internationales de Moscou, 26 September 1997, text 

provided by the Service de Presse, Présidence de la République, p. 11.

42. Projet de loi de programmation relatif à l’équipement militaire et aux effectifs de la 

défense pour les années 1992-1994, no. 2877 (Paris: Assemblée Nationale, July 1992), 

p. 14. This draft military program-law, unlike all previous military program-laws 

of the Fifth Republic, was never debated or approved by parliament. The draft 

text nonetheless reflected thinking in the executive branch of the government in 

mid-1992.

43. Ministère de la Défense, Livre Blanc sur la Défense (Paris: Service d’Information 

et de Relations Publiques des Armées, February 1994), pp. 70, 72. 
233

44. Ministère de la Défense, Livre Blanc sur la Défense (Paris: Service d’Information 

et de Relations Publiques des Armées, February 1994), p. 70.

45. Speech by President Jacques Chirac at the École Militaire, Paris, 23 February 

1996, in Propos sur la Défense, no. 57 (February 1996), p. 179; emphasis added.

46. “Loi no. 96-589 du 2 juillet 1996 relative à la programmation militaire pour 

les années 1997 à 2002,” Journal Officiel de la République Française, 3 July 1996, pp. 

9987-9988.

47. Speech by Prime Minister Lionel Jospin at the Institut des Hautes Études de 

Défense Nationale, 4 September 1997, p. 4 of text furnished by the French Foreign 

Ministry.

48. Raymond Barre (then Prime Minister), “Discours prononcé au Camp de 

Mailly le 18 juin 1977,” Défense Nationale, August-September 1977, p. 16; and 

General Guy Méry (then Chief of Staff of the Armed Forces), “Conférence,” Défense, 

no. 9 (May 1977), p. 22.

49. Ivan Margine (the pseudonym of a high-level Ministry of Defense official), 

“L’avenir de la dissuasion,” Défense Nationale, April 1978, p. 26.

50. Charles Hernu, “La politique et la volonté de défense,” Politique Internationale, 

no. 16 (Summer 1982), p. 13.

51. Mitterrand, 7 February 1991, in Le Monde, 9 February 1991, pp. 8-9.

52. Another factor in Mitterrand’s decision-making was evidently his 

determination to promote adherence to the Chemical Weapons Convention, and 

therefore to assert the principle that chemical, biological, and nuclear weapons 

should not be considered operationally usable. Author’s interviews in Paris, April 

2003. 

53. Roland Dumas interview in Journal du Dimanche, 10 February 1991.

54. Jacques Chirac, discours à l’occasion de la réception des ambassadeurs, 

Palais de l’Élysée, 31 August 1995, p. 10; emphasis added.

55. Admiral Jacques Lanxade, “La défense française dans le nouveau cadre 

géostratégique,” Défense Nationale, August-September 1995, p. 19.

56. Alain Juppé, discours à l’Institut des Hautes Études de Défense Nationale, 

7 September 1995, p. 7.

57. Communication du Ministre des Affaires Étrangères, M. Alain Juppé, à la 

Commission des Affaires Étrangères, de la Défense et des Forces Armées du Sénat, 

Paris, 6 April 1995. 

58. A thorough comparative analysis of British, French, and U.S. declaratory 

policies regarding nuclear deterrence and WMD proliferants might help to establish 

whether, as some French observers maintain, these arguments for caution have 

exerted even greater influence in London and Washington than in Paris. Some 

French observers hold that French nuclear deterrent threats to WMD proliferants 

have been more explicit than those articulated by the United Kingdom and the 

United States. Author’s interviews in Paris, April 2003. 
234

59. Admiral Marcel Duval, “De la non-prolifération à la contre-prolifération?” 

Défense Nationale, August-September 1995, pp. 37, 39.

60. The Conseil de Défense, a top-level decision-making body, is France’s 

closest equivalent to the U.S. National Security Council. It should be noted that 

Socialist leader Lionel Jospin served as Prime Minister from June 1997 to May 

2002, and that the policy announced by Chirac in June 2001 was determined in 

concurrence with Jospin.

61. Jacques Chirac, speech at the Institut des Hautes Études de Défense 

Nationale, 8 June 2001, available at www.elysee.fr; emphasis added. 

62. Ministère de la Défense, Livre Blanc sur la Défense (Paris: Service d’Information 

et de Relations Publiques des Armées, February 1994), p. 57.

63. Intervention de M. François Mitterrand sur le thème de la dissuasion, 5 May 

1994, p. 5 of text furnished by the Service de Presse, Présidence de la République.

64. Jean-Dominique Merchet, “Chirac menace les ‘États voyous’ du feu 

nucléaire,” Libération, 9 June 2001.

65. This affirmation of choices between “total annihilation” and “doing nothing” 

can be seen, some French observers have noted, as a less explicit way of saying (to 

use the old terms) that France has “prestrategic” and “final warning” options, now 

related to possible confrontations with regional powers as well as major powers.

66. Author’s interviews in Paris, June-July 2001, March 2002, June-July 2002, 

and April 2003.

67. Bruno Tertrais, “Dissuasion nucléaire: Une doctrine adaptée au contexte 

stratégique,” Armées d’Aujourd’hui, no. 262 (July-August 2001), p. 65.

68. Jacques Chirac, speech at the Institut des Hautes Études de Défense 

Nationale, 8 June 2001.

69. Author’s interviews in Paris, June-July 2001, March 2002, and June-July 

2002.

70. Thérèse Delpech, “Le deuxième âge nucléaire?” Le Figaro, 8 June 2001.

71. Jacques Chirac, speech at the Institut des Hautes Études de Défense 

Nationale, 8 June 2001.

72. North Atlantic Council, Prague Summit Declaration, 21 November 2002, 

par. 4g.

73. General Henri Bentégeat, interview in Jane’s Defence Weekly, 4 June 2003.

74. Jacques Chirac, speech at the Institut des Hautes Études de Défense 

Nationale, 8 June 2001.

75. Author’s interviews in Paris, June-July 2001, March 2002, June-July 2002, 

and April 2003. An official explanation of Chirac’s phase indicated that “The world 

has shrunk. Therefore, we are not completely indifferent to what is happening 

in China.” An anonymous official source quoted in Jean-Dominique Merchet, 
235

“Chirac menace les ‘États voyous’ du feu nucléaire,” Libération, 9 June 2001. A 

well-informed observer has suggested the following distinction: a major military 

power could destroy France or threaten its survival, while a regional power could 

threaten its vital interests but not its survival.

76. Lionel Jospin, “La politique de défense de la France,” Défense Nationale, 

December 1999, p. 9; emphasis added. This article reproduces the text of Jospin’s 

speech on 22 October 1999 at the Institut des Hautes Études de Défense Nationale. 

In an interview in April 2003, an observer in Paris said that the word “distant” in 

Jospin’s speech meant “in Asia.”

77. Jacques Chirac, speech at the Institut des Hautes Études de Défense 

Nationale, 8 June 2001.

78. Jacques Chirac, speech at the Institut des Hautes Études de Défense 

Nationale, 8 June 2001.

79. Audition du général Henri Bentégeat, chef d’état-major des armées, sur le 

projet de loi relatif à la programmation militaire pour les années 2003 à 2008 (no. 

187), Commission de la Défense Nationale et des Forces Armées, Compte Rendu 

no. 19, 13 November 2002, available at www.assemblee-nat.fr/12/cr-cdef/02-03/

c020319.asp; emphasis added.

80. Loi no. 2003-73 du 27 janvier 2003 relative à la programmation militaire 

pour les années 2003 à 2008, section 2.3.1., “Les fonctions stratégiques,” available 

at www.legifrance.gouv.fr.

81. General Henri Bentégeat, “Stratégie militaire française,” Défense Nationale, 

June 2003, pp. 34-35.

82. General Henri Bentégeat, interview in Jane’s Defence Weekly, 4 June 2003.

83. Charles de Gaulle, press conference of 10 November 1959, in Discours et 

messages, vol. III, Avec le renouveau, Mai 1958-Juillet 1962 (Paris: Plon, 1970), p. 

134.

84. In the 7 November 1991 Strategic Concept, the French are excluded by the 

“Allies concerned” formula (paragraph 57) and by the reference to “European 

Allies involved in collective defense planning in nuclear roles” (paragraph 56). In 

the 24 April 1999 Strategic Concept, the same formulas are used in paragraphs 63 

and 64.

85. As President Mitterrand put it in May 1994, “This indispensable autonomy 

of the Chief of State’s decision excludes submitting this decision to international 

bodies and even to an Alliance and even to the most faithful, the closest, and the 

strongest of our allies. That it is why it was formerly decided to withdraw France 

from the integrated command of the Atlantic Alliance, of NATO, and that is why 

I firmly uphold this decision.” Intervention de M. François Mitterrand sur le 

thème de la dissuasion, 5 May 1994, p. 3 of text furnished by the Service de Presse, 

Présidence de la République. 

86. “The supreme guarantee of the security of the Allies is provided by the 

strategic nuclear forces of the Alliance, particularly those of the United States; 
236

the independent nuclear forces of the United Kingdom and France, which have a 

deterrent role of their own, contribute to the overall deterrence and security of the 

Allies.” North Atlantic Council, Strategic Concept, 24 April 1999, paragraph 62. 

This statement repeated an identical statement in the Alliance’s Strategic Concept 

of 7 November 1991 (paragraph 55). This wording represented a recasting of the 

formula used in the Alliance’s June 1974 Ottawa Declaration, which noted that 

two of the European Allies “possess nuclear forces capable of playing a deterrent 

role of their own contributing to the overall strengthening of the deterrence of 

the Alliance.” See North Atlantic Council, Declaration on Atlantic Relations, 

Ottawa, 19 June 1974, in Texts of Final Communiqués, 1949-1974 (Brussels: NATO 

Information Service, 1975), p. 319 (paragraph 6). 

87. For background, see David S. Yost, “Franco-German Defense Cooperation,” 

in Stephen Szabo, ed., The Bundeswehr and Western Security (London: Macmillan 

and New York: St. Martin’s Press, 1990), pp. 223, 234-242.

88. Joint Statement by President Jacques Chirac and Prime Minister John Major, 

29-30 October 1995.

89. For background, see David S. Yost, The US and Nuclear Deterrence in Europe, 

Adelphi Paper no. 326 (London: Oxford University Press for the International 

Institute for Strategic Studies, March 1999), pp. 36-40.

90. Ministère de la Défense, Livre Blanc sur la Défense (Paris: Service d’Information 

et de Relations Publiques des Armées, February 1994), p. 52.

91. Some French observers deplore the government’s repetition of the expression 

non-emploi (non-use) because it has sometimes been construed to imply that France 

might be prepared to endorse a policy of “no first use,” whereas France has always 

rejected such proposals.

92. Communiqué of the Ministry of Foreign Affairs, 8 July 1996, in Documents 

d’Actualité Internationale, no. 17 (1 September 1996), p. 697. 

93. According to Article VI of the Non-Proliferation Treaty, “Each of the Parties 

to the Treaty undertakes to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures 

relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear 

disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict 

and effective international control.”

94. Hervé de Charette, Foreign Minister, answer to a written question, National 

Assembly, 24 February 1997.

95. For background, see David S. Yost, “Nuclear Weapons Issues in France,” 

in John C. Hopkins and Weixing Hu, eds., Strategic Views from the Second Tier: 

The Nuclear Weapons Policies of France, Britain, and China (San Diego, California: 

Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation, University of California, San Diego, 

1994), pp. 87-91; and Bruno Tertrais, The French Nuclear Deterrent After the Cold 

War, P-8012 (Santa Monica, California: Rand, 1998), pp. 21-25.

96. The terms non-bataille and non-guerre were prominent in 1970s and 1980s. 

Since the early 1990s, the expression non-emploi has been used most consistently.
237

97. Ministère de la Défense, Livre Blanc sur la Défense (Paris: Service d’Information 

et de Relations Publiques des Armées, February 1994), p. 49.

98. Pierre Hassner, “Ethical Issues in Nuclear Deterrence: Four National Debates 

in Perspective (France, Great Britain, the United States and West Germany),” in 

Hassner, Violence and Peace: From the Atomic Bomb to Ethnic Cleansing, trans. by 

Jane Brenton (Budapest: Central European University Press, 1997), pp. 126, 133. 

This essay was first published in German in Uwe Nerlich and Trutz Rendtorff, 

eds., Nukleare Abschrekung — Politische und ethische Interpretation einer neuen Realität

(Baden-Baden: Nomos, 1989).

99. Author’s interviews in Paris, April 2003. 

 100. Lionel Jospin, speech at the Institut des Hautes Études de Défense Nationale, 

3 September 1998, p. 14 of text furnished by the French Foreign Ministry; emphasis 

added.

239

CHAPTER 8

CHINESE AND MUTUALLY ASSURED DESTRUCTION:

IS CHINA GETTING MAD?

James Mulvenon

INTRODUCTION

Alone among nuclear powers in the Cold War, the People’s 

Republic of China (PRC) maintained a publicly ambivalent attitude 

about Armageddon, occasionally shocking the world with statements 

that appeared to welcome the deaths of hundreds of millions, if not 

billions, of people as a possible shortcut to communist nirvana. 

Yet these disturbing assertions often were tempered by comments 

disparaging nuclear weapons, refusing to see atomic arsenals as 

more decisive in war and peace than “man” or “the people.” Outside 

observers struggled to interpret these seemingly contradictory Maoist 

precepts about nuclear war, and tried to disentangle the dialectical 

embrace of opposites from the practical impulse to denigrate that 

which one does not possess. 

 Since the death of Mao and the deployment of nuclear-capable 

delivery systems, however, Beijing’s attitudes about nuclear warfare 

continue to change in subtle but important ways. Put briefly, Chinese 

views of nuclear weapons have evolved from initial disparagement 

and covetousness prior to the acquisition of an arsenal, to a nuclear 

minimalist perspective that resembles mutually assured destruction 

(MAD) in every way but name. Ironically, China appears to be 

implicitly embracing MAD and achieving a credible minimal 

deterrent at precisely the same time that the United States, from the 

Chinese perspective, appears to be abandoning MAD and deterrence 

in favor of defenses and preemptive strike.1

 In its desperation to 

retain the MAD dynamic, China may therefore be forced to build to 

higher force levels, permitting the PRC to actually contemplate postMAD counterforce strategies in the future. 

 The chapter is divided into four sections. The first outlines 

Chinese attitudes about mutually assured destruction from 1945 to 
240

1964, and focuses on the interplay between Maoist ideology, the split 

with the Soviet Union, and ongoing tension with the United States. 

The second section charts the evolution of Beijing’s policies from 

1964 to 1976 and assesses the impact of the successful acquisition 

of the bomb on China’s views of nuclear weapons and warfare. The 

third section analyzes Beijing’s evolving attitudes about deterrence 

from the death of Mao Zedong in 1976 to the present day. Finally, the 

chapter concludes with a discussion of the strategic implications of 

Beijing and Washington’s diverging views on MAD.

DEFINITIONS 

The Chinese literature on nuclear deterrence presents significant 

terminological challenges to comparative study. To a certain 

extent, the linguistic divergence is intentional, as Chinese scholars 

and officials explicitly rejected the content and frameworks of the 

Western deterrence discourse as hegemonist and imperialist. For 

the purposes of this chapter, MAD is defined as minimum, mutual 

deterrence,2 and has three key principles. First, do not pursue firststrike options. Second, do not attack weapons, since they cannot all 

be destroyed and the process will lead to an arms race. Instead, aim 

at cities and people in the form of countervalue strikes. Third, do not 

defend against the adversary’s weapons with missile defenses, since 

it would be impossible, prohibitively expensive, and destabilizing 

by encouraging preemptive first strike. A MAD force therefore is 

relatively minimalist, seeking to satisfy, not maximize and secure 

forces through mobility, concealment, and hardening. Submarinebased forces are the ideal MAD system, because they are relatively 

invulnerable to a decapitation strike. 

 Chinese strategists use two terms to describe their nuclear 

doctrine: “minimal deterrence” and “limited deterrence.” Minimal 

deterrence is China’s self-defined doctrine, characterized by a small, 

second-strike countervalue force bound by a no-first use doctrine as 

well as negative and positive security assurances. In many respects, 

the doctrinal aspects of the concept strongly resemble MAD, 

though the credibility of the PRC’s deterrent force was historically 

in question. More recent Chinese writings call for an aspirational 
241

doctrine of “limited deterrence” (youxian weishe) comprised of 

counterforce, warfighting capabilities “to deter conventional, 

theater, and strategic nuclear war, and to control and suppress 

escalation during a nuclear war.”3 According to Chinese analysts, 

such a posture requires “a greater number of smaller, more accurate, 

survivable, and penetrable intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs); 

sea launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) as countervalue retaliatory 

forces; tactical and theater nuclear weapons to hit battlefield and 

theater military targets and to suppress escalation; ballistic missile 

defense to improve the survivability of the limited deterrent; spacebased early warning and command and control systems; and antisatellite weapons (ASATs) to hit enemy military satellites.”4

 In terms 

of Western theories, this “limited deterrence” concept resembles the 

“flexible response” concept of the late McNamara period.

CHINESE ATTITUDES ABOUT NUCLEAR WEAPONS, 

1945-PRESENT

1945-64: Paper Tigers, Bloody Feuds. 

When the American atomic bomb fell on Hiroshima in 1945, 

the Chinese Communist Party and its leader, Mao Zedong, were 

mopping up their victory over the Japanese Imperial Army and 

readying themselves for civil war against Chiang Kai-Shek’s 

Nationalist forces. Mao’s guerrilla armies had been fighting for 

nearly 2 decades and were beginning to see the fruits of his theories 

of protracted struggle and People’s War against technologically 

superior foes. Among his tenets was a belief that man was ultimately 

more powerful than machine and that no weapon was sufficient to 

defeat the will of the “the people.” Despite this view, however, 

there was understandable fear about the awesome destructive 

power of atomic weapons and a significant amount of frustration, 

as evidenced in this unattributed historical analysis published by a 

Chinese author:

At the end of World War II, after it had dropped two atomic bombs on 

Hiroshima and Nagasaki in Japan, U.S. imperialism assumed that armed 

with this “ultimate weapon” it could ride roughshod over the world and 

do whatever it pleased. At the time there was a kind of fear mentality 
242

among the Chinese people as well as among the peoples of other 

countries. U.S. imperialism, possessed of atomic weapons, appeared 

to them so powerful that they thought it could put down peoples’ 

revolutions at will.

Until 1955, China sought to control these fears by enforcing a virtual 

news blackout on news related to global nuclear developments. For 

example, there was no mention in any Chinese news source about 

Britain’s 1952 successful test of a nuclear weapon.5

 When the bomb was mentioned by Chinese officials or media, the 

tone was always disparaging, downplaying the strategic significance 

of the technology and emphasizing the power of the Chinese people. 

The classic encapsulation of this viewpoint was Mao’s famous 

statement: 

The atom bomb is a paper tiger with which the American reactionaries 

try to terrify the people. It looks terrible but, in fact, is not. Of course, the 

atom bomb is a weapon of mass annihilation: the outcome of a war is 

decided by the people, not by one or two new weapons.6

Quoting Mao, then Minister of National Defense Lin Biao in his 

1963 article, “Long Live the Victory of People’s War,” argues “The 

spiritual atomic bomb which the revolutionary people possess 

is a far more powerful weapon than the physical atomic bomb.”7

While these statements accurately reflect Mao’s normative and 

ideological beliefs about the primary of man over technology, it is 

also clear that he made a virtue out of a necessity. A country that 

does not have nuclear weapons has an incentive to downplay their 

strategic significance. Moreover, the Beijing government believed 

that “exaggeration of the destructiveness of nuclear war only served 

to demoralize the socialist camp and plays into the hands of U.S. 

nuclear blackmail,”8

 while consistent dismissal of the threat “boosted 

the morale” of the Chinese people.9

 As explored in more detail later, 

these dismissive views also played an important part in shaping 

China’s minimalist view of its own nuclear weapons and their role, 

encouraging Beijing to develop the smallest possible deterrent and 

thus embrace the essence of MAD. 

 While Beijing sought to devalue nuclear weapons in this period, 

events in the international security environment also highlighted the 

fact that nuclear weapons were in some cases counterproductive to 
243

Chinese national interests and relations with other countries. From 

a threat perspective, the Korean War, as well as the 1954 and 1958 

Quemoy-Matsu crises, were marked by implicit or explicit threats of 

nuclear attack from the United States, which the Chinese denounced 

as “nuclear blackmail.” Unprotected from such an attack, Beijing 

turned to its ally, the Soviet Union, for a nuclear umbrella commitment 

and technical assistance in building its own bomb. In 1956, Mao 

Zedong stated plainly that China needed nuclear weapons, arguing 

that “if we are not to be bullied in the present-day world, we cannot 

do without the atomic bomb.”10 He implicitly accepted that nuclear 

weapons had deterrent value, at least against the corrupt West. Yet 

the intra-alliance debate over the correct interpretation of these 

crises and the nature of nuclear war itself, as well as the subsequent 

negotiations for a Chinese bomb, severely frayed the unity of the 

socialist camp, and eventually was a major factor in its rupture in the 

late 1950s and early 1960s. 

 The Sino-Soviet debate over the nature of nuclear warfare 

reveals important features of Chinese attitudes about the bomb and 

its perceived utility. View in hindsight, the heart of the argument 

was a disagreement over whether “mutually assured destruction” 

was indeed “mutual.” While both Moscow and Beijing agreed 

with Clauswitz’s dictum that “war is the continuation of politics,” 

they disagreed over its continuing applicability in the nuclear 

era. Asserting that “the effects of massive retaliation are highly 

doubtful,”11 China interpreted American unwillingness to use 

nuclear weapons in Korea and the 1954 and 1958 Quemoy-Matsu 

crises as further proof that atomic weapons were a “paper tiger.”12

Beijing also believed that nuclear weapons limited American 

power: 

Recourse to this kind of weapon places U.S. imperialism in a position 

of extreme isolation, and militarily, the massive destructiveness of 

nuclear weapons limits their use, for in civil wars and wars of national 

independence, where the lines zigzag and the fighting is at close range, 

the use of nuclear weapons of mass destruction would inflict damage on 

both belligerents.13

For the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics (USSR), however, the 

consequences of war, i.e., total destruction, threatened to undermine 
244

the desired political end of communist domination. In response to 

Malenkov’s 1954 statement that nuclear war would result in the 

“annihilation of mankind,” Foreign Minister Chen Yi responded, 

“We do not believe that the power of atomic weapons is too 

overwhelming. We do not believe that atomic weapons could destroy 

mankind.”14 Indeed, Beijing rejected the potential effectiveness of 

nuclear weapons against China:

Nuclear weapons would not be effective against China because of her 

large territory and the general dispersal of her armed forces, population, 

and industrial centers, and that battles were won decisively only with the 

occupation of enemy territory by infantry forces.15

The atomic bomb itself cannot be the decisive factor in a war . . . It cannot 

be employed on the battlefield to destroy directly the fighting power 

of the opposing army in order not to annihilate the users themselves. 

It can only be used against a big and concentrated object like a big 

armament industry center or huge concentration of troops. Therefore, 

the more extensive the opponents’ territory is and the more scattered the 

opponent’s population is, the less effective will the atomic bomb be. 16

As a result, Mao insisted in 1957 that China was not afraid of nuclear 

war:

People all over the world are now discussing whether or not a third world 

war will break out. In regard to his question, we must be psychologically 

prepared and at the same time take an analytical view. We stand 

resolutely for peace and oppose war. But if the imperialists insist on 

unleashing another war, we should not be afraid of it. Our attitude on 

this question is the same as our attitude toward all disturbances: Firstly, 

we are against it; secondly, we are not afraid of it.17

 More disturbing to observers in Moscow and around the world, 

Mao in the same year asserted that China could survive and prevail 

in a nuclear war, and therefore saw global megadeath as a potential 

historical shortcut to victory over capitalism: 

The first World War was followed by the birth of the Soviet Union with 

a population of 200 million. The Second World War was followed by 

the emergence of the socialist camp with a combined population of 900 

million. If the imperialists should insist on launching a third world war, 

it is certain the several hundred million more will turn to socialism; then 
245

there will not be much room left in the world for the imperialists, while 

it is quite likely that the whole structure of imperialism will utterly 

collapse.18

Lest one assume that this was a political line unsupported by 

professional Chinese military officers, Marshal Peng Dehuai, who 

would later stand up to Mao over the failures of the Great Leap 

Forward, agreed with the Chairman’s arithmetic:

America possesses atomic weapons and is threatening us with them. But 

we are not afraid of atomic warfare. Why? Because China has 600 million 

people. Even if 200 million people were killed by atomic weapons, 400 

million people would still survive. Even if 400 million people were killed, 

200 million would still survive. Even if 200 million survived, China 

would still constitute a big country of the world. Furthermore, these 

200 million people will absolutely not surrender. Therefore, at the end 

America will lose the war.19

At its most extreme, the hyperbole of Chinese communist 

propaganda promised impossible rewards for war: “The victorious 

people would very swiftly create on the ruins of imperialism a 

civilization thousands of times higher than the capitalist system and 

a truly beautiful future for themselves.”20 This rhetoric was deeply 

alarming to the Soviet Union, and explains Moscow’s unwillingness 

to implement nuclear cooperation agreements with Beijing as well as 

their reluctance to extend a Soviet nuclear umbrella over Beijing in 

the 1958 Quemoy crisis.21 From then on, China knew that the Soviet 

Union could not be relied on for extended deterrence. According to 

Foreign Minister Chen Yi in 1963, “[W]hat is this Soviet assurance 

worth? . . . This sort of promise is easy to make, but . . . worthless. 

Soviet protection is worth nothing to us . . . No outsiders can give us 

protection, in fact, because they always attach conditions and want 

to control us.”22

 As a result of these fissures in the Sino-Soviet relationship, 

open verbal warfare broke out between Moscow and Beijing 

on the issue of nuclear warfare and the struggle with American 

imperialism. Moscow openly rejected Mao’s political analysis of 

the bomb, arguing that “the atom bomb does not adhere to the class 

principle.”23 Moreover, Moscow excoriated the lack of realism in 

Chinese understandings of nuclear war, arguing that “the Chinese 
246

Communist Party has developed some kind of special aims and 

interests which the socialist camp cannot support with its military 

force.”24 Finally, Moscow made the following unsubtle threat to 

leave Beijing in the cold, warning that “the attempt of any socialist 

country to rely on its own force in insuring its defense―forces which, 

moreover, may not be sufficient in all countries―can prove to be a 

fatal mistake in the age of nuclear arms.”25 In other words, “China 

might be subjected to massive destruction before the Russians had a 

chance to intervene.”26

 Shorn of any guarantee of protection from nuclear attack, China 

returned to its “man over machine” line in 1958: 

Although the absolute control of atomic weapons is now in the socialist 

camp, it still does not believe that the atomic weapons is the chief factor 

in determining victory. Atomic weapons and ICBMs are good weapons, 

but they cannot be substituted for men in warfare. The United States 

should therefore realize that the Chinese people are no longer frightened 

by any atomic attack!27

Beijing also stepped up verbal assaults on the Soviet views of nuclear 

conflict, rejecting Moscow’s contention that mutual deterrence 

excludes the possibility of war.28 Instead, China argued that mutual 

deterrence gave them political and military room to maneuver, 

especially in national liberation wars and revolutionary civil wars.29

Beijing responded to Moscow’s risk-averse behavior with taunting: 

The crucial point is, what should be the policy in the face of U.S. 

imperialist nuclear blackmail and threats―resistance or capitulation? We 

stand for resistance.30

Imperialism, whose doom is sealed, cannot save itself by relying on 

nuclear weapons, nor can the socialist countries win victory in their 

struggle against imperialism by relying solely on nuclear weapons . . . 

The Soviet leaders insist on exaggerating the role of nuclear weapons 

and trust blindly in them, despise the masses, and have forgotten that 

the masses are the makers of history, and so they have degenerated into 

worshippers of nuclear weapons.31

The Chinese believed that Soviet policy―its support of peaceful 

coexistence, emphasis on the horrors of nuclear war, and downgrading of 

militancy in national liberation movements―paralyzes the revolutionary 

process and, consequently, the struggle against imperialism.32
247

Finally, China warned the Soviet Union that its attempts at control 

in the socialist camp, particularly with regard to the distribution of 

nuclear technology, were not going to prevent China from pursuing 

its own capability. As a 1963 government statement forcefully 

asserts, “the Chinese people will not tremble before U.S. nuclear 

threats,”33 and will not “kneel before the nuclear blackmail of the 

U.S. imperialists.”34 Instead, an official argues that “the one and only 

way to counter the threat of a nuclear war is for more socialist and 

peace-loving countries to gain a nuclear self-defense capability.”35

Views of Nuclear Weapons After Acquisition, 1964-78.

By the early 1960s, China was moving closer to its goal of 

developing an indigenous weapon, which would serve “as a 

principal means to remain autonomous from both Soviet and U.S. 

alliance systems” and the “ultimate guarantor of their national 

security.”36 While the Chinese believed that even a token capability 

would deter the United States,37 Beijing’s relentless disparaging 

of nuclear weapons undermined the credibility of rumors about 

Beijing’s impending atomic and missile capability.38 However, 

China’s successful detonation of a fission weapon in 1964 was effective 

“propaganda of the deed,”39 announcing to the world that Beijing 

was no longer vulnerable to U.S. “nuclear blackmail.”40 The official 

statement is a fascinating window into China’s conflicted attitude 

about nuclear weapons. It is riddled with internal contradictions 

and dialectical mindbenders. It strains credulity, for instance, that 

the Chinese would have spent an enormous amount of scarce state 

resources to build a weapon that is explicitly labeled as a “paper 

tiger.” If atomic weapons were a paper tiger, it is difficult to fathom 

how nuclear weapons will provide “defense” and protect “the 

Chinese people from U.S. threats to launch a nuclear war.” Moreover, 

the official insistence that China developed nuclear weapons in 

order to aid in the global disarmament of nuclear weapons seems 

disingenuous at best. But to question this report’s logic misses the 

point, because it is a testament to ideological correctness. Only 

Mao’s death in 1976 provided an opportunity to strip the bomb of its 

political character and explore the strategic rationales and possible 

utility of nuclear weapons in Chinese defense and foreign policy.
248

 After China joined the ranks of the nuclear powers, its views of 

nuclear weapons underwent some important and understandable 

modifications. First, the incessant disparaging of nuclear weapons 

as a “paper tiger” was toned down in favor of trumpeting of China’s 

success in creating a “real tiger,” which could deter the country’s 

enemies and boost the morale of the population. At the same time, 

China stepped up its criticism of the nuclear weapons policies of the 

Soviet Union and the United States, particularly the superpowers’ 

use of their arsenals to intimidate and bully smaller states. Beijing’s 

fears were confirmed during the chaos of the Cultural Revolution, 

when a feeler from Moscow to Washington was leaked. The feeler 

called for a preemptive strike against China’s nuclear facilities, 

but was ultimately disavowed by Kissinger. China sought to 

differentiate itself from the superpowers by issuing a no first use 

policy, asserting both negative and positive security assurances,41

and advocating the proliferation of nuclear-free zones around the 

world.42 China also embraced the notion of a minimalist mutual 

deterrence, arguing that its small, new arsenal would credibly deter 

U.S. threats to launch a nuclear war. In short, China embraced MAD 

when it acquired nuclear weapons, as reflected in emerging doctrine 

and force structure, but for ideological reasons was precluded from 

explicitly labeling it as such. At the same time, both Russia and the 

United States abandoned MAD as an official policy, leaving China 

with a miminalist posture while they racheted up the ladder to a 

more maximalist position. 

Views of Nuclear Weapons After the Death of Mao, 1978-Present.

 The death of Mao permitted important changes in Chinese views 

of nuclear weapons, though the shifts were gradual in scope and 

timing. Deng Xiaoping, for instance, did not completely abandon 

the Maoist rhetoric about using nuclear victory over capitalist 

imperialism, and he was certainly no less cold-blooded in its 

analysis:

It is impossible to exterminate the human race by using nuclear weapons. 

Now there are more than four billion people in the world. If the worst 

came to worst and more than two billion people died, the other more 

than two billion people would remain. More than two billion people 

would live on the globe just the same.43
249

Indeed, official statements about deterrence since the late 1970s 

have been remarkably consistent, despite wholesale changes in 

the arsenals of both the United States and the former Soviet Union. 

In 1983, Deng Xiaoping validated China’s minimalist deterrence 

posture, declaring that the development of nuclear weapons “had 

forced the superpowers not to use” their arsenals against China, 

adding that “China only wants to adhere to principle: we have what 

others have, and anyone who wants to destroy us will be subject to 

retaliation.”44 In 1986, Defense Minister Zhang Aiping elaborated on 

this theme, asserting “We have built a powerful national defense 

and possess a nuclear strike capability. The enemy no longer dares 

to strike [the first blow] or to underestimate us.”45 These views 

have survived the end of the Cold War and are still being publicly 

delivered by officials. In a July 1997 speech to the U.S. Army War 

College, Lieutenant General Li Jijun, Vice President of the PLA’s 

Academy of Military Science, reiterated China’s public position 

regarding its nuclear posture: 

China’s nuclear strategy is purely defensive in nature. The decision to 

develop nuclear weapons was a choice China had to make in the face of 

real nuclear threats. A small arsenal is retained only for the purpose of 

self-defense. China has unilaterally committed itself to responsibilities 

not yet taken by other nuclear nations, including the declaration of a 

no-first-use policy, the commitment not to use or threaten to use nuclear 

weapons against non-nuclear states and in nuclear-free zones . . . In short, 

China’s strategy is completely defensive, focused only on deterring the 

possibility of nuclear blackmail being used against China by other 

nuclear powers.46

These comments also reveal the ongoing contradictions between 

China’s declared nuclear principles, its changing force structure 

and doctrine, and important changes in the international security 

environment during this period, including U.S. and Russian 

drawdowns, the abrogation of the antiballistic missile (ABM) Treaty, 

the imminent introduction of theater and national missile defenses, 

the advent of increasingly accurate conventional precision guided 

munitions (PGMs), and the emerging weaponization of the Indian 

arsenal. Indeed, the comments highlight the necessity for a more 

critical examination of the discontinuities between China’s public 

statements about nuclear weapons, its technical modernization 

programs, and doctrinal debates, with the goal of developing 
250

a comprehensive understanding of the nature of the force. The 

question remains as to whether MAD is still an important organizing 

principle for China’s arsenal.

 China’s currently deployed nuclear forces are incompletely 

postured for mutually assured destruction, as defined earlier. 

The small ICBM force (roughly two dozen missiles) is structurally 

and doctrinally configured for MAD, though its second strike has 

historically lacked credibility. The deployed continental United 

States (CONUS)-capable ICBM force is based exclusively in silos. 

It has no strategic early warning infrastructure to permit launchunder-attack (LUA)/launch-on-warning (LOW). As a result, the 

operational survivability of China’s nuclear retaliatory capability 

vis-à-vis major nuclear powers was and probably still is open 

to question, particularly in the context of an all-out preemptive 

decapitation strike. At best, China’s minimalist deterrent was 

primarily psychological, though the potency of this aspect of the 

deterrent should not be underestimated. Beijing’s concerns about the 

credibility of its second strike, however, have been exacerbated by 

the expected deployment of theater and national missiles defenses 

by the United States, as well as the recognition that U.S. conventional 

forces have developed the ability to destroy fixed targets like silos 

with PGMs.

 At the same time, the Chinese force has grown to encompass 

more than simply minimal deterrent forces, including theater and 

tactical systems. Viewed in its totality, the Chinese nuclear arsenal 

seems to defy simple categorization as a MAD force. The PRC’s 

multifaceted inventory is made up of strategic, theater, and tactical 

systems of varying range, accuracy, and yield, reflecting the very 

different missions it is required to perform. The small ICBM force, 

anchored by the DF-5 family of missiles, is the heart of the MAD 

force, composed of a minimally necessary number of missiles with 

large warheads and CEPs designed to hit countervalue targets like 

cities. The theater systems, by contrast, are unlikely to be used in a 

second-strike role following a preemptive strike. Instead, the theater 

systems look like offensive systems meant to threaten or strike U.S. 

forces and bases in Asia in order to deter coalition operations or 

degrade conventional capability. The short-range, ballistic missile 

forces, which are also nuclear capable, further confuse the situation 

by serving a variety of conventional warfighting and nuclear 
251

warfighting roles. For the future, the doctrine and force structure of 

China’s Second Artillery must be analyzed at three distinct levels. 

The first level is a MAD posture of credible minimalist deterrence with 

regard to the continental United States and Russia, the second is a 

more offensive-oriented, counterforce posture of “limited deterrence” 

with regard to China’s theater nuclear forces, and the third is an 

offensively-configured, preemptive, counterforce warfighting posture of 

“active defense” or “offensive defense” for the Second Artillery’s 

conventional missile forces.

 How did the Chinese force evolve into this arrangement? First, 

the evidence tends to confirm the arguments of Lewis, et al., of the 

importance of technology as a determinant of Chinese doctrine. 

The progression of missile systems, with their gradually expanding 

ranges and capabilities, defined the limits of the possible for the 

Chinese leadership. Technology alone did not determine the nature 

of the Chinese nuclear force posture. Central guidance on ranges 

and payloads, while admittedly vague, appears to conform with 

strategic-level perceptions of threats and goals in the external security 

environment, especially when matched with its corresponding 

logical deployment pattern. Perhaps, the Chinese made a virtue out 

of necessity in the construction of their nuclear deterrent by accepting 

the technological constraints of the system and making rational 

choices under those constraints. Historically, attention has focused 

on reducing the discontinuity between reality and aspiration, which 

is oftimes referred to as the “capabilities-doctrine gap.” 

 At the present stage in the Second Artillery’s modernization, 

China is nearing an historic convergence between doctrine and 

capability, allowing it to achieve credible minimalist deterrence vis-àvis the continental United States. This represents a convergence of its 

doctrine and capability that China has not confidently possessed since 

the weaponization of its nuclear program in the mid-1960s. Indeed, 

the PRC’s current modernization program appears to be a quest to 

increase the credibility of its deterrence posture by improving the 

readiness and survivability of the force. Measures being implemented 

include a transition from volatile liquid fuels to more stable solid 

fuels, a shift from fixed basing to mobile basing, the introduction 

of improved guidance systems, and the construction of a robust 

C4I infrastructure. Currently, the Chinese have not operationally 

deployed their planned solid-fueled, road-mobile ICBMs, though the 
252

DF-31 seems to be nearing initial operational capability after more 

than 30 years of work. When these systems come online, the Chinese 

will have succeeded in fielding a much more credible minimalist 

deterrent force, whose mobility and readiness theoretically increase 

the chances that some percentage of the force could survive a first 

strike and, thus, effectively deter potential attackers. In short, China 

has nearly put in place a fully-realized MAD force.

 But what about the future? In particular, how should one 

interpret the streams of writings beginning in the late 1980s from 

PLA strategists that advocate so-called “limited deterrence,” and 

appears to resemble counterforce “flexible response.” While these 

writings are not official declarations of doctrine, the fact that they 

are written by military analysts and appear in officially-sanctioned 

military publications gives them a special salience which deserves 

further scrutiny. In analyzing these writings, Johnston observes 

the emergence of “more comprehensive and consistent doctrinal 

arguments in favor of developing a limited flexible response 

capability” and that “Chinese strategists have developed a concept 

of limited deterrence . . . to describe the kind of deterrent China 

ought to have.”47

 These recent Chinese writings call for limited, counterforce, 

warfighting capabilities “to deter conventional, theater, and strategic 

nuclear war, and to control and suppress escalation during a nuclear 

war.”48 According the Chinese analysts, such a posture requires:

[a] greater number of smaller, more accurate, survivable, and penetrable 

ICBMs; SLBMs as countervalue retaliatory forces; tactical and theater 

nuclear weapons to hit battlefield and theater military targets and to 

suppress escalation; ballistic missile defense to improve the survivability 

of the limited deterrent; space-based early warning and command 

and control systems; and anti-satellite weapons (ASATs) to hit enemy 

military satellites.49

Because such a posture requires a significant increase in present 

Chinese capabilities, Johnston correctly highlights the gap between 

this proposed doctrine on the one hand, and actual capabilities 

on the other. As Godwin points out, the lack of any space-based 

reconnaissance or early warning systems means that Beijing’s 

command and control system does not have the ability in real time 

to determine the size and origin of the attack, making it difficult to 
253

determine what kind of response is required. This information is an 

essential component of the more sophisticated versions of limited 

deterrence found in Chinese military journals.50 Johnston also notes 

that achieving such a deterrent posture is not an inevitable outcome, 

due to several constraints.

 There is little empirical basis for questioning the findings of 

Johnston about internal military writings on nuclear deterrence, 

especially since there is a the striking disappearance of discussion 

of the term “minimal deterrence.” There are a number of possible 

explanations. Paul Godwin suggests that Mao Zedong’s death in 

1976, and the implementation of Deng Xiaoping’s military reforms 

in the late 1970s permitted China’s military analysts to explore issues 

of doctrine and strategy “free from the stultifying requirement to 

verify everything they wrote with a literal interpretation of Mao’s 

writings and statements.”51 Second, Godwin points to the increased 

battlefield nuclear weapons threat on the Sino-Soviet border, which 

“raised the salience of strategic deterrence and nuclear warfighting 

to a level it had never before achieved.” This threat encouraged 

Chinese military analysts to read extensively in Western theories 

and journals.52 Johnston himself offers some additional explanations 

in the last few pages of his International Security article.53 Many of the 

PLA authors contrast limited and minimal deterrence, obviating the 

possibility that they have simply renamed the previous doctrine for 

bureaucratic purposes. The authors appear to be well-placed to affect 

the operational doctrine of the Second Artillery, which removes the 

possibility of a disjuncture between academic and military writings, 

as occurred between the writings of RAND strategists and the warwinning strategy of General LeMay at Strategic Air Command. 

If limited deterrence is defined as flexible response, counterforce 

warfighting, then perhaps limited deterrence is the aspirational 

doctrine for a future Second Artillery.

 Three more caveats can be added to interpret the emergence 

and meaning of an ostensible counterforce doctrine in China. First, 

assuming a continued adherence by China to its testing moratorium, 

and the possibility that it will ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban 

Treaty (CTBT) in the future, it is reasonable to question China’s 

ability to develop smaller, lighter, and more accurate nuclear 

warheads (including potential multiple reentry vehicle [MRV] and 

multiple independent reentry vehicle [MIRV] capability) consistent 
254

with the counterforce aspirations described by Chinese analysts in 

the late-1980s and early 1990s. Second, it is possible that China’s 

previously discussed tripartite system is a confirmation of Johnston’s 

conclusions about limited deterrence, and the analysis has simply 

come to the same place from a different direction. Perhaps the 

Chinese, when they looked at the multifunctional force structure they 

created, felt that minimal deterrence no longer could encompass all 

of the various defensive and offensive, long-range and short-range 

systems in their arsenal. Borrowing from Confucius, they may have 

concluded that harmony could only be restored when the name of the 

thing matched the nature of thing, and the product of this zhengming

was “limited deterrence.” Third, even if one accepts limited 

deterrence as an overarching aspirational goal of this multifaceted 

system, the misinterpretation of Johnston’s writings by some, such 

as the Cox Committee, to mean that the Chinese are unquestionably 

engaged in an aggressive modernization of their missile forces 

meant to enable counterforce warfighting, must be rejected. Indeed, 

there are legitimate, alternative explanations for many of the 

hardware trends in China. Reforms in mobility, readiness, and C4

I 

infrastructure are readily and more comprehensively explained 

as an attempt to increase survivability from foreign attack. It may 

simply represent the long-sought confidence of a credible deterrent, 

and not necessarily the desire to achieve a warfighting, war-winning 

strategy. Moreover, as long as the numbers of the force stay beneath 

a certain level, increases in accuracy and multiple warheads alone 

do not pose an appreciably greater threat to American and Russian 

nuclear superiority. American strategic nuclear forces number close 

to 8,000 deployed on 575 ICBMs, 102 strategic bombers, and 17 

SSBNs. A single Trident SSBN, carries more missiles (24) than the 

entire Chinese ICBM inventory. 

CONCLUSION: IS CHINA FINALLY GETTING MAD?

 In retrospect, Jonathan Pollack’s tentative predictions in a 1995 

book chapter entitled “The Future of China’s Nuclear Weapons 

Policy” appear prescient:

Over the coming decade, the asymmetries between China’s nuclear forces 

and those of the major nuclear arsenals seem likely to narrow, perhaps 
255

appreciably. As the arsenals of the United States and the successor Soviet 

states diminish, the scale and imputed significance of Chinese nuclear 

deployments will grow. In addition, the Chinese appear in throes of a 

transition to a more credible nuclear deterrence, though there are ample 

uncertainties here as well.54

Ironically, since the above publication, more uncertainty was created 

by Beijing’s perceptions of the West than by Chinese behavior. Its 

growing perception is that the Bush administration is moving away 

from MAD and deterrence towards a focus on preemption. As a 

result, Pollack’s analysis that “the Chinese presumably feel less 

subject to strategic pressure than at any point since their emergence 

as a nuclear weapons state” is certainly no longer true.55 While the 

analysis in the previous section suggests that China’s deterrent was 

credible in the psychological rather than technical sense of word, the 

ongoing development in the United States of a new generation of 

missile defense systems and the development of a potential capability 

to decapitate a small, nonmobile nuclear arsenal with conventional, 

precision-guided munitions undermines Beijing’s “’insurance 

policy’ against the prospect of significantly heightened U.S.-Chinese 

antagonisms.”56 As a result, Beijing has accelerated deployment of 

a new generation of solid-fueled, road-mobile missiles, and is on 

the verge of achieving a technically credible deterrent for the first 

time and restoring some equilibrium in the offense balance with 

the United States. If one factors in U.S. continuing failures with socalled “Scud-hunting” for mobile missiles, China may soon arrive 

at a stable equilibrium in the impending world of offense-defense 

racing, whereby a U.S. preemptive first strike would not be capable 

of sufficiently degrading China’s forces such that the currently 

planned architecture of missile defenses could reliably catch the 

stragglers. 

 It is not clear whether Beijing will be content with the status of 

its nuclear force modernization once it reestablishes the credibility 

of its minimalist MAD force, particularly in a world marked by 

missile defenses, preemption and conventional attack. Indeed, the 

more interesting implications arise when one contemplates a larger 

Chinese force structure, combined with continuing reductions in 

Russian and American arsenals. Here Pollack’s musings about the 
256

declining appeal of minimalism and the possibility of trilateral 

“parity” between the PRC, United States, and Russia are relevant.57

So are Brad Robert’s challenge to the nuclear community to consider 

what trilateral deterrence at, say, 600 warheads apiece would look 

like.58 In its desperation to retain the MAD dynamic, China may 

build to these levels, though it also permits the PRC to contemplate 

post-MAD counterforce strategies, such as a force de frappe capable 

of “tearing of an arm” of the adversary. Whether or not this force 

will ever be large enough to eclipse MAD in favor of counterforce is 

open to debate. What is clear, however, is that China is one of only 

two countries (the other being India) that is increasing the number 

of its forces while the Cold War arsenals of Russia and the United 

States are being gradually dismantled. Once the mobile DF-31 is 

deployed, China can be much more confident in its ability to ride 

out a preemptive strike, and rain down death on the attacker’s cities. 

Assuming that the contradictions between its No First Use policy and 

the conventional threat result in the eventual scrapping of the policy, 

one can imagine a future in which China contemplates limited first 

strikes against an adversary’s population centers or strategic forces. 

In such a violent world, we may dream of the days when China was 

only MAD.

ENDNOTES - CHAPTER 8

1. See The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, Washington, 

DC: U.S. Government Printing Office, 2002.

2. This definition is drawn from Arthur Steiner’s excellent chapter in this 

book.

3. Alastair Iain Johnston, “China’s New ‘Old Thinking’: The Concept of Limited 

Deterrence,” International Security 20, No. 3, Winter 1995/96, p. 19.

4. Ibid., p. 20.

5. Alice Langley Hsieh, Communist China’s Strategy in the Nuclear Era, Englewood 

Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall, 1962, p. 4.

6. Mao Zedong, “Talks with the American Correspondent Anna Louise Strong 

(August 1946),” Mao Zedong Selected Works, Vol. IV, Beijing: Foreign Languages 

Press, 1975, p. 100.

7. Lin Biao, “Long Live the Victory of People’s War,” Renmin ribao [People’s 

Daily], September 3, 1965.
257

8. Hsieh, Communist China’s Strategy in the Nuclear Era, p. 4.

9. Rong Zhi, “The Big Powers’ Military Strategies and Our Countermeasures 

by the End of This Century,” in Guoji Xingshi yu guofang zhanlue [The International 

Situation and Defense Strategy], Beijing, 1987, p. 73.

10. Mao Zedong, “On the Ten Major Relationships” (April 25, 1956), in Selected 

Works of Mao Zedong, Vol. 5, Beijing: Foreign Languages Press, 1977, p. 288.

11. “United States Strategy is in a Blind Alley,” Shijie zhishi, December 5, 1957.

12. Renmin ribao, February 21, 1958; Ta kung pao, July 5, 1958.

13. Statement of the Government of the People’s Republic of China, 16 October 

1964, found in John Wilson Lewis and Xue Litai, China Builds the Bomb, Stanford, 

CA: Stanford University Press, 1988, pp. 241-242.

14. Stuttgarter Zeitung, May 12, 1958.

15. Jiefangjun zhanshi, March 11, 1956.

16. Ibid.

17. Mao Zedong, “On the Correct Handling of Contradictions Among the 

People,” Xinhua, June 18, 1957.

18. Ibid.

19. Peng Dehuai comment to a mission of Japanese military officers visiting the 

mainland, August 22, 1956.

20. Statement of the Government of the People’s Republic of China, 16 October 

1964, found in Lewis and Xue, China Builds the Bomb, pp. 241-242.

21. Hsieh, Communist China’s Strategy in the Nuclear Era, p. 136.

22. Washington Post, December 8, 1963.

23. Soviet government statement, August 21, 1963.

24. Ibid., p. 260

25. Ibid.

26. Alice Langley Hsieh, “The Sino-Soviet Nuclear Dialogue: 1963,” in Raymond 

Garthoff, ed., Sino-Soviet Military Relations, New York: Praeger, 1966, p. 162.

27. Jiefangjun bao, July 17, 1958.

28. Chinese government statement, August 15, 1963.

29. Hsieh, Communist China’s Strategy in the Nuclear Era, p. 76.

30. Statement of the Government of the People’s Republic of China, 16 October 

1964, found in Lewis and Xue, China Builds the Bomb, pp. 241-242.

31. Ibid.

32. Alice Langley Hsieh, “The Sino-Soviet Nuclear Dialogue: 1963,” p. 158.

33. Statement of the Government of the People’s Republic of China, 16 October 

1964, found in Lewis and Xue, China Builds the Bomb, pp. 241-242.
258

34. Ibid.

35. Liao Chengzhi speech, Radio Peking, August 1, 1963.

36. Jonathan Pollack, “The Future of China’s Nuclear Weapons Policy,” 

in Weixing Hu and John Hopkins, eds., Strategic Views from the Second Tier: 

The Nuclear Weapons Policies of France, Britain, and China, New Brunswick: 

Transaction Publishers, 1995, pp. 157, 164.

37. Hsieh, Communist China’s Strategy in the Nuclear Era, p. 97.

38. Ibid., p.123.

39. An account of this program based on offi cial sources can be found in John 

Wilson Lewis and Litai Xue, China Builds the Bomb, Stanford: Stanford University 

Press, 1991.

40. Statement of the Government of the People’s Republic of China, 16 October 

1964, found in Lewis and Xue, China Builds the Bomb, pp. 241-242.

41. “China undertakes not to use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against 

non-nuclear-weapon States or nuclear-weapon-free zones at any time or under 

any circumstances. This commitment naturally applies to non-nuclear weapon 

States Parties to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons [NPT] or 

non-nuclear weapon States that have undertaken any comparable internationally 

binding commitments not to manufacture or acquire nuclear explosive devices.” 

See Lieutenant General Li Jijun, Traditional Military Thinking and the Defensive 

Strategy of China, Letort Paper No. 1, Carlisle Barracks, PA: U.S. Army War College, 

August 29, 1997, p. 7; and China’s white paper entitled China: Arms Control and 

Disarmament, Beijing: Information Office of the State Council, November 1995. 

The U.S. NSA, by constrast, is conditional in retaining the possibility of nuclear 

weapons use against non-nuclear weapon states who take part in an attack on U.S. 

territory, armed forces, or allies.

42. China: Arms Control and Disarmament, Beijing: State Council Information 

Office, November 1995, p. 261.

43. Xia Zhengnan, “On the Political Essence of War and the Atomic Age,” Mao 

Zedong Sixiang Yanjiu, No. 2, 1990, p. 111.

44. Li Fumin and Li Dunsong, “A Brief Account of the Growth and Development 

of Our Country’s Strategic Missile Troops,” Junshi Shilin [Military History], No.5, 

1988, p. 51.

45. Li Jianghe and Hou Aiping, “What We Think About Our Country’s Defense 

Development Strategy,” Junshi Shilin, No. 5, 1987, p. 9.

46. Lieutenant General Li Jijun, Traditional Military Thinking and the Defensive 

Strategy of China, Letort Paper No. 1, Carlisle Barracks, PA: U.S. Army War College, 

August 29, 1997, p. 7.

47. Johnston, p. 5.

48. Ibid., p. 19.
259

49. Ibid., p. 20.

50. Godwin, “China’s Nuclear Forces.”

51. Ibid.

52. Ibid.

53. Johnston, pp. 35-36.

54. Pollack, pp. 157-158.

55. Ibid., p. 159.

56. Ibid.

57. Ibid., pp. 160, 165.

58. Robert A. Manning, Ronald Montaperto, and Brad Roberts, China, Nuclear 

Weapons, and Arms Control: A Preliminary Assessment, New York: Council on 

Foreign Relations, 2000.

261

CHAPTER 9

THE BRITISH EXPERIENCE

Michael Quinlan

PRE-HISTORY

 For a mix of historical and geographical reasons, the United 

Kingdom brought to the nuclear revolution a security mindset 

differing in significant respects from that of the United States. The 

United States, behind its huge two-ocean moat, enjoyed (despite the 

outlying Pearl Harbor shock) a sense of continental sanctuary that in 

some degree endured, at least psychologically if not intellectually, 

until the impact of September 11, 2001. The combination of island 

configuration and dominant maritime power had for centuries given 

Britain a similar sense. With the advent of aircraft, however, able to 

overpass swiftly the short sea distances that separated Britain from 

the threats and turbulences of the rest of Europe, the experience of 

the two 20th-century world wars had unmistakably and irreversibly 

erased that sense.

 In the First World War raids on England by Zeppelin airships 

began as early as January 1915. The vulnerability of these delivery 

vehicles led in time to their withdrawal from the bombardment 

role, but long-range fixed-wing aircraft subsequently entered the 

attack. Defensive attrition of all these efforts was severe. The direct 

damage inflicted, a few thousand civilian casualties, was modest in 

comparison with the carnage of the Western Front. But the disruption 

of industrial production and the diversion of air power into defence 

were significant, and the memory of attack lingered in public 

consciousness. It played some part in the widespread revulsion 

against the idea of war in the 1930s. The leading political figure of the 

time warned that “it is well for the man in the street to realise that there 

is no power on earth that can protect him from being bombed . . . . 

the bomber will always get through.” 

 The outbreak of World War II in 1939 did not immediately 

produce the huge homeland bombardment that was initially feared, 

but during 1940 and 1941 air attack―especially but by no means only 
262

the “blitz” on London―became part of common experience. New 

dimensions were added in 1944, when attacks began first with the 

V.1 cruise missile and then with the V.2 ballistic missile. The scale of 

the damage received did not reach that inflicted upon Germany, or 

later upon Japan, but it nevertheless was formidable; about 50,000 

civilians were killed.

 As a result of the British experience of war from 1914 to 1945, the 

British people and their leaders entered the nuclear age with a vivid 

awareness of their inescapable vulnerability. At the same time, this 

awareness was less shocking, because it was less unfamiliar, than it 

was for the United States.

 One other aspect of British experience should be noted. From 

1940 until almost the end of the conflict in Europe in 1945, the 

strategic bombing offensive, primarily against Germany, had been 

a massive component of the British war effort. (There were heavier 

losses in action among Bomber Command aircrew in World War II 

than among British junior officers on the Western Front throughout 

World War I.) The value-for-resources-used, the impact, and even 

the morality of the offensive became subjects of debate in postwar 

appraisal. But the weight and salience of the effort at the time meant 

that awareness of the practical aspects and issues of long-range 

“homeland” attack―the realities of targeting, for example―was 

probably more widespread, not only among professional servicemen 

but also with political leaders and in public discourse, than in almost 

any other country. This awareness extended to a recognition (or 

belief) that such attack should be directed―rather like maritime 

blockade, a historic form of Britain’s military leverage―to sapping 

an adversary’s economic and social strength rather then directly 

assailing his armed forces.

EARLY YEARS

 In the immediate aftermath of August 1945, there were mixed 

views in Britain about the long-term significance of what had 

happened to Hiroshima and Nagasaki. Some military voices 

questioned its revolutionary significance, but air force leaders took 

a different view. In a remarkable letter in September 1945, only 2 
263

months after succeeding Churchill in office, Prime Minister Clement 

Attlee argued to President Harry Truman that the new weapons 

represented a qualitative, not just a quantitative, change in the nature 

of warfare. Existing conceptions, he said, were now “completely out 

of date. . . . the only deterrent is the possibility of the victim of such 

an attack being able to retort on the victor.” The idea of deterrence as 

the only protection against nuclear weapons dominated government 

thinking from then on, and so in large measure did the belief that 

the threat posed must be against the enemy’s cities. The concern 

for nuclear-weapon-based deterrence moreover, almost from the 

outset of the postwar era, was given a sharper edge by perceptions 

that Soviet conventional-force preponderance in Europe was so 

massive that without prompt and all-out U.S. participation (not to 

be assumed until the North Atlantic Treaty Organization’s (NATO) 

creation in 1949, and even thereafter not in prospect on a matching 

scale) a Soviet assault could reach the English Channel within 

weeks.

 In January 1947, against the background of abrupt U.S. termination 

of its wartime cooperation on nuclear-weapon development, the 

UK Government (initially very secretly) made a formal decision to 

develop a capability of its own. There was, however, no possibility 

that such a capability could become operational with adequate 

delivery platforms and a significant stock of weapons before the 

mid-1950s, and for several years after 1947 there was no firm political 

guidance on the scale of force provision or the concepts of use. Even 

the Chiefs of Staff arrived at no clear consensus, despite considerable 

discussion. They recognized that severe limitations in intelligence 

about Soviet dispositions compounded the difficulties of any 

counterforce damage-limitation concept. They came also to accept―

after higher initial hopes―that surface-to-air guided weapons did 

not offer, at least to a country in Britain’s geographical situation, any 

expectation of success in warding off even a Soviet strike capability 

attenuated by attacks on its launching airfields.

 Despite all this―and sitting oddly with its logic, at first look―

there emerged at the end of the 1940s a disposition, especially within 

the Royal Air Force (RAF), to consider damage-limitation as well as 

counter-valve targeting. The basis for this was a hypothesis that the 

United Kingdom would be participating in a very large combined 
264

offensive alongside the United States, even though at this stage 

the United Kingdom knew virtually nothing of U.S. plans. Despite 

some low-key informal contacts, it was not until well into the 1950s 

that this ignorance began to be rectified. Within the concept of joint 

action, the RAF thinking was that, because of its greater proximity 

to the Soviet Union, the United Kingdom might have different 

targeting priorities from the United States, and that the V-Force―

the Valiant, Vulcan, and Victor strategic bombers which were being 

developed―should therefore concentrate its attacks upon air bases 

from which the United Kingdom could most quickly be struck. 

A planning staff paper in 1954 envisaged that 40 such airfields 

should be targeted. These concepts continued into the 1960s and 

played a part in RAF planning for V-Force participation which was 

progressively incorporated from 1959 onwards into the U.S. Single 

Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP), with British officers stationed at 

Strategic Air Command Headquarters in Omaha. This thinking was 

reflected at ministerial level in a report made to the Cabinet in 1955 

by Minister of Defence Selwyn Lloyd.

 But starker realities continued to present themselves. In 1955, a 

major interdepartmental study concluded that as few as ten thermonuclear bombs could virtually destroy the United Kingdom as a 

functioning society, and the government’s major Defence White Paper

of early 1957 frankly avowed this profound vulnerability. (Judgments 

of this kind played a part throughout the Cold War. There was an 

acceptance of the idea that, although civil defense had protected the 

general population during World War II, its prospects of success in 

the nuclear age, for a country in the United Kingdom’s circumstances, 

were too thin to warrant massive expenditure.) The implication for 

strategic targeting policy, that damage limitation was an unfruitful 

avenue to pursue, was clear. So too, however, seemed the parallel 

implication that even a modest UK force could inflict a grave wound 

upon the Soviet Union. Occasionally in official papers from 1952 

onwards, there were statements that “superiority in numbers has no 

meaning” which belong to the same line of analysis. Nevertheless, 

the roles assigned to the V-Force in the joint SIOP had a hybrid 

character. It was envisaged that Bomber Command’s 1959 capability 

should be allocated 69 city targets and 37 counterforce ones. In 1962 

(when during the Cuban missile crisis all the Command’s delivery 
265

systems were brought to heightened readiness), the targeting figures 

shifted to 16 cities and 82 counterforce. (Even in national planning 

the notion of damage-limitation understandably died hard. As late 

as the final decade of the Cold War, the neutralization of Soviet 

fleet ballistic missile submarines (SSBNs) was still a factor in Royal 

Navy thinking on the size and tasking of its attack submarine [SSN] 

hunter-killer force.) However, it became increasingly clear that UKonly nuclear plans could not realistically aspire to damage-limitation 

effect. These plans had to be countervalue―that is, so everyone at 

this stage assumed, directed simply at large cities (as shortcomings 

in intelligence and delivery accuracy, in combination with limited 

holdings of weapons and delivery systems, effectively dictated).

 The scale of countervalue capability evolved rather 

unsystematically. The original planned size of the V-Force, at 240 

front-line aircraft, reflected a broad judgment―scarcely more than 

a gut feeling―of what would be perceived as a force substantial 

enough to command caution from the adversary and influence with 

the major ally. The imprecision of such a rationale made it difficult 

for the Air Ministry (until 1964 still a full department separate from 

the Ministry of Defence) to resist progressive cutback of plans to 

help ease the constant pressure which national economic difficulties 

imposed upon the defence budget, and frontline numbers never rose 

beyond 150 aircraft. This diminution, coupled with recognition of 

the difficulties which the aircraft would have in penetrating Soviet 

defences in a UK-only strike, steadily reduced assessments of how 

heavy a countervalue threat the force could pose. This was recognized 

even though in their heyday these aircraft were at least the equal 

of U.S. counterparts in most performance dimensions other than 

range. In the late 1950s, it was variously forecast in official appraisals 

that the aircraft could knock out (this being defined as inflicting 50 

percent destruction) between 30 and 40 cities. By 1962 the figure 

was down to 15, although still including Moscow and Leningrad. 

Ministers took the view that this was adequate for the deterrent 

purpose. The Minister of Defence of the day indeed suggested that 10 

would be enough, but the Cabinet settled upon 15 as the benchmark. 

Logic suggested, and it was occasionally attempted, to start with a 

judgment of the deterrent required and derive force level from that.
266

As the above summary indicates, however, the governing methodology amounted to assessing what the existing or intended force could 

do and then considering whether that sufficed. 

 Historians of the period have suggested that the differences of 

concept between a countervalue national plan and a contribution to the 

U.S. offensive that was at least partly counterforce shows a basic and 

continuing confusion of thought. For all the oscillation of discussion 

in the early 1950s, this criticism is not necessarily valid. There was no 

incompatibility, and therefore no practical need to choose, between 

having one concept for the UK-alone hypothesis and a different one 

for participation in a U.S. effort which, because of its massive scale, 

could have wider objectives. In internal governmental debate, the 

arguments in favor of maintaining a substantial capability veered 

between seeking a voice in U.S. plans and decisions and providing 

a last-resort independent insurance. In logic and practice neither of 

these justifications excluded the other, or pointed towards divergent 

provision. That said, by the time of the pivotal events of December 

1962, serious thinkers both within and outside the government had 

come to recognize that the fundamental case for UK capability, and 

indicators for its character and scale, must be sought in hypotheses of 

independent action from which the United States stood aside. Though 

the existence of significant strategic offensive capability based in 

Britain might be of potential value to the United States by helping 

to complicate the task facing any Soviet first-strike aspirations, since 

Britain’s eastward location posed an awkward operational dilemma 

for the Soviets: “simultaneous launch or simultaneous arrival?” 

In terms of strike weight, however, the U.S. armory was reaching 

a magnitude that rendered any UK contribution no more than an 

optional extra. Indeed, for wider reasons, significant elements within 

the Kennedy administration would have preferred to see the UK’s 

capability fade away. 

THE SHIFT TO SLBMS

 It had long been understood that V-Force penetrativity in the 

free-fall delivery mode would decline steadily as Soviet defenses 

improved. A stand-off air-launched missile code-named Blue Steel 

was developed and brought into service on a modest scale, but its 
267

limited range and other shortcomings meant that it could not be seen 

as a long-term solution. A ground-based intermediate-range ballistic 

missile project, Blue Streak, was abandoned in 1960 largely because 

of the vulnerability of any land-based second-strike missile within a 

territory as small as the UK. In 1960 the Eisenhower administration 

undertook - subject to successful completion of development, which 

was not guaranteed - to make the Skybolt long-range air-launched 

ballistic missile available to the UK to prolong the life of the V-force. 

In late 1962, however, the United States decided to terminate the 

project. A tense meeting at Nassau in the Bahamas in December 

1962 between President John Kennedy and Prime Minister Harold 

Macmillan yielded an agreement that the United States instead would 

sell to the United Kingdom Polaris submarine-launched ballistic 

missiles (SLBM) (initially envisaged to be the A.2 version, but in the 

end the A.3 version with three re-entry vehicles not independently 

targetable). It was envisioned that Polaris missiles would be installed 

in nuclear-propelled submarines designed and built by the United 

Kingdom.

 If anyone in Britain doubted the inescapability of a countervalue 

targeting concept, this shift erased that doubt. The SSBN fleet―set 

at four boats, after an initial aspiration of five―could not be sure of 

sustaining on permanent operational patrol more than one boat with 

a load of 16 missiles. (Though there were often two boats at sea, and 

very occasionally three, UK planning always set its benchmarks by 

worst-case, no-warning scenarios.) Even if the A.3 missile had been 

capable of high-precision targeting, and even without allowance 

for a malfunctioning proportion, a salvo of this size could never 

hope to achieve a significant damage-limiting effect, or to cause 

enemy leaders any material concern about erosion of their offensive 

capability.

 Almost from the moment the Nassau decision was announced, 

critics (in Britain and elsewhere) assailed it on the ground that reliance 

on the U.S. capability implied that UK nuclear independence had 

ceased to have reality. This had applied equally to the plan to acquire 

Skybolt. The answer to such criticism was (and remains) that the 

concept of independence has more than one legitimate interpretation, 

with different implications and markedly different price-tags. Given 
268

the formidable size, diversity and quality of the U.S. inventory the 

strategic case for any ally to maintain a separate capability rested 

on a hypothesis that in some circumstances the U.S. armory might 

not be promptly available. If, hypothetically, the United States 

became deeply alienated and withdrew from its materiel-support 

commitments to its allies, the allies would need independence of 

procurement. Except for a few items, such as tanker aircraft, France 

chose this sort of independence, at high financial and opportunity 

cost within its defense budget. If, however, the hypothetical situation 

involved the United States merely being unwilling (or thought likely 

to be unwilling) to stand fully by its allies in time of acute crisis 

and mortal danger, a narrower form of insurance would suffice. 

Independence then need mean no more than the ability to make 

one’s own operational decisions; that is, to be free to launch nuclear 

strikes whether or not the United States chose, or wished its allies, 

to do so. It was the latter form of independence, with its much lower 

costs and therefore less damaging repercussions on other aspects of 

defense effort, that United Kingdom decisionmakers saw themselves 

as choosing.

 The first Polaris-carrying boat became operational in 1968. In the 

following year, the strategic nuclear role was formally transferred 

from the Royal Air Force to the Royal Navy. Some squadrons of Vbombers were kept in service until the early 1980s in a supplementary 

or “sub-strategic” nuclear role. Both the Polaris missiles and the 

remaining V-bombers were declared to NATO and notionally tasked 

by NATO military staffs in plans for General Nuclear Release, though 

amid the vast plethora of systems available there was a good deal of 

artificiality about finding targets to assign to them. For UK staffs, 

national plans that tasked Polaris in the countercity role were the 

prime focus of attention. The V-bombers also continued for some 

time to be seen for national purposes as simply participating in an 

all-out countercity assault. From 1967 onwards, NATO developed 

its flexible-response strategy, including the idea of carefully-limited 

nuclear strikes as an option to convey war-termination imperatives. 

In 1975 U.S. Secretary of Defense James Schlesinger presented 

a similar concept of Limited Nuclear Options for U.S. strategic 

forces. Such doctrines, however, were transmitted and absorbed 
269

only slowly between UK policy and operational staffs. It was not 

until 1978 that their applicability was recognized and reflected in 

UK national plans for the V-bombers and for other aircraft that later 

offered deep-strike potential. (The national tasking of shorter-range 

aircraft and maritime systems equipped with UK nuclear weapons 

is not considered here.).

 Though the Polaris force remained the United Kingdom’s key 

strategic nuclear delivery resource until well into the 1990s, two 

issues soon impelled governments to reconsider the concepts and 

needs of deterrence. The first issue concerned what stance the United 

Kingdom should take, both in respect of its own direct interests and 

as a member of NATO, about the strategic arms limitation process 

which the United States and the Soviet Union began in 1969. The 

second―in some degree related―was how to deal with the threat to 

UK penetration capability posed by Soviet defenses against ballistic 

missiles.

 The United Kingdom had concerns about the Strategic Arms 

Limitations Talks (SALT). The main ones were that the scale of its 

own modest force provision should not be “counted in” on the U.S. 

side; that the United States should not bind itself in any way that 

would constrain its future freedom to help allies again on the lines of 

previous cooperative acts such as the 1962 Nassau bargain, and that 

Soviet antiballistic missile (ABM) defences should be constrained 

to the lowest level attainable (ideally zero, though it was swiftly 

recognized that this was not on the cards). In the earlier years of 

the SALT/Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (START) processes, 

UK staffs sought to think the issues through on a broader basis as 

a leading member of the collective Alliance and to provide a useful 

“second opinion” for the United States. The UK believed that (1) 

two-way deterrence, underpinned by manifest capability for mutual 

assured destruction not as preference but as ineluctable fact, had to be 

accepted; (2) the prime aim of the negotiations should be to maintain 

deterrence in as stable a form and at as low a cost as possible; (3) precise 

numerical equality in systems was not important at the magnitudes 

involved; and (4) attempts to establish neatly-symmetrical categoryby-category equivalences amid the asymmetries of the East/West 

confrontation might damage NATO strategy and deterrence.
270

 The soon-evident fact that the Soviet Union could not be 

convinced not to have ABM defenses around Moscow clearly 

affected the ability of the UK’s Polaris A.3 missiles to pose a threat 

to the Soviet capital. The A.3 missile was judged highly vulnerable 

to exo-atmospheric interception by the Soviet Galosh system, and the 

UK force was not large enough, especially in the one-boat case, to 

rely (as the United States always could) on saturating the defence 

shield, even at the 100-interceptor limit set by the 1972 ABM treaty. 

Discussion of what to do about this, and then of the development of 

countermeasures, was taken forward very secretly. The matter was 

closely held within government, and there was virtually no public 

debate or even awareness until an announcement was made in 1980, 

when the chosen countermeasure was close to entering operational 

service. Deliberations were premised on the assumption that the 

ability to target Moscow effectively (“the Moscow criterion”) was 

important for deterrent credibility. The argument for action noted 

the constant possibility, at least in theory, that the Soviet Union might 

one day choose to break out of the ABM treaty to provide protection 

for a wider range of assets. Additionally, an exo-atmospheric ABM 

system (such as the Soviet Union had deployed) could generate a 

defended “footprint” (its precise size and shape depending on the 

azimuth and trajectory of incoming missiles) covering a much larger 

area than just the city of Moscow itself.

 The solution chosen, code-named Chevaline, was to fit a muchchanged front-end to the A.3 missile. The highly sophisticated 

technology incorporated in this new front-end aided penetration 

at the expense of reducing the warheads carried from three to two. 

The warheads were still not independently targetable. The project 

(designed and paid for by the United Kingdom, though it had some 

U.S. antecedents and U.S. industrial participation) was technically 

demanding and proved much more costly than was originally 

foreseen. As a result the need for it, and the related value placed 

upon the “Moscow criterion,” was challenged. But the Government 

of Prime Minister James Callaghan decided against cancellation, 

partly because the disclosure of abandoning such a major endeavour 

in mid-development would detract from UK credibility in the nuclear 

field.
271

Trident

 Despite the imminence of the Chevaline improvement, it was 

evident by the end of the 1970s that, given project lead-times, the 

question of whether and how to replace the Polaris fleet could not 

be deferred. The arguments bearing upon the scale and character 

of threat capability needed for adequate deterrence in the UK-only 

setting (“second centre of decision”) were revisited in internal 

Government studies more systematically than had been done at most 

earlier junctures, but without radical change of outcome in either 

the basic concept of countervalue strike or the order of magnitude 

judged necessary.

 Though a substantial range of delivery system options was 

dutifully examined, the Trident sea-launched ballistic missile (SLBM) 

system emerged unsurprisingly as the clear preference, and in 1980 

the United States agreed to sell it. Purely in weight of strike potential, 

the United Kingdom could have been content with less than Trident

could offer, even in the C.4 version originally chosen (let alone the D.5 

version to which the United Kingdom switched in early 1982, when 

it became clear that the United States was committed to proceeding 

with its acquisition and deployment). The original choice and the 

switch were driven in large measure by the long-term financial and 

logistic benefits of commonality with the United States. After the 

end of the Cold War, the United Kingdom announced a series of 

discretionary reductions in warhead load to well below what Trident

was capable of carrying.

 The 1980 decision to acquire Trident was explained in a special 

memorandum published by the Ministry of Defence (Defence Open 

Government Document 80/23). This is of particular interest for the 

present survey because it included the fullest―or, perhaps more 

accurately, the least meagre―statement made by any UK Government 

over the years about the sizing and targeting of strategic nuclear 

capability. The relevant section of the memorandum merits extended 

quotation:

The “Second-Centre” Role:

9. If Britain is to meet effectively the deterrent purpose of providing a 

second centre of decisionmaking within the Alliance, our force has to be 
272

visibly capable of posing a massive threat on its own. A force which could 

strike tellingly only if the United States also did so―which plainly relied, 

for example, on U.S. assent to its use, or on attenuation or distraction of 

Soviet defences by United States forces―would not achieve the purpose. 

We need to convince Soviet leaders that even if they thought that, at some 

critical point as a conflict developed, the United States would hold back, 

the British force could still inflict a blow so destructive that the penalty 

for aggression would have proved too high.

10. There is no way of calculating exactly how much destruction in prospect 

would suffice to deter. Clearly Britain need not have as much power as 

the United States. Overwhelming Britain would be a much smaller prize 

than overwhelming the United States, and a smaller prospective penalty 

could therefore suffice to tilt his assessment against starting aggression 

that would risk incurring the penalty. Indeed, one practical approach to 

judging how much deterrent power Britain needs is to consider what 

type and scale of damage Soviet leaders might think likely to leave them 

critically handicapped afterwards in continuing confrontation with a 

relatively unscathed United States.

11. The Soviet Union is a very large and powerful state, which has in 

the past demonstrated great national resilience and resolve. Its history, 

outlook, political doctrines, and planning all suggest that its view of 

how much destruction would constitute intolerable disaster might differ 

widely from that of most NATO countries. Appalling though any nuclear 

strike would be, the Government does not believe that our deterrent 

aim would be adequately met by a capability which offered only a low 

likelihood of striking home to key targets; or which posed the prospect of 

only a very small number of strikes; or which Soviet leaders could expect 

to ward off successfully from large areas of key importance to them. They 

might even be tempted to judge that if an opponent equipped himself 

with a force which had only a modest chance of inflicting intolerable 

damage there might be only a modest chance that he would have the 

resolve to use it at all.

12. Successive United Kingdom Governments have always declined 

to make public their nuclear targeting policy and plans, or to define 

precisely what minimum level of destructive capability they judged 

necessary for deterrence. The Government however thinks it right now 

to make clear that its concept of deterrence is concerned essentially with 

posing a potential threat to key aspects of Soviet state power. There might 

with changing conditions be more than one way of doing this, and some 

flexibility in contingency planning is appropriate. It would not be helpful 

to deterrence to define particular options further. The Government, 

however, regards the considerations noted in paragraphs 10 and 11 above 

as important factors in deciding the scale of capability we need.
273

 The reference to posing a threat to “key aspects of Soviet state 

power” is worth noting since it signalled, even if lightly and 

indirectly, a new strand of thought in official utterances on strategic 

nuclear issues. The phrase was intended to imply targeting concepts 

which, while still countervalue and not promising to exempt cities or 

in particular Moscow, would not be exclusively or primarily directed 

at the destruction of cities. The impulse behind this was ethical, 

and reflected in some degree vigorous public debate in Britain on 

the moral tolerability of striking at populations. It was recognized 

within Government defence circles that Polaris―with high-yield 

warheads, not independently targetable, and mediocre accuracy―

was not well-suited to providing more discriminate options, but that 

more flexible options might become available with the advent of 

Trident. Considerations of this kind continued to be voiced internally 

from time to time, but nothing further was said publicly, and it is 

not known outside Government how much adjustment of planning 

resulted.

AFTER THE COLD WAR

 Since the end of the Cold War, there has been little debate about 

the United Kingdom’s strategic nuclear capability. The capital 

investment in the Trident force was well-advanced by 1989, and 

nearing full commitment by the time the Soviet Union broke up. 

Argument over whether the United Kingdom should remain in the 

nuclear-deterrence business at all―against what possible adversaries, 

with what targeting concept―could have been stimulated afresh, but 

it had lost the impulsion of large savings available to be made or of 

new decisions forced upon public attention. Despite the longstanding 

antinuclear tradition on the Left, the incoming Labour Government 

excluded the Trident force (as it did no other component of the 

defence programme) from reexamination in its 1998 Strategic Defence 

Review. The Government, continuing the preceding Conservative 

government’s initiatives without elaborating on strategic rationale, 

announced a reduction in the force’s holding of operational warheads 

to 200 or less, with no more than one boatload of 48 warheads (that 

is, an average of three per missile) to be at sea at any one time. In 
274

addition, the Government completed the phasing out of all other 

nuclear-weapon capabilities, and is configuring the Trident force to 

provide “substrategic” options. This has been conjectured to mean 

that some missiles might have only a single warhead, and that 

warhead might have reduced explosive yield.

 The United Kingdom has declared, as have the United States 

and Russia, that its remaining nuclear weapons are not in normally 

targeted at anyone. No indication has been given of how they might 

be targeted―at what adversaries, against what types of objective―in 

time of crisis. Considerations of sparing populations that emerged in 

the 1980s are surely still prominent, but nothing has been said or is 

to be expected. It is likely that UK Governments would regard that 

as now even less necessary, and even more undesirable, than it was 

thought during most of the Cold War. “[I]t has been the preference of 

Governments to allow [adversaries] to draw their own conclusions 

rather than to describe precisely what our plans and capability would 

be in terms of targeting policy.”1

 There is no basis for speculation on 

what contingency planning may secretly be undertaken within the 

Ministry of Defence or operational headquarters. It is possible, given 

now the very general “to-whom-it-may-concern” character of UK 

nuclear deterrence, that there is currently little or no such planning 

in specific terms.2

ENDNOTES - CHAPTER 9

1. Ministry of Defence witness in evidence to House of Commons Defence 

Committee, November 4, 1980.

2. Under the “30-year rule” applying to the release of most categories of UK 

Government papers, files relating to the period up to the end of 1972 are available 

(though still with significant exceptions on continuing security grounds) in the 

National Archives. For most of this early period, the survey in this chapter draws 

extensively on the study of the files reflected in “Ambiguity and Deterrence: British 

Nuclear Strategy 1945-1964” by Professor John Baylis, Oxford: Clarendon Press, 

1995. It is indebted also to the recollections of Mr. Peter Hudson, who occupied 

senior planning posts in the Air Ministry. UK strategic nuclear targeting policy 

beyond the 1960s is little discussed in the open literature, and, because of the 

sustained reticence of successive Governments, such material as exists is mostly 

either speculation or based on sources of uncertain authenticity. There is, however, 

a useful survey in Professor Lawrence Freedman, “British Nuclear Targeting,” in 

Strategic Nuclear Targeting, Ball and Richelson, eds., Ithaca, NY: Cornell University 

Press, 1986, pp. 109-126.
PART III

MOVING BEYOND MAD

277

CHAPTER 10

SMALL NUCLEAR POWERS

Mark T. Clark

INTRODUCTION

 Why might it be useful to examine how small nuclear powers 

(SNPs) consider nuclear deterrence and use? Much of the burgeoning 

literature on SNPs is concerned primarily with the effects on nuclear 

proliferation. It focuses on how the behavior of SNPs (testing, 

development, deployment, and nuclear trade) may adversely affect 

the antiproliferation norms, treaties, and regimes established over 

the last 30 years. The new domino theory addresses how SNPs may 

encourage or compel other states to acquire or develop nuclear 

weapons. As important as that literature is, however, deterrence 

failures would have more catastrophic effects. This chapter evaluates 

how SNPs may use nuclear weapons for deterrence and, should 

deterrence break down, in actual military operations. The four SNPs 

under consideration here are Israel, India, Pakistan and South Africa 

(while it had them).

 Most of the remaining literature assumes that SNPs adhere 

to a similar deterrence policy. While not always specific, the 

assumption seems to be that SNPs must have developed a variation 

on a minimum deterrence policy, based on a smaller, more limited 

version of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD), a mini-MAD.1

 Since 

SNPs invariably have relatively small nuclear arsenals, or at least 

small in comparison to superpower arsenals or second tier nuclear 

powers like France, Britain, and China, they are constrained to adopt 

a mini-MAD deterrent. That is, they have adopted nuclear policies 

that demand countervalue, city-busting targeting simply as a last 

resort, if even that. Some suggest that the mere possession of nuclear 

weapons by a SNP confers “existential deterrence,” a de facto 

deterrence realized through the mere potential for, or possession of, 

nuclear weapons.
278

 Uncritical acceptance of the idea of mini-MAD produces 

myopia about how SNPs may use nuclear weapons. Oddly enough, 

deterrence theorists who hold to some form of MAD may be too 

optimistic about the improbability of war, precisely because of 

its potential catastrophic consequences. The opposite approach, 

believing that war is inevitable and will entail nuclear warfighting, 

produces its own myopia about how SNPs consider nuclear 

deterrence. A better approach to the subject is based on prudence. 

As Owen Harries noted some time ago:

Both a consistent worst-case and a consistent best-case mentality interfere 

with the ability to see things as they are. But there is a difference. The 

characteristic error associated with the former is the taking of unnecessary 

measures to meet problems which do not arise (though, even then, there 

is always the question of whether they would have arisen had not action 

been taken). The characteristic error associated with best-case thinking, 

on the other hand, is the failure to take measures to cope with problems 

that do arise [emphasis in original]. The first is likely to be wasteful; the 

latter may be fatal.2

 MAD may have problems when applied to SNPs. Assured 

Destruction (AD), as viewed by Robert McNamara during the 1960s, 

imposed fairly heavy requirements for nuclear forces in deterring 

a Soviet attack. U.S. nuclear forces were required to absorb a wellexecuted surprise attack and respond with unacceptable damage on 

the Soviet Union. That level of unacceptable damage was calculated 

to be the destruction of nearly 50 percent of Soviet industry and 

casualties of up to 25 percent of the Soviet population. The calculus 

of damage was based on the United States having 400 equivalent 

megatons available for delivery on Soviet cities after degradation 

from the surprise attack and accounting for the reliability of 

delivery systems and their ability to penetrate Soviet defenses. 

AD was mutualized (MAD) for similar levels of destruction on 

both sides. However, it is unlikely SNPs will ever get to those 

levels of destruction. Even in the worst case of an all-out IndianPakistan nuclear exchange, terrible as it would surely be, the level of 

destruction fails to come even remotely close to the expected level of 

destruction under MAD.3

 Deterrence policies have another problem. States that announce 

a deterrence policy do so in order to convince their opponents not 
279

to initiate war in the first place. That is to say, deterrence is largely 

a psychological phenomenon.4 However, deterrence policies are 

public declaratory policies, and often differ substantially from the 

targeting plans a military force develops for the use of nuclear 

weapons in war (the action or employment plans). For instance, late 

in the Johnson administration, after McNamara had enshrined MAD 

as U.S. policy, only about 7 percent of U.S. nuclear weapons were 

targeted on Soviet cities.5 In other words, despite the public rhetoric 

about destroying tens or hundreds of Soviet cities in a nuclear 

annihilation, Soviet cities were (a) only a small fraction of the target 

set, and (b) targets of last resort. There are good reasons to believe 

that SNPs are struggling with the same gap between their public 

policies and their internal military plans.

 While commentators frequently acknowledge that it is too 

simplistic to impose Cold War ideas of nuclear deterrence on emerging 

nuclear powers, it is a hard habit to shake. Viewing SNPs through the 

prism of MAD and/or related deterrence ideas has its problems. Such 

theories tend to be deductive in form.6 Theories of deterrence hold 

axiomatically to the Rational Actor assumption about state behavior 

and choices with respect to nuclear weapons. Rationality assumes a 

pure “cost/benefit” analysis with perfect information that ignores 

or downplays individual differences among states.7

 According 

to “rationality” in deterrence theory, the costs of nuclear use will 

always outweigh any conceivable gains. While not disparaging 

of the utility of such an assumption, by definition it ignores how 

individual state leaders, bureaucracies, beliefs, and ideologies shape 

nuclear strategies. Indeed, it imposes a uniform calculus on very 

different actors with very different strategic “personalities.”8 Further, 

an assumption of rationality is, by definition, not necessarily true. 

The criterion for employing such theoretical assumptions is whether 

they are useful. The usefulness of the assumption of rationality has 

been challenged.9

 If it is problematic to view SNPs through the prism of western 

deterrence theory, it is not a problem that SNPs make, though they 

make a share of their own. Frequently, analysts, politicians, and 

strategists for SNPs assure us that they have learned much from our 

literature and experience, and will not make similar “mistakes.” It 
280

therefore behooves us to first understand how policymakers in SNP 

countries understand themselves, their deterrence requirements, 

and their articulation of plans. 

 The approach taken here is primarily inductive rather than 

deductive. A series of questions guides the review of how SNPs are 

talking about themselves, their deterrence requirements, and their 

deterrence postures. The questions are designed to tease out the 

different ideas SNPs have considered in designing their deterrence 

preferences. Rather than assuming a uniform deterrence calculus 

based on “rationality,” this approach tries to capture the preferred 

values that key policymakers and military strategists see for their 

own nuclear forces.

The questions are:

How do SNPs perceive their own views on deterrence and nuclear use? 

What kind of deterrence doctrine, if any, has been publicly established?

Does the emerging SNP literature on nuclear weapons envision a 

continuum for nuclear weapons use? If so, what is it?

What are the threats to the SNPs, and how do those threats impact the 

development of nuclear weapons? 

Does it matter whether a particular state has civilian or military control 

over nuclear weapons?

What are the research and development trends for the delivery of nuclear 

weapons that may signal changes in deterrence posture?

The results of this study are suggestive, not conclusive. This is 

due in no small measure to the absence of enough data to make 

determinations with a high degree of certainty. Another difference 

from the Cold War is found here. During the Cold War, the data on 

the respective arsenals, the doctrines that guided them, and public 

declaratory statements (along with publicly available records on 

arms production at least for the United States), made calculations of 

the deterrence relationship fairly simple. If that seems odd, given the 

enormity of the nuclear arsenals and variety of delivery systems of 

the United States and the Soviet Union during the Cold War, consider 

that with the exception of the Republic of South Africa, we have no 

certain data on the number of nuclear weapons by the other three 

SNPs considered here. Debate still rages over how many weapons, 

if actually produced and weaponized, are deliverable. Moreover, 
281

the delivery systems for the most part are far less advanced, and 

their reliabilities therefore are more difficult to calculate. Only 

India published a draft nuclear doctrine and subsequently an 

“operationalized” nuclear doctrine, but it contradicts its officially 

declared deterrence policy. Israel’s official nuclear policy remains 

opaque. Finally, whereas Pakistan’s nuclear policy is India-centric, 

India argues that its nuclear forces are primarily for China; Israel 

has―and South Africa had―no nuclear neighbors. There can be no 

mutuality (the M in MAD) without nuclear neighbors.

 Nonetheless, some hypotheses may be proposed. First, it seems 

clear that these four SNPs all hold to a richer view of nuclear deterrence than a simple mini-MAD deterrent theory suggests. Second, 

all four see a use for nuclear weapons that is at least as broad as that 

viewed by the superpowers during the Cold War, though adapted 

to local conditions. Third, all have some idea of how they might use 

nuclear weapons on the battlefield, or at least have considered their 

use. This last hypothesis most directly contradicts the mini-MAD 

deterrence paradigm. While it does not prove that SNPs will use 

nuclear weapons on the battlefield, or that deterrence will necessarily 

break down, it at least suggests that Western observers ought not 

ignore how SNPs view themselves. In crises, political leaders tend 

to turn to those ideas and habits developed in calmer times. There is 

little to suggest that SNPs would do otherwise.

It does suggest, however, that non-nuclear powers should look 

skeptically on the acquisition of nuclear weapons. While some 

deterrence theorists argue that acquiring nuclear weapons brings 

greater security and peace of mind, the short history of small 

nuclear powers tells a different story. Acquiring nuclear weapons 

means acquiring a whole host of new problems, even greater than 

the problems of not having them. Trying to figure out how to secure 

them, use them, or lose them are among only a few of the numerous 

problems that attend such weapons. More importantly, having 

nuclear weapons means having to consider how to defend against 

them, and how to rebuild society should deterrence fail; neither 

consideration is easy.
282

THE REPUBLIC OF SOUTH AFRICA

 The Republic of South Africa’s (RSA) nuclear program is an 

oddity in international politics. It remains the only state that 

developed nuclear weapons and subsequently dismantled them.10

Though there is still debate on exactly when the RSA decided to 

produce militarily useful nuclear weapons (sometime in the early to 

mid-1970s), there is no doubt as to when it officially gave them up. 

By all official accounts, the RSA completely dismantled its nuclear 

weapons and related infrastructure by June 1991. On July 10, 1991, 

the RSA acceded to the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of nuclear 

weapons (NPT), and by September 16, signed full-scopes safeguards 

with the International Atomic Energy Agency (IAEA). For many, 

RSA’s actions are a model for reversing proliferation.11

 Scholars debate why the RSA got into the nuclear business.12

Some argue that the RSA’s security situation is sufficient to explain 

its decision. Others believe that the regime’s internal weaknesses also 

contributed. Still others argue that nuclear capability development 

was based on Pretoria’s belief that South Africa was part of the 

western European security culture. When Europe and America 

began to distance themselves from South Africa’s apartheid policies, 

the regime’s sense of insecurity increased dramatically. Without 

settling the differences in scholarly approaches to the subject, or the 

peculiar theories employed to prove them, it is sufficient to note that 

all of the factors above helped shape the regime’s decision. 

 The mid-1970s were troubling for South Africa. The security 

situation of South Africa grew more complicated when Portugal 

withdrew from Africa after the 1974 Lisbon coup. Subsequently, 

communist governments emerged in Angola and Mozambique. At 

the same time, western governments began disassociating themselves from the RSA’s policy of apartheid, particularly the United 

States, under the administration of President Jimmy Carter. Finally, 

Soviet support for regional enemies through the use of proxy forces 

rattled Pretoria’s leadership as well. Former State President of South 

Africa Mr. F. W. de Klerk testified:

The decision to develop this limited [nuclear] capability was taken . . . 

against the backdrop of a Soviet expansionist threat in Southern Africa, 

as well as prevailing uncertainty concerning the designs of the Warsaw 

Pact members.
283

The build-up of the Cuban forces in Angola from 1975 onwards 

reinforced the perception that a deterrent was necessary, as did South 

Africa’s relative international isolation and the fact that it could not rely 

on outside assistance should it be attacked.13

 By the late 1980s, however, South Africa’s security situation 

had improved considerably. De Klerk noted that when he became 

president in 1989, a cease-fire in Angola had been agreed upon. 

In December 1988, a tripartite UN agreement provided for the 

withdrawal of 50,000 Cuban troops from Angola. And, finally, 

the Cold War began winding down with the destruction of the 

Berlin Wall and the collapse of the Warsaw Pact. As de Klerk’s 

administration began reforming its policy of apartheid and sought 

greater cooperation with neighboring African states, it determined 

that “a nuclear deterrent had become not only superfluous but, in 

fact, an obstacle to the development of South Africa’s international 

relations.”14

 In 1993, de Klerk testified to Parliament of South Africa’s 

secret nuclear weapons program. He indicated that the RSA had 

dismantled its nuclear weapons program and acceded to both the 

NPT and IAEA inspections. The RSA’s original nuclear objective 

had been to develop seven nuclear devices, though only six were 

developed by the time the decision was made to dismantle them. 

De Clerk also averred that no advanced nuclear weapons, such as 

thermonuclear devices, had ever been developed. He also spelled 

out the RSA’s limited nuclear deterrence policy. In the event of a 

dire threat to South Africa’s existence, the RSA would confidentially 

inform the major powers, presumably including the United States, 

of its nuclear program in order to elicit (or provoke) intervention on 

its behalf.15

 Waldo Stumpf, director of the RSA’s Atomic Energy Corporation, 

explained the three phases of the nuclear deterrent policy: 

Phase I: Strategic ambiguity. The RSA would develop its indigenous 

nuclear weapons and prepare for any contingency, and would neither 

confirm nor deny its capability.

Phase II: Covert acknowledgement. Should the situation deteriorate 

significantly, say by threats to South Africa’s territory by Warsaw Pact 
284

countries through surrogate Cuban forces, the RSA would consider 

covertly acknowledging its nuclear deterrent to international powers, 

particularly the U.S.A.

Phase III: Overt acknowledgement. Should covert acknowledgement fail 

to induce or provoke a major power to intervene on behalf of the RSA, 

the government would consider publicly acknowledging its nuclear 

deterrent or demonstrating it by an underground nuclear test.16

This “strategy” seems to have evolved from an ambiguous three-fold 

recommendation by a key military adviser to then Defense Minister 

P. W. Botha in mid-1978. Botha had requested a study on nuclear 

deterrence by South African Defense Force (SADF) Chief of Staff for 

Planning, Army Brigadier John Huyser.17

 The actual “strategy” was a bit more nuanced. In 1983, Andre 

Buys, a senior scientist with Armaments Corporation (Armscor), 

chaired a working group of senior scientists and politicians. The 

group conducted war games, reviewed deterrence literature, and 

developed a nuclear doctrine. Phase I remained the same. However, 

Phase II included not only privately acknowledging RSA’s nuclear 

deterrent, but also inviting scientists of the skeptical countries 

to privately examine its nuclear weapons capability and, if the 

guests remained skeptical, threaten to detonate a nuclear device 

underground. Phase III was the most ambitious, involving three 

steps itself. The first step would be to publicly declare its nuclear 

deterrent or conduct an underground test. The second step, should 

the first fail to elicit the desired response, would be to detonate a 

nuclear weapon 1,000 kilometers south over the ocean. The last 

step, if all else failed, would be to threaten to use nuclear weapons 

tactically on the battlefield.18

 Senior RSA officials declared that in actual practice the RSA never 

got―nor ever intended to get―beyond Phase I.19 They argue that the 

only reason for the weapons in the first place was for deterrence, 

however ambiguously defined. Most admitted that the actual use 

of nuclear weapons would be suicidal, politically and militarily, 

since the Soviet Union could have responded with a devastating 

riposte.20 Some scholars believe the weapons were simply for 

blackmail diplomacy, designed solely to keep the West, especially 

the United States, in place as an ally in the event of dire emergency. 
285

To support their contention, they point out that the weapons were 

never deployed militarily or integrated into the country’s military 

doctrine.21 As importantly, Buys mentioned that he and the other 

Armscor scientists who developed the bomb and recommended 

its strategy were aware of the allegations that Israel used nuclear 

weapons during the 1973 Yom Kippur War in order to obtain U.S. 

assistance. According to one scholar, Buys later wrote:

[The Armscor working group was] aware of the alleged use by Israel 

of its nuclear capability . . . during the 1973 war. We had no proof that 

this was factual. . . . The allegation probably subconsciously influenced 

our thinking. We argued that if we cannot use a nuclear weapon on the 

battlefield (as this would have been suicidal), then the only possible way 

to use it would be to leverage intervention from the Western Power by 

threatening to use it. We thought that this might work and the alleged 

Israel-U.S. case gave some support to our view.22

Still another scholar of South Africa’s nuclear program believed that 

South Africa’s nuclear weapons “were developed without a strategic 

rationale.”23

 The threats to South Africa were amorphous; its possible 

nuclear targets were hard to imagine. South Africa had no nuclear 

neighbors. Its defense forces could defeat any conceivable invasion 

threat conventionally, even an improbable Soviet invasion force 

of airborne, air assault, and naval infantry forces. General Jan 

Geldenhuys, chief of the South African Defense Forces (SADF) from 

1985 to 1990, testified that he saw no need for nuclear deterrence 

because such threats to invade were seen as slight probabilities.24

About the only conceivable targets were nearby cities and Soviet 

naval forces offshore, since South Africa lacked capability to strike 

any targets at very great range.25

ISRAEL

 Israel’s nuclear policies are sui generis. From the beginning, Israel 

has kept its nuclear program a tightly held secret, even among its 

political leadership.26 Its nuclear program was born and developed 

at a time when Arab states backed by the Soviet Union posed threats 

to its existence. As importantly, Israel has kept its nuclear posture 
286

opaque to foreign observation and inspection. Observers have called 

it a policy of “deliberate ambiguity” or one of “opacity,” though a 

better description may be that its nuclear program is “translucent.” 

Enough is known about Israel’s nuclear capability to conclude that 

it provides credible deterrence, but without enough certainty to 

provoke unwanted reactions. 

 Unlike other small nuclear powers, Israel has never given any 

official declaration of its nuclear policies. In fact, according to most 

scholars, by remaining ambiguous about its nuclear arsenal―as 

well as any nuclear targeting plans or nuclear doctrine―Israel reaps 

most of the rewards of a declared nuclear deterrent but avoids its 

costs.27 The reward of translucence is existential deterrence; that 

is, the deterrence of a major Arab invasion of Israel proper. The 

costs of going public, however, could be heavy. They could include 

forcing the United States to reverse its nonproliferation policy or 

to distance itself from Israel and perhaps compel Israel to disarm. 

An announcement might also propel Arab states to overtly pursue 

nuclear weapons.

 Given Israel’s deliberate ambiguity, its nuclear doctrine and 

plans for nuclear use must be inferred from circumstantial evidence. 

Despite this, a number of scholars of Israel’s strategic deterrent are 

adamant that the only purpose for Israel’s nuclear weapons are for 

weapons of last resort―that is, a mini-MAD deterrent.28 Others see 

more subtlety to its putative doctrine, including the use of nuclear 

weapons diplomatically, politically, and militarily, as well as a last 

resort.29 The available evidence suggests that however deficient 

Israeli official policy pronouncements may be, the latter seems more 

realistic.

 Of all small nuclear powers, Israel’s nuclear capabilities are 

the most robust, advanced, and diverse. The U.S. intelligence 

community suspected Israel of having some 25 nuclear weapons by 

the early 1980s. To the community’s surprise, evidence from a walkin defector, either an Israeli scientist or technician, gave the United 

States its first look inside the Israeli nuclear production facility at 

Dimona some 5 years before the defection of Mordechai Vanunu. It is 

reported that the walk-in had photographs that suggested Israel had 

more than four times the original estimate, some 100 nuclear bombs, 

and that Israel had a very sophisticated program far more advanced 
287

than originally believed. More importantly, the data the defector 

brought with him about the delivery systems suggested that Israel 

could deliver nuclear warheads with accuracies that were the equal 

of anything the United States or the Soviet Union had.30 If close to 

true, it is fairly remarkable. In the early 1980s the United States was 

capable of delivering nuclear warheads to within a hundred meters 

of its intended target at intercontinental ranges, and to within tens of 

meters at intermediate ranges.31

 By the mid-1980s, the Israeli program had advanced even 

further. According to a 1986 article in the London Sunday Times, a 

technician from Dimona―Mordechai Vanunu―provided evidence 

and photographs of the Israeli program. According to the expose, 

Vanunu’s data indicated that Israel had about 200 nuclear warheads, 

with boosted fission devices and the capability for thermonuclear 

weapons. Some weapons were considered to be capable of several 

hundred kilotons of explosive power. Further, other scientists who 

evaluated the evidence believed Israel was capable of building 

neutron bombs (enhanced radiation warheads) and suggested that 

Israel had F-16 deliverable warheads and warheads that could fit 

on its Jericho missile system. Finally, Vanunu’s product showed that 

Israel’s underground plutonium separation facility produced several 

times more plutonium than originally thought. The sophisticated 

designs revealed in the photographs suggested that Israel may be 

capable of building nuclear bombs with as little as 4 kilograms of 

plutonium, which increased the estimates of Israeli stockpiles.32

Israel has fairly sophisticated delivery systems. According to 

widely acknowledged sources, Israel originally designed its longrange delivery system around the F-4.33 Since then its strategic 

delivery systems have come to include the F-16, F-15, Jericho I and II 

ballistic missiles, and a variation on a cruise missile launched from 

a submarine. Notably, the Jericho II is considered to be essentially a 

knockoff or replica of the U.S. Pershing II missile deployed in Europe 

in the early 1980s. The Jericho II has an inertial guidance system, 

an advanced radar terminal guidance system, elements of a solid 

fuel propellant, and the shell of the missile itself.34 The testing and 

development of the Jericho II in the late 1980s prompted Moscow to 

warn Israel that it posed a direct threat to the Soviet Union.35 As Table 

1 shows, Israel has a robust Triad of nuclear delivery systems. 
288

Delivery system IOC Range 

Air-based F-16 A/B/C/D/I 1980 1,600 km

F-15 I 1998 4,450 km

Land-based Lance (tactical use only) 1975 130 km

Jericho I 1972 1,200 km

Jericho II 1984-1985 1,800-4,000 km

Sea-based Dolphin-class submarine 2000-2000 350-1,500 km

―Popeye Turbo SLCM

Table 1. Israel’s Tactical and Strategic Forces.36

 Israel also has its own space-based satellite reconnaissance 

capability, the Offeq satellite, launched aboard the Shavit Space 

Launch Vehicle (SLV). Many believe that the first two stages of the 

Shavit SLV make up the Jericho II missile. The Shavit’s capabilities 

are robust, and if deployed as a ballistic missile, it is capable of 

delivering a 775 kg payload a distance of some 4,000 km. Such 

a range provides the Israelis with coverage for the entire Middle 

East/Persian Gulf region, as well as a large part of the former Soviet 

Union.37

 Israel’s quest for nuclear weapons began in earnest during the 

1950s. The Warsaw Pact, via Czechoslovakia, provided Egypt with 

a substantial arms package in 1955. Although Israel began nuclear 

energy research in 1948, the failure of Israel’s allies in the 1956 

crisis, coupled with an implicit Soviet nuclear threat,38 convinced 

Israeli leaders they could not rely on others for their security. It 

was not until 1967, just 2 weeks before the 6-Day War, that Israel 

manufactured its first crude, undeliverable nuclear weapon.39 By 

1973, Israel had the capability of targeting its Arab enemies with the 

Jericho I missile and F-4 Phantom fighter aircraft. In fact, during the 

Yom Kippur War, Israel reportedly alerted its nuclear forces on two 

separate occasions.40 The first alert reportedly occurred during the 

early phase of the war when Israeli leaders doubted whether Israel 

could survive the Arab attack. The second occurred soon after a 

report (later deemed false) of nuclear-tipped SCUD missiles being 

sent to Egypt. 

 Since these events are not publicly documented in Israel, there 

remains some doubt as to their exact details. Israelis familiar with 
289

the alerts maintain they were simply to prevent their nuclear forces 

from being overrun by advancing Arab armies. Other officials 

maintain that the alerts were designed to catch the attention of 

either Soviet or American reconnaissance satellites, and so provide 

implicit warning to both the Soviet Union as well as the Arab armies, 

particularly Egypt’s, of Israeli nuclear capabilities. Still others believe 

Israel demonstrated its resolve to U.S. officials in order to elicit U.S. 

intervention on its behalf with conventional munitions.41 Egyptian 

officials acknowledge that Soviet officials warned them of Israel’s 

alert, but emphasize it did not change their military plans. 

 Analysts believe that for years Israel considered the Soviet 

Union the biggest threat to its existence.42 Israeli officials believed 

that without Soviet support, no alliance of Arab armies would dare 

threaten―or would be capable of threatening―to invade Israel and 

wipe it out. Thus, early in its nuclear history Israel wanted the 

capability to target the Soviet Union. By various accounts, Israel had a 

rudimentary capability to attack the Soviet Union by the early 1970s, 

though whether the capability was conventional or unconventional 

remains unclear.43 When the Israeli Air Force received U.S.-made F16s in the early 1980s, its capability for striking the southern Soviet 

Union with aerial refueling increased dramatically, though many 

doubted whether Israeli aircraft could have penetrated Soviet air 

defenses. By the late 1980s, with the initial testing of the Jericho II, 

Israel began to acquire increased capability to attack the Soviet 

Union, a threat which Soviet leaders clearly understood. The missile 

was not deployed operationally until 1994, however, too late for the 

Gulf War or for countering the Soviet threat. 

 Throughout this period, Israel’s strategic forces were vulnerable 

to Soviet―later Russian―nuclear strikes. As recently as 1997, 

overhead imagery of the Jericho II missile base at Zachariah, located 

several miles southeast of Tel Aviv, showed that it was vulnerable to 

Russian and Chinese missiles, as well as to crudely-aimed, nucleartipped ballistic missiles by other powers. Apparently, there are 

no silos for the missiles on the lightly armored transporters, only 

shallow caves in limestone. According to analysis for Jane’s: 

[A missile containing a] 20 kiloton warhead detonated 2,200 [meters] 

above and 1,000 [meters] away from its intended target within Zachariah, 

the surface target would still sustain severe damage from heat, radiation, 
290

and blast effects. 2 kilometers from ground zero, the shock . . . would 

be powerful enough to destroy unreinforced buildings and unprotected 

TELs [transport-erector-launchers], while the thermal radiation . . . 

would be enough to ignite combustible materials. If the base were hit 

with missiles having the accuracy of the M-9 [Chinese missile with a 300 

meter accuracy], even reinforced underground caves would be seriously 

damaged by a ground burst.44

Close to Zachariah are a number of underground bunkers believed to 

house nuclear weapons for Israel’s nuclear-capable Air Force units. 

The problem according to the report above is that because Israel’s 

strategic assets remain vulnerable, analysts believe Israel must have 

adopted a doctrine of preemption, knowing full well that it had 

“use-it or lose-it” forces.45 Recent improvements in its passive and 

active defenses, including Arrow missile defenses, may help some, 

but probably not enough against very long range ballistic missiles.46

 The threats to Israel’s existence have substantially changed since 

the beginning of its nuclear program. It seems clear that Israel’s 

conventional superiority, backed by nuclear prowess, has stymied 

threats to Israel’s existence from a combined Arab assault through 

conventional means. And after the collapse of the Soviet Union, 

any similar coalition would be without a superpower patron. 

However, Israel’s predominance has not precluded what scholars 

call the stability/instability paradox. Though Israel enjoys stability 

against a major conventional threat to its existence, it does not enjoy 

such stability at lower levels of conflict. For example, the intifada

has increased suicide bombing inside Israel. Despite the change in 

the overall threat, there has been no discernible change to Israel’s 

nuclear posture.

 No certainty may be given to Israel’s nuclear doctrine. If one 

exists, it is known among the political elite and remains a closely 

held secret. Some scholars argue that the doctrine must be one of 

last resort (i.e., a mini-MAD) for a variety of reasons. It has been 

called by a number of observers the “Samson Option,” based on the 

Biblical hero Samson who uses his strength to take out his Philistine 

captors. It stands in contrast to Masada, where several hundred 

Israelites preferred suicide to Roman conquest.47 Some observers 

believe only in the “Samson Option” because it is impossible for 
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them to conceive that anyone could think otherwise about nuclear 

use.48 Others believe it is so because nuclear forces have never been 

integrated into Israeli military training, or publicly into its military 

doctrine.49 The problem with that view is that many Israeli military 

officers did their training in the United States, where U.S. forces 

were trained for tactical use of nuclear forces in crowded Europe.

 Israel must have given some thought to nuclear use below the 

threshold of “existential” threats.50 Some Israelis are concerned that 

under certain conditions, its threat of countervalue attacks (miniMAD) may not be credible.51 In addition, because Israel’s nuclear 

arsenal is far more robust, diverse, and advanced than seems 

necessary for last resort alone, it is likely that Israeli leaders considered 

battlefield use of tactical nuclear weapons. Indeed, the only purpose 

for enhanced radiation warheads―if they truly exist―is for use in 

crowded conditions to keep collateral damage to a minimum.52 The 

Lance, Jericho I, F-16, and submarine-launched nuclear forces may be 

configured for in-theater use against a combined-arms offensive. 

 Between nuclear warfighting and as weapons of last resort, there 

are a number of other uses for Israel’s nuclear arsenal:

 1. To deter a large conventional attack;

 2. To deter all levels of unconventional (chemical, biological, nuclear) 

attacks;

 3. To preempt enemy nuclear attacks;

 4. To support conventional preemption against enemy nuclear 

assets;

 5. To support conventional preemption against enemy non-nuclear 

(conventional, chemical, biological) assets;

 6. For nuclear warfighting;

 7. The “Samson Option” (last resort).53

It is also argued that, given Israel’s spectacular 1981 raid on the 

Osiraq nuclear reactor in Baghdad, it actively supports a policy of 

conventional, if not nuclear, preemption of emerging Arab nuclear 

capabilities.

 Others have added that Israel’s nuclear arsenal may be used as 

leverage to keep the United States interested in Israel’s survival. 

It was reportedly used in this way during the Yom Kippur War.54

South African nuclear scientists and strategists believed that this 
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was Israel’s motivation when they prepared South Africa’s nuclear 

policy.55 They believed that Israel’s potential for massive retaliation 

in the Yom Kippur War provoked the United States to provide 

Israel with the conventional arms and diplomatic support needed 

to preclude Israel’s destruction. Whether the Israelis purposely 

intended their alerts to result in U.S. intervention in the Yom Kippur 

War, or whether this was an unintended, but welcome, result 

remains unclear.

INDIA

 Of all SNPs, India’s nuclear policy has been the most publicly 

discussed. A little more than a year after India tested nuclear 

weapons at Pokhran, an unofficial version of a nuclear doctrine was 

reported. On August 17, 1999, Indian National Security Adviser 

Brajesh Mishra announced the Draft Report of the National Security 

Advisory Board on Indian Nuclear Doctrine.56 The draft Indian 

nuclear doctrine called for several things:

• A minimum credible deterrent force based on adequate 

retaliatory capability, should deterrence fail;

• A dynamic configuration of its nuclear arsenal, based on 

changes in India’s strategic environment, technological 

capabilities, and national interests;

• A design for “punitive retaliation” using nuclear weapons in 

the event of any nuclear attack on India;

• A nuclear force “based on a triad of aircraft, mobile landbased missiles and sea-based assets,” that are to be survivable, 

“enhanced by a combination of multiple redundant systems, 

mobility, dispersion and deception;”

• A shift from peacetime deployment to fully employable 

nuclear forces in the shortest possible time;

• A robust and survivable command, control, communications, 

computing, intelligence and information (C4I2) system, with 

release authority in the hands of the Prime Minister or his 

designated successor(s);
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• A no first use pledge; and

• A well-maintained and “highly effective conventional 

military capabilit[y]” to raise the threshold for the outbreak of 

conflict, whether nuclear or conventional.

The draft report was promulgated to encourage public debate over 

India’s nuclear doctrine, but no public debate occurred. By early 

2003, India announced its official “operationalized” nuclear doctrine, 

differing very little from the draft version. In it, India added that it 

would retaliate massively against any nuclear assault on its armed 

forces, or any chemical or biological attack against India or its armed 

forces.57

 The draft nuclear doctrine was heralded by Indian officials for 

its remarkable display of restraint in the teeth of its nuclear-armed 

neighbors.58 The doctrine’s no first use (NFU) pledge indicated 

that India was willing to absorb a first strike before retaliating and 

that India’s resulting nuclear posture should therefore not provoke 

an arms race. However, as many Indian and non-Indian scholars 

have noted, the draft and final doctrine are ambiguous documents. 

The Advisory Board that promulgated the draft doctrine held no 

official standing in the Indian government. Its committee members 

consisted of former diplomats, bureaucrats, and chiefs of the three 

military services. Members’ ideologies reflect the whole spectrum of 

thinking on nuclear policy, from “disarmament doves” to “nuclear 

warfighting hawks.”59 It is no wonder that many people see in the 

doctrine what they want to see.

 Few seem to agree what the doctrine means.60 Even among 

scholars at India’s oldest defense think tank, the Institute for 

Defence Studies and Analysis, there is no consensus.61 The doctrine 

expressly calls for deterrence by the threat of punitive retaliation. 

However, one scholar argues that the doctrine reflects a strategy 

of deterrence by denial.62 According to another scholar, there is a 

problem. Deterrence by denial is a doctrine for nuclear warfighting, 

a doctrine that he claims is impossible for a SNP. He argues that 

even deterrence based on the punishment that SNPs could inflict 

would be difficult to gauge against larger nuclear powers. Thus, he 

believes that India’s nuclear doctrine is better suited for a policy of 
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“existential deterrence;” that is, deterrence by the threat of a small, 

survivable nuclear retaliatory force.63 Yet a third scholar argues that 

India’s nuclear doctrine only looks like it is primarily countervalue 

because the nuclear forces are so small.64 One acerbic commentator, 

retired Rear Admiral of the Indian Navy Raja Menon, argues “in 

India scholars define their idea of deterrence against China and 

Pakistan with no scientific method and odd figures pulled out of a 

hat.”65

 As well, no one seems to agree on what state poses the biggest 

threat to India. It is not clear whether China, Pakistan, or the United 

States based in Diego Garcia, or some combination or all of the above, 

threatens Indian interests the most. For China,66 the 1995 Report of 

the Indian Parliamentary Committee on Defence is clear: 

China has also continued to be the main source of major weapons, 

including missiles and allied technology, to Pakistan, a very hostile 

neighbour, causing disquiet to India. Despite warming relations with 

China, China is, and is likely to remain, the primary security challenge 

to India in the medium and long terms. Its enhancement of missile 

capabilities and its immense help to Pakistan in the missile programme 

are serious security concerns to India.67

Others argue that the main threat is from Pakistan, and others 

include the United States.68 As recently as 1996, former Indian Prime 

Minister I. K. Gujral suggested the biggest threats emanated from 

both China and the United States:

In the east, there is China, a full-fledged nuclear power. In the south, 

there is Diego Garcia, a major American naval base for its nuclear 

submarines as well as aircraft carriers. In the west, the Gulf region is 

nuclearised by the United States. Is it possible for any government in 

India to remain indifferent to this gigantic array of nuclear arms across 

its eastern, southern, and western borders?69

Although it may seem irrelevant to nuclear deterrence, the shape 

and size of the nuclear arsenal, as well as the type of delivery systems, 

depend largely on the nature of the principal threats. As Indian 

scholars have noted, SNPs may be able to deter each other with very 

small though survivable nuclear arsenals, but deterring a larger 

power, not to mention a superpower, requires far more capability. 
295

Even so, whether SNPs can deter each other depends critically upon 

whether one or the other is a status quo or a revisionist power.70

India’s doctrine is ambiguous about how large its nuclear 

arsenal should become. The Indian government has given no public 

guidance. The draft doctrine simply left it open to the dynamics 

of evolving threats, technology, and India’s national interests. The 

formal doctrine says nothing. The suggested number of nuclear 

weapons varies considerably among analysts. Former Army Chief 

of Staff General Krishnaswami Sundarji argued for a relatively small 

nuclear force. He believed that to deter other SNPs, the arsenal 

should consist of about 20 warheads of 20 kilotons (KT) each; to 

deter larger nuclear powers (presumably China), an arsenal of 50 

warheads of 20 KT each should suffice.71 Others put the arsenal at 

anywhere from 100 to 400 nuclear weapons, though the precise 

configuration remains a mystery.72

The size of India’s current arsenal also remains unclear. Estimates 

vary from the low 30s, between 60-80, to as many as 150 nuclear 

weapons.73 In addition, there is little certainty about how advanced 

its weapons are. This problem stems from the series of nuclear 

tests done in May 1998. The Indian Atomic Energy Commission 

reported that this series of five nuclear tests involved both fission 

and fusion designs. On May 11, three nuclear devices were 

detonated simultaneously. Reportedly, one was a thermonuclear 

device at about 43-60 KT, another was a fission device at about 12 

KT, and still another a sub-kiloton device. Two days later, two more 

nuclear weapons were detonated simultaneously, both low-yield, 

sub-kiloton devices. A number of nuclear scientists believe that the 

largest explosions were much smaller, as much as by a factor of four, 

than reported by Indian scientists. Indeed, some believe that the 

thermonuclear device fizzled.74 Indian scientists reportedly answered 

the skeptics adequately.75 War gamers recently estimated that in allout countervalue exchanges, the respective arsenals of India and 

Pakistan may produce anywhere from hundreds of thousands to as 

many as 12 million deaths, with many more injured.76 Regardless, 

at the time many Indians celebrated the tests as a success. Prime 

Minister Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee exulted in Parliament that:

India is now a nuclear weapon state. This is a reality that cannot be 

denied. It is not a conferment that we seek; nor is it a status for others to 
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grant. It is an endowment to the nation by our scientists and engineers. It 

is India’s due, the right of one-sixth of human-kind.77

India’s weapon designs suggest a paradox. While India claims 

its nuclear doctrine is a minimum credible deterrence based on 

punitive retaliation, the tested devices suggest something quite 

different.78 One Indian scholar boasted that the tests demonstrated 

India’s ability to develop a “wide-ranging arsenal of low-yield, 

sub-kiloton nuclear munitions for artillery shells, boosted fission 

weapons, and city-busting thermonuclear weapons.”79 Sub-kiloton 

munitions for artillery rounds imply that Indian nuclear scientists 

have created battlefield nuclear weapons. Indeed, the “father” of 

India’s nuclear program, R. Chidambaram, indicated that the subkiloton devices were for tactical, battlefield use.80 Moreover, the 

Chairman of the Indian Atomic Energy Commission argued that 

Indian scientists were now capable of building enhanced radiation 

(neutron) warheads, though apparently there are no current plans to 

develop them.81

India’s nuclear delivery systems also support the thesis that 

India considered nuclear warfighting capabilities to be important. 

An Indian foreign ministry official revealed in 2000 that India’s 

no first use “policy does not mean India will not have a first-strike 

capability.”82 Analysts concede that India will not be able to field 

a truly effective triad for at least a decade or more. Since India’s 

nuclear-capable aircraft and current land-based missiles lack the 

reach to attack targets in eastern China, India may be pursuing an 

Intercontinental Ballistic Missile (ICBM) capability, based on either 

its Surya Space Launch Vehicle (SLV) or a new design. A sea-based 

ballistic missile may take longer still, despite the fact that almost 

everyone concedes they are the most stabilizing systems.83

In the interim, India has several options for delivery of nuclear 

weapons at short ranges, sufficient to target all of Pakistan and 

penetrate deeply into China. India’s nuclear weapons are deliverable 

mainly by aircraft, the Mirage 2000, MiG 27, and possibly the Su-30. 

Ballistic missiles have been produced as well for nuclear missions. 

Shorter range, nuclear-capable missiles include two types of the 

Prithvi with ranges of 150-250 km, and a potential sea-based Prithvi 

variant.84 More than any other system, the Prithvi causes Pakistan to 

disbelieve Indian strategists when they claim that China is their main 
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concern. India’s main intermediate missile, the Agni, is believed to 

have three variants with ranges of anywhere from 750 to 3,500 km. 

The first two have been tested. Whereas the Agni I was liquid-fueled 

and required at least a day or more preparation for launch, the Agni

II is based on solid-fuel propulsion and requires only 15 minutes 

preparation.

The Agni II, with an estimated range of about 2,500 km, is 

intriguing. It can carry a payload of about 1,000 kg, sufficient for 

a nuclear warhead. In addition, Indian scientists reported greatly 

increased accuracy with the Agni II, as much as by a factor of 

three or more. In fact, in one test of about 2,200 km in “operational 

configuration,” scientists claimed to have achieved an accuracy 

of 100 meters, and in another test, was reported to have achieved 

an accuracy of 40 meters.85 Such accuracies are unnecessary for 

countervalue, city-busting attacks. A Circular Error Probability 

(CEP) of 40-100 meters is a substantial achievement. It could mean 

that a 12 KT warhead with a CEP of 100 meters (0.054 nautical miles) 

could destroy a high-value, nuclear-hardened military target with a 

high degree of confidence in a single shot kill probability (SSPK).86

Were the warhead to be thermonuclear, it could take on some of 

the most hardened military targets in the world. A nuclear-armed 

Agni II missile would be India’s preferred weapon of choice to attack 

military targets in a nuclear warfighting role.87

India’s draft and formal nuclear doctrine call for robust, 

survivable C4I2 assets. The military controls the delivery systems, 

while the nuclear scientists maintain control over the nuclear 

warheads. Not until late 2002 or early 2003, however, did India 

establish a nuclear command system headed by the Prime Minister.88

No details have been forthcoming, so it remains uncertain how the 

Indians maintain positive and negative controls over nuclear weapons 

apart from the dual control system established earlier. While some 

Indian strategists despair over the lack of military involvement, 

others believe that India will consider nuclear preemption should 

the military service gain operational control over nuclear weapons.89

Ever since the 1987 Indian military exercise Brasstacks, its Army and 

Air Force have assumed the need to fight in a nuclear environment 

against Pakistan and have prepared accordingly. In one adaptation, 

the Indian Air Force changed its targeting plan from having to attack 

Pakistan’s nuclear installations to attacks on Pakistan’s delivery 
298

systems so as to avoid collateral damage.90 India and Pakistan have 

since signed a joint agreement to avoid attacking each other’s nuclear 

infrastructure.91 And because the borders are heavily populated, only 

military installations are targeted for nuclear missions.92 Reportedly, 

there is no political or military directive to the nuclear scientists 

specifying the targets to be destroyed.93

PAKISTAN

 Unlike India, Pakistan’s nuclear strategy or doctrine has not been 

officially announced. Few political or military officials in Pakistan 

have discussed openly how Islamabad may consider using nuclear 

weapons for deterrence or in the event of a deterrence failure. One of 

the first public statements regarding the use of nuclear force was by 

Foreign Minister Abdul Sattar in late 1999:

Minimum nuclear deterrence will remain the guiding principle of our 

nuclear strategy. The minimum cannot be quantified in static numbers. 

The Indian build-up will necessitate review and reassessment. In order 

to ensure the survivability and credibility of the deterrent Pakistan will 

have to maintain, preserve and upgrade its capability. But we shall not 

engage in any nuclear competition or arms race.94

In addition to the vaguely worded minimum nuclear deterrence, 

in contrast to India, Pakistan did not rule out a “first strike.” It argues 

that because India is much larger, has greater conventional military 

capabilities and has a more robust economy, Pakistan must have 

resort to first use of nuclear weapons to preclude an Indian military 

victory by conventional means, let alone by nuclear means.95 In fact, 

many Pakistani strategists argue that Pakistan’s nuclear posture 

towards India is comparable to NATO’s nuclear posture towards 

the Soviet Union during the Cold War. It must compensate for 

numerical conventional inferiority by relying on early resort to 

nuclear weapons.

A retired military officer writing in Pakistan’s premier military 

journal provided the most comprehensive analysis of Pakistan’s 

putative nuclear doctrine. Lieutenant General Sardar F. S. Lodi 

analyzed the doctrinal requirements for Pakistan in early 1999, which 

Indian analysts seem to accept as official Pakistani doctrine.96 After 

tracing NATO’s reliance on early use of nuclear weapons and briefly 
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analyzing the evolution of U.S. nuclear doctrine over the years, he 

relates how these doctrinal developments inform Pakistan’s nuclear 

requirements:

During any future Indo-Pak armed conflict India’s numerical superiority 

in men and conventional arms is likely to exert pressure beyond endurance. 

In a deteriorating military situation when an Indian conventional attack 

is likely to break through our defences or has already breached the main 

defence line causing a major set-back to the defences, which cannot be 

restored by conventional means at our disposal, the government would 

be left with no other option except to use Nuclear Weapons to stabilize 

the situation. India’s superiority in conventional arms and manpower 

would have to be offset by nuclear weapons. The political will to use 

nuclear weapons is essential to prevent a conventional armed conflict, 

which would later on escalate to nuclear war.

Pakistan’s Nuclear Doctrine would therefore essentially revolve around 

the first-strike option.97

The first-strike option is as important as how Pakistan may use 

nuclear weapons against an initial Indian attack. Lodi borrows from 

American strategy what is called an “option-enhancing policy” for 

possible use of nuclear weapons. This “option-enhancing policy” 

envisions a staged escalation of nuclear use in response to an Indian 

attack. At any point, either side may then choose to de-escalate the 

conflict. The stages include the following:

Stage One: A public or private warning of nuclear use;

Stage Two: A demonstration explosion of a small nuclear weapon 

on Pakistan’s own soil;

Stage Three: The use of a few nuclear weapons on its own soil 

against Indian attacking forces;

Stage Four: Counterforce strikes “against critical but purely military 

targets” on Indian soil, probably “in thinly populated areas in the 

desert or semi-desert, causing least collateral damage”; and,

Stage Five: Weapons in reserve for a countervalue attack plan.98

Over time, improvements would create more options and greater 

flexibility for Pakistan “to employ nuclear weapons if attacked yet 

cause the least civilian casualties and damage to infrastructure.” 
300

Commentators note that Pakistan needs a robust nuclear strategy 

because:

India’s earlier rhetoric of ‘minimum credible (nuclear) deterrence’ has 

been replaced by an ‘effective, credible nuclear deterrence and adequate 

retaliatory capability should deterrence fail’ [based on its change from 

early pronouncements to its draft nuclear doctrine], implying that a 

massive arsenal of nuclear weapons that would give India an offensive 

nuclear capability.99

More recently, some hint of Pakistan’s nuclear doctrine was 

given by an active official. According to an American analyst in a 

Pakistani newspaper, General Khalid Kidwai, Chief of the Strategic 

Plans Division of Pakistan’s nuclear command and control system, 

Pakistan’s nuclear arsenal is aimed “‘solely at India’ and ‘will be 

used only if the very existence of Pakistan as a state is at stake’.”100

Kidwai further enumerated the triggers for Pakistani nuclear use 

under a variety of circumstances:

(a) India attacks Pakistan and conquers a large part of its territory 

(space threshold);

(b) India destroys a large part either of [Pakistan’s] land or air 

forces (military threshold);

(c) India proceeds to the economic strangling of Pakistan 

(economic threshold);

(d) India pushes Pakistan into political destabilization or creates 

a large scale internal subversion in Pakistan (domestic 

destabilization).101

In arguing for early use of nuclear weapons, Pakistan is posed with 

a problem of credibility. Though Indian analysts agree that Pakistan 

may gain temporary tactical advantages by early first use, they also 

point out that Pakistan would suffer a devastating retaliation.102

Another retired Pakistani military officer argues that it is precisely 

that degree of uncertainty―even apparent “irrationality”―that lends 

credibility to its deterrence policy. Writing in Pakistan’s premier 

military journal, Air Commodore Jamal Hussain argues:

A deterrence doctrine that spells out use of first strike (nuclear) option 

in case enemy’s conventional forces are about to achieve their strategic 

aim is based on a degree of irrationality . . . If the aggressor comes to the 
301

conclusion that it is not dealing with a mad nation, it may be tempted 

to disregard the nuclear deterrence of its enemy calculating that it is 

unlikely to unleash its nuclear arsenal, as it would in all probability end 

up in mutual destruction of both the contestants. Nuclear deterrence 

would then have failed.

While commission of suicide by itself may be an act of insanity, many 

sane persons have committed it under what at best can be termed as 

temporary or momentary insanity. Mutual suicide or kamikaze acts 

by a human or a nation when pushed beyond a limit is in the realm 

of possibility. To lend credibility to its nuclear deterrence against 

conventional attacks by superior foes, a nation like Pakistan would like 

to give the impression that it would not hesitate to protect its honour, 

dignity, sovereignty and vital interests through mutual suicide, if all 

other options are closed. . . .

In nuclear deterrence doctrine, everyone will be bluffing, but just how far 

is difficult to determine.103

Hussain rejects the “rational actor” assumption of nuclear deterrence, arguing instead that deterrence is largely “psychological.”

The public side of Pakistan’s nuclear program reflects this view. 

Pakistan’s public policy is devised to concede nothing to Indian 

technological or scientific prowess, apparently fearing that to do so 

would portray a failure of resolve and thereby weaken deterrence. 

Pakistan has followed a policy of tit-for-tat.104 For every Indian test, 

demonstration, or public announcement, Pakistan reciprocates 

with one of its own. When India explodes nuclear devices, Pakistan 

follows suit. When India evaluates its Prithvi or Agni ballistic missiles, 

Pakistan reciprocates with tests of its Hatf or Ghauri missiles. When 

an Indian official suggests nuclear threats, Pakistan responds with 

threats of its own. As one Pakistani scholar put it, “Every landmark in 

Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program is closely linked to its troubled 

relationship with India and to India’s nuclear aspirations.”105

The nuclear weapons required for Pakistan’s deterrence policy, 

because it is India-specific, are lower than India’s. Whereas India 

may require up to 150 nuclear weapons, Pakistan may require only 

half of that, and maybe less. At the time of Pakistan’s retaliatory 

nuclear weapons tests in late May 1998, Pakistani nuclear scientists 
302

estimated that Pakistan would require 60-70 nuclear devices.106

Current estimates of Pakistan’s nuclear inventory range from 30 to as 

many as 50 nuclear weapons.107 Although Pakistani officials reported 

detonating boosted fission, fission, and sub-kiloton nuclear weapons 

in May 1998, American and Indian scientists dispute the number of 

weapons detonated and the size of the yields. Most believe that the 

explosive yields were substantially less than officially reported, in 

some cases by an order of magnitude.108

Although the sub-kiloton nuclear tests suggest battlefield nuclear 

weapons, it is not clear how Pakistan plans to incorporate them into 

its nuclear doctrine. The key is how the analysts think about tactical 

battlefield use. According to General Kidwai’s interview, “no 

tactical nuclear rungs are placed down in the India-Pakistan nuclear 

escalation ladder.”109 However, the commentator interprets this as 

the General not saying tactical nuclear weapons are ruled either 

in or out. Indeed, the doctrinal analysis by General Lodi implies 

tactical nuclear use at the lower rungs of the escalation ladder 

and General Kidwai’s “triggers” for nuclear use suggest tactical 

nuclear weapons against Indian conventional military forces. And 

according to other Pakistani analysts, Pakistan “lacks spatial depth 

and therefore cannot afford the luxury of distinguishing between 

tactical and strategic, within a nuclear context.”110 On the website for 

the Pakistan Institute for Air Defence Studies, a page is devoted to 

two illustrations depicting how tactical battlefield nuclear weapons 

may be deployed by fighter aircraft. The “Over-the-Shoulder” 

method of delivery depicted allows the fighter to escape the effects 

of the nuclear detonation. No other commentary is attached to this 

depiction.111 The following three sets of targets for nuclear missions 

have been suggested: “Nuclear-related targets such as missile silos, 

nuclear airfields, etc.; other military targets (OMT) including nonnuclear military forces, bases, installations, etc.; and, political and 

military command centers, economic targets and populations.”112

Some of these targets require tactical nuclear weapons.

Although Pakistan is not as technically sophisticated as India, 

Pakistan has a strong indigenous program for missile development. 

In addition, Pakistan’s nuclear weapons and ballistic missile 

programs have been assisted by outside sources. China has helped 

Pakistan’s nuclear weapons program, including missile development 

and the miniaturization of nuclear weapons.113 North Korea has 
303

helped Pakistan with its ballistic missile development, most notably 

by means of its Nodong missile, which is believed to be the basis for 

Pakistan’s Ghauri.

114 The Ghauri has a range of 1,500 km (about 900 

miles), giving it full coverage of almost all of India, including naval 

bases in the east. Pakistan’s American made F-16s also contribute to 

its nuclear attack capability.

Unlike the other three SNPS, Pakistan’s military has remained 

firmly in control of its nuclear program throughout its life. Indeed, 

the military bureaucracy has marginalized its political leadership.115

Former Prime Minister Benazir Bhutto said that she could never 

get control of the nuclear decisionmaking infrastructure. Indeed, 

“[a]fter her dismissal as prime minister, she revealed that she had 

not been in charge of Pakistan’s nuclear program and that during 

the 1990 Kashmir crisis, Pakistan had crossed the ‘Red Line’ without 

her knowledge,” though she never explained what the “Red Line” 

was.116 Even before India, Pakistan announced the formation of a 

National Command Authority (NCA), located with its Joint Strategic 

Headquarters, which had overall responsibility for policy, strategy, 

and employment of strategic forces.117 Reports suggest that Pakistan 

maintains its nuclear forces in an “unconstituted state” for safety 

reasons.118 That is to say, the fissionable cores of nuclear weapons are 

kept separate from their non-nuclear assemblies, and the warheads 

are unmated to their delivery systems. Some analysts suggested that 

because survivability of Pakistan’s nuclear forces is crucial in the face 

of superior Indian conventional and nuclear capabilities, the NCA 

should predelegate nuclear release authority to military commands 

in the event of a decapitating strike. The predelegation of nuclear 

release authority has never been confirmed.119

CONCLUSION

 After examining the literature on these four nuclear powers, 

it is clear that all of them have a richer view of nuclear deterrence 

than one might otherwise think. Indeed, according to the public 

announcements on nuclear doctrine, or reports on technological 

advancements, or testimonies from defectors and retired military 

officers, the idea that SNPs are limited to some form of mini-MAD 

deterrent seems unreasonably optimistic. The optimism rests on 

the notion that because MAD, even its mini-version, would be so 
304

catastrophic that its realization is exceedingly remote, if not a virtual 

impossibility. The optimistic conclusion is that nuclear war may not 

occur. But as Table 2 demonstrates, these four SNPs consider nuclear 

use for a variety of pre-war and wartime uses. Of course, the benefit 

of talking about nuclear use in this way is that it adds to a country’s 

strengthening of its peacetime deterrent posture.

 Pre-War Use War-time Use

Covert 

capability

Overt 

capability

Threat 

to use/

Provoke

Intervention

Demonstration

Shot

Tactical

strikes

Counterforce 

strikes

Counter

-value 

strikes

RSA √ √ √

Israel √ √ √ √ √

Pakistan √ √ √ √ √

India √ √ √ √

Table 2. Nuclear Deterrence/Threat/Use Continuum.

 All four SNPs have considered how to employ nuclear weapons. 

This is natural, given that responsible public officials must consider 

what may happen should deterrence fail. All have tried to avoid 

the “all-or-nothing” approach of total annihilation found in a miniMAD nuclear deterrent. Unlike with tenured academics, theirs is a 

position of trust and great responsibility for the safety and well-being 

of millions of citizens. As other scholars in this volume attest, you 

may resign yourself to nuclear deterrence, but it is not something 

you strive to obtain. This will be true for SNPs, or at least for those 

with nuclear neighbors. 

Of course, this does not mean that SNPs will necessarily engage in 

nuclear warfighting. It may be that although our theories of nuclear 

deterrence are problematic, short of “existential threats” to SNPs, 

nuclear restraint may continue. But policymakers and strategists 

should not blindly ignore the potential for wars in which nuclear 

weapons may be used, even when short of all-out attacks.

{

{
305

APPENDIX 1

CALCULATING WEAPONS EFFECTIVENESS

1. Calculating Single Shot Kill Probability (SSPK)

SSPK = 

Where:

CMP = Countermilitary Potential

 (A measure used for calculating military utility of a weapon)

CMP = 

Where Y = Yield in Megatons

 CEP = Circular Error Probability, in nautical miles (nm)

 (CEP is a measure of accuracy of ballistic missile)

 H = the hardness of a given target, expressed in pounds per square

 inch (psi) atmospheric overpressure (from blast)

2. Indian weapon system

Agni II, 100-meter = 0.054 nm

Warhead = 12 KT (kilotons), or .012 MT (megatons)

Notional bunker complex in Pakistan hardened to 1,000 psi.

CMP = CMP = 17.97

SSPK =

 

 

 

 

SSPK = 99.74%

0.012 3

0.0542

2

17.97/(1000/16) 2/3

17.97/62.5) 2/3

1.140952381

17.97/15.75

0.45346

 54.5%

307

ENDNOTES - CHAPTER 10

1. Michael Krepon, “Moving Away from MAD,” Survival, Vol. 43, No. 2, 

Summer 2001, pp. 82-84.

2. Owen Harries, “Best-Case Thinking,” Commentary, May 1984, p. 28.

3. See Natural Resources Defense Council, “The Consequences of Nuclear 

Conflict between India and Pakistan,” from internet: www.nrdc.org, accessed 

February 19, 2003.

4. For a good discussion of this and related problems, see Keith B. Payne, 

Deterrence in the Second Nuclear Age, Lexington: University Press of Kentucky, 

1996.

5. Jeffrey Richelson, “PD-59, NSDD-13, and the Reagan Strategic Modernization 

Program,” in P. Edward Haley, David M. Keithly, and Jack Merritt, Nuclear Strategy, 

Arms Control, and the Future, Boulder: Westview Press, 1985, p. 123.

6. For a good discussion of theoretical approaches, see Shibley Telhami, Power 

and Leadership in International Bargaining: The Path to the Camp David Accords, New 

York: Columbia University Press, 1990, especially chapter 2, pp. 18-42.

7. For the most parsimonious characterization of the assumption of rationality, 

see Kenneth N. Waltz, “More May Be Better,” in Scott D. Sagan and Kenneth 

N. Waltz, The Spread of Nuclear Weapons: A Debate, New York: W. W. Norton 

& Company, 1995, pp. 1-46; for the most concise critique of the assumption of 

rationality, see Payne, Deterrence in the Second Nuclear Age.

8. A good discussion of strategic personality and nuclear deterrence may be 

found in Caroline F. Ziemke, Philippe Loustaunau, and Amy Alrich, Strategic 

Personality and the Effectiveness of Nuclear Deterrence, project for the Defense Threat 

Reduction Agency, DTRA, IDA Document D-2537, Alexandria, VA: Institute for 

Defense Analysis, November 2000.

9. See Steve Fetter and Devin T. Hagerty, “Nuclear Deterrence and the 1990 

Indo-Pakistani Crisis,” Correspondence, International Security, Vol. 21, No. 1, 

Summer 1996, pp. 176-185; see also my critique of Kenneth Waltz’s use of the 

assumption in Mark T. Clark, “Proliferation in the Second Nuclear Age,” Orbis, 

Vol. 41, No. 1, Winter 1997, pp. 133-136.

10. Ukraine, Kazakstan, and Belarus inherited sizeable nuclear arsenals from 

the collapse of the Soviet Union and voluntarily gave them up. For a brief overview, 

see J. W. de Villiers, Roger Jardine, and Mitchell Reiss, “Why South Africa Gave 

Up the Bomb,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 72, No. 5, November/December 1993, pp. 98-

109.

11. Indeed, the case was repeatedly cited by some officials in the George 

W. Bush administration as evidence why Iraq was not dismantling its weapons 

of mass destruction infrastructure. In the case of the RSA, the government not 

only helped IAEA inspectors but suggested ways the inspectors could improve 

their research; precisely the opposite occurred with the Iraqi regime under the 

constraints of Security Council Resolution 1441.
308

12. This section is based, in part, on Peter Liberman, “The Rise and Fall of the 

South African Bomb,” International Security, Vol. 26, No. 2, Fall 2001, pp. 45-86; 

see also Correspondence between Helen E. Purkitt and Stephen F. Burgess with 

Peter Liberman in “South Africa’s Nuclear Decisions,” International Security, Vol. 

27, No. 1, Summer 2002, pp. 186-194; Frank V. Pabian, “South Africa’s Nuclear 

Weapon Program: Lessons for U.S. Nonproliferation Policy,” The Nonproliferation 

Review, Fall 1995; William J. Long and Suzette R. Grillot, “Ideas, Beliefs, and 

Nuclear Policies: The Cases of South Africa and Ukraine,” The Nonproliferation 

Review, Spring 2000, pp. 24-40. See also the presentation by the former director 

of the RSA’s Atomic Energy Corporation, Waldo Stumpf, who headed the RSA’s 

dismantlement effort, as “Birth and Death of the South African Nuclear Weapons 

Programme,” on the web site of the Federation of American Scientists at http://

www.fas.org/nuke/guide/rsa/stumpf, accessed January 15, 2003. 

13. Text of statement by State Presdient F. W. de Klerk, “Matters Relating to 

Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, Violence, Negotiation and the Death Penalty,” 

in Debates of Parliament, 5th Session, 9th Parliament, Vol. 8, cols 3576 to 3574, 

March 24, 1993, p. 3467.

14. Ibid., pp. 3468-3469.

15. De Klerk, testimony, pp. 3466-3472.

16. Stumpf, “Birth and Death.”

17. Liberman, “Rise and Fall,” p. 53.

18. Ibid.,” pp. 55-56; and footnotes 34-36.

19. De Klerk, testimony, pp. 3468.

20. Stumpf, “Birth and Death,” p. 5; Liberman, “Rise and Fall,” p. 57; Long 

and Grillot, “Ideas, Beliefs, and Nuclear Policies,” p. 28.

21. Long and Grillot, “Ideas, Beliefs, and Nuclear Policies,” p. 27, 31.

22. Liberman, “Rise and Fall,” p. 62; and footnote 61.

23. Mitchell Reiss, Bridled Ambition, Baltimore: Johns Hopkins University 

Press, 1995, p. 29.

24. Liberman, “Rise and Fall,” p. 59; and footnote 50.

25. Warren H. Donnelly, “South Africa and Nuclear Weapons,” CRS Issue 

Brief, Congressional Research Service, the Library of Congress, June 27, 1991, p. 7.

26. For an interesting insight into how the secret is kept, see Fuad Jabber, 

Israel and Nuclear Weapons: Present option and future strategies, London: Chatto & 

Windus for the International Institute for Strategic Studies, 1971, pp. 123-125.

27. The author calls it a culture of opacity in Avner Cohen, Israel and the 

Bomb, New York: Columbia University Press, 1998, p. 343; Robert Harkavy, 

“The Imperative to Survive,” in Louis Rene Beres, Security or Armageddon: Israel’s 

Nuclear Strategy, Lexington, MA: D. C. Heath, 1986, pp. 117-118; see also Edwin S. 
309

Cochran, “Deliberate Ambiguity: An Analysis of Israel’s Nuclear Strategy,” The 

Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 19, No. 2, September 1996, pp. 321-339.

28. Shai Feldman, Israeli Nuclear Deterrence: A Strategy for the 1980s, New 

York: Columbia University Press, 1982); similarly, see Yair Evron, Israel’s Nulcear 

Dilemma, Ithaca, NY: Cornell University Press, 1994, p. 244; Cochran, “Deliberate 

Ambiguity, p. 327; see also Gerald M. Steinberg, “Re-examining Israel’s Security 

Doctrine,” RUSI International Security Review, 1999, UK: Royal United Services 

Institute for Defence Analysis, pp. 215-224; from internet: http://faculty.biu.ac.il/

~steing/arms/doctrine, accessed December 12, 2002.

29. Admittedly, even this is harder to tell since most of the literature on Israel’s 

nuclear weapons treats the history of the program as well as the types of weapons 

that may have been developed, and devote little attention to actual plans for use. 

See, for example, Cohen, Israel and the Bomb; Warner D. Farr, “The Third Temple’s 

Holy of Holies: Israel’s Nuclear Weapons,” Counterproliferation Paper No. 2, USAF 

Counterproliferation Center, Air War College, Maxwell Air Force Base, Alabama: 

Air University, September 1999, from internet: www.fas.org/nuke/guide/israel/nuke/

farr.htm, accessed January 8, 2003; Robert E. Harkavy, Spectre of a Middle Eastern 

Holocaust: The Strategic and Diplomatic Implications of the Israeli Nuclear Weapons 

Program, Monograph Series in World Affairs, Denver: University of Denver Press, 

1977; and Harkavy, “The Imperative to Survive,” pp. 97-118.

30. Seymour M. Hersh, The Samson Option: Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal and 

American Foreign Policy, New York: Random House, 1991, p. 291.

31. Peter Vincent Pry, The Strategic Nuclear Balance. Vol. 1: And Why It Matters, 

NY: Crane Russak, 1990, pp. 145-155. 

32. For the expose, see “Revealed: The Secrets of Israel’s Nuclear Arsenal,” The 

Times, London, Issue: 8,461, October 5, 1986, pp. 1, 4-5; see also Farr, “The Third 

Temple’s Holy of Holies.” Hersh explains that the discovery of Israel’s capability 

for constructing enhanced radiation warheads comes from weapons designers at 

both Los Alamos and Lawrence Livermore who studied Vanunu’s photographs. 

See Hersh, p. 199.

33. Federation of American Scientists, Weapons of Mass Destruction, 

“Strategic Doctrine,” from internet: www.fas.org, accessed December 11, 2002.

34. Seth Carus and Dov Zakheim, “North Africa/Israel,” Appendix II: 

Unclassified Working Papers, Report of the Commission to Assess the Ballistic Missile 

Threats to the United States, Pursuant to Public Law 201, 104th Congress, July 15, 

1998, from internet: www.fas.org, accessed April 17, 2003; see also The Risk Report, 

“Israel: How Far Can Its Missiles Fly?,” Vol. 1, No. 5, June 1995, from internet: 

www.wisconsinproject.org, accessed April 11, 2003.

35. “Armaments Battle of Jericho,” Time, August 10, 1987, from internet: 

www.time.com, accessed April 11, 2003.

36. Based on the Nuclear Resources Defense Council (NDRC) Nuclear 

Notebook, “Israeli nuclear forces, 2000,” from internet: www.thebulletin.org, 
310

accessed April 11, 2003, and Federation of American Scientists, Weapons of Mass 

Destruction, “Popeye Turbo,” from internet: www.fas.org, accessed December 11, 

2002.

37. Federation of American Scientists, Weapons of Mass Destruction, “Jericho 

2,” from internet: www.fas.org, accessed December 11, 2002.

38. Farr, “The Third Temple’s Holy of Holies.”

39. Avner Cohen, “Cairo, Dimona, and the June 1967 War,” The Middle East 

Journal, Vol. 50, No. 2, Spring 1996, pp. 190-210.

40. Avner Cohen, “Nuclear Arms in Crisis under Secrecy: Israel and the 

Lessons of the 1967 and 1973 Wars,” in Peter R. Lavoy, Scott D. Sagan, and James 

J. Wirtz, Planning the Unthinkable: How New Powers will Use Nuclear, Biological, and 

Chemical Weapons, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000, pp. 104-124.

41. Mark Gaffney, Dimona, the Third Temple? The Story Behind the Vanunu 

Revelation, Brattleboro, VT: Amana Books, 1989, pp. 144-149.

42. Hersh, The Samson Option; Farr, “The Third Temple’s Holy of Holies.”

43. Much speculation surrounds whether Israel could have used its limited 

air assets to attack southern cities in the Soviet Union or would have had to rely on 

small nuclear devices smuggled into the Soviet Union. 

44. Harold Hough, “Could Israel’s nuclear assets survive a pre-emptive 

strike?,” Jane’s Intelligence Review, January 9, 1997, from internet: www.janes.com, 

accessed April 4, 2003.

45. Ibid.

46. Steinberg, “Re-examining Israel’s Security Doctrine.”

47. Robert Harkavy, “The Imperative to Survive,” p. 112; The “Samson 

Option” is also the title of the book by Seymour Hersh.

48. There are strong parallels with the debate over nuclear use in American 

and Soviet doctrine throughout the Cold War as most commentators on Israel’s 

nuclear program are schooled in that same tradition. Without an open public 

debate in Israel, however, it seems presumptuous to assign a position to Israeli 

military and political figures with absolute certainty; it is more likely that different 

leaders hold different views, just as different American leaders did.

49. Steinberg, “The Future of Nuclear Weapons: Israeli Perspectives,” 

presented at the Ninth Amaldi Conference: Security Questions at the End of 

the Twentieth Century, Geneva, November 21-23, 1996, from internet: http://

faculty.biu.ac.il/~steing/arms/amaldi.htm, accessed April 4, 2003.

50. For a discussion of the different approaches taken by different Israeli 

leaders, see Shlomo Aronson, The Politics and Strategy of Nuclear Weapons in the 

Middle East: Opacity, Theory, and Reality, 1960-1991: An Israeli Perspective, New 

York: State University of New York Press, 1992, pp. 167-184.
311

51. Efraim Inbar and Shmuel Sandler, “Israel’s Deterrence Strategy Revisited,” 

Security Studies, Vol. 3, No. 2, Winter 1993/94, pp. 342-343.

52. Harold Hough, “Israel reviews its nuclear deterrent,” Jane’s Intelligence 

Review, November 1998, pp. 11-13.

53. See Louis Rene Beres, “Israel’s Bomb in the Basement: A Revisiting of 

‘Deliberate Ambiguity’ vs. ‘Disclosure’, in Efraim Harsh, ed., Between War and 

Peace: Dilemmas of Israeli Security, London: Frank Cass, 1996, pp. 113-133.

54. The earliest discussion of this possibility is found in Robert W. Tucker, 

“Israel and the United States: From Dependence to Nuclear Weapons?” 

Commentary, November 1975, p. 41.

55. See the discussion in the section on South Africa’s development of the 

nuclear weapon.

56. “The Draft Report of National Security Advisory Board on Indian 

Nuclear Doctrine,” Embassy of India, Washington, DC, from internet: 

www.indianembassy.org, accessed November 27, 2002.

57. “Indian Statement of ‘Operationalisation’ of Nuclear Doctrine, January 

4,” in Disarmament Documentation, The Acronym Institute, from internet: 

www.acronym.org.uk, accessed May 14, 2003.

58. George Perkovich makes the case that Indians have approached the 

nuclear policy problem with the conflicting goals of moral superiority through 

nuclear restraint and the pursuance of great power status even before the 

announcement of India’s nuclear doctrine. The pattern continues here as well. See 

George Perkovich, India’s Nuclear Bomb: The Impact on Global Proliferation, Berkeley: 

University of California Press, 1999, pp. 448-449. 

59. Waheguru Pal Singh Sidhu, “India’s Nuclear Use Doctrine,” in Peter R. 

Lavoy, Scott D. Sagan, and James J. Wirtz, Planning the Unthinkable: How New 

Powers Will Use Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical Weapons, Ithaca: Cornell University 

Press, 2000, p. 127.

60. Ashley Tellis takes on this problem in Ashley J. Tellis, India’s Emerging 

Nuclear Posture: Between Recessed Deterrent and Ready Arsenal, Santa Monica: 

RAND, 2001, pp. 296-366, though he believes strongly that India’s nuclear forces 

are countervalue only. 

61. The Institute, based in New Delhi, was established in 1965 and is 

funded by the Ministries of Defence and External Affairs. According to its web 

page, Institute scholars remains independent of the government. From internet: 

www.idsa-india.org. 

62. Gurmeet Kanwal, India’s Nuclear Doctrine and Policy, Vol. XXIV, No. 

11, February 2001, Institute for Defence Studies and Analysis, New Delhi, from 

internet: www.idsa-india.org, accessed November 27, 2002.

63. Rajesh Rajagopalan, Nuclear Strategy and Small Nuclear Forces: The 

Conceptual Components, Vol. XXIII, No. 7, October 1999, Institute for Defence 
312

Studies and Analysis, New Delhi, from internet: www.idsa-india.org, accessed 

December 9, 2002.

64. Brahma Chellaney, “India’s Nuclear Planning, Force Structure, Doctrine 

and Arms Control Posture,” Australian Journal of International Affairs, Vol. 53, No. 

1, 1999, p. 66.

65. Raja Menon, A Nuclear Strategy for India, New Delhi and London: Sage 

Publications, 2000, p. 148.

66. P.M. Kamath, Indian National Security Policy: Minimal Nuclear Deterrence, 

Vol. XXIII, No. 8, November 1999, Institute for Defence Studies and Analysis, 

New Delhi, from internet: www.idsa-india.org, accessed December 9, 2002; see also 

Chellaney, “India’s Nuclear Planning,” p. 67.

67. Cited in Kamath, Indian National Security Policy.

68. Amit Gupta, “India’s Draft Nuclear Doctrine,” The Round Table, Vol. 355, 

2000, p. 358.

69. Cited in Kamath, Indian National Security Policy.

70. Menon, A Nuclear Strategy for India, pp. 146-147.

71. Kamath, Indian National Security Policy. Arguably, Sundarji was India’s 

greatest strategist according to Menon, A Nuclear Strategy for India, p. 98.

72. Gupta, “India’s Draft Nuclear Doctrine,” p. 355. According to the author, 

in the 1980s Indian analysts called for about 150 weapons; after the nuclear tests of 

1998, for about 400.

73. For comparison, see “India’s Nuclear Forces, 2002,” NRDC Nuclear 

Notebook, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Vol. 58, No. 2, March/April 2002, p. 70, 

from internet: www.nci.org, accessed January 20, 2003; see also “India’s Nuclear 

Weapons,” Weapons of Mass Destruction, Federation of American Scientists, 

from internet: www.fas.org, accessed December 11, 2002; for the higher number, 

see “India Establishes a Nuclear Command System,” New York Times, January 5, 

2003, from internet: www.nytimes.com, accessed January 6, 2003.

74. “India’s Nuclear Forces, 2002,” NRDC Nuclear Notebook and “India’s 

Nuclear Weapons,” Weapons of Mass Destruction.

75. Menon, A Nuclear Strategy for India, p. 114.

76. Paul D. Taylor, “India and Pakistan: Thinking about the Unthinkable,” 

Naval War College Review, Vol. LIV, No. 3, Summer 2001, pp. 40-51; see also “12 

Million Could Die at Once in an India-Pakistan Nuclear War,” New York Times, 

May 27, 2002, from internet: www.nytimes.com, accessed January 28, 2003.

77. “Suo Motu Statement by Prime Minister Shri Atal Bihari Vajpayee in 

Paliament,” May 27, 1998, from internet: www.fas.org, accessed December 11, 

2002.

78. American scholar Ashley Tellis hotly contests any claims to warfighting 

for India’s nuclear forces. See Ashely J. Tellis, India’s Emerging Nuclear Posture: 
313

Between Recessed Deterrent and Ready Arsenal, Santa Monica: RAND, 2001, especially 

Chapter Four, pp. 251-476.

79. Sidhu, “India’s Nuclear Use Doctrine,” p. 125.

80. Chellaney, “India’s Nuclear Planning,” p. 66. 

81. Kamath, “Indian National Security Policy,” especially note 20.

82. Cited in “India’s Nuclear Forces,” NRDC Nuclear Notebook.

83. Menon, A Nuclear Strategy for India, p. 167.

84. The CIA reportedly believes of the two land-based versions, only 

the Prithvi I has a nuclear role. See “India’s Nuclear Forces,” NRDC Nuclear 

Notebook.

85. Ibid.; see also Michael Kraig, “The Indian Drive towards Weaponization: 

the Agni Missile Program,” report to the Federation of American Scientists, from 

internet: www.fas.org, accessed December 11, 2002.

86. Appendix I for calculations of the Agni II SSPK.

87. Critics are right to note that one test does not a system make. However, it 

remains intriguing that the Indian military that tested the system was interested 

in promoting its capabilities. Whether hyperbole or no, the fact remains that some 

officials found it important to “signal” their capability for nuclear warfighting, 

and we should not dismiss their claims outright.

88. “India Establishes a Nuclear Command System.”

89. For military involvement see Menon, A Nuclear Strategy for India; for 

concern that military control would lead to a doctrine of preemption, see Sidhu, 

“India’s Nuclear Use Doctrine,” p. 157.

90. See the discussion in Sidhu, “India’s Nuclear Use Doctrine,” pp. 128-152.

91. See text of “Agreement Between Pakistan and India on the Prohibition of 

Attack Against Nuclear Installations and Facilities,” signed December 31, 1988, 

from internet: www.pnnd.org, accessed February 19, 2003.

92. Kamath, “Indian National Security Policy.”

93. Menon, A Nuclear Strategy for India, p. 130.

94. “Pakistan’s response to the Indian Nuclear Doctrine,” Foreign Minister 

Abdul Sattar’s Inaugural Address to the Seminar organized by the Islamabad 

Council on World Affairs and the Institute of Strategic Studies,” November 25, 

1999, from internet: http://missions.itu.int/pakistan, Pakistan’s Permanent Mission 

in Geneva, accessed March 5, 2003. 

95. Samina Ahmed, “Pakistan’s Nuclear Weapons Program: Moving Forward 

or Tactical Retreat?,” Kroc Institute Occasional Paper #18:op:2, February 2000, 

Harvard University: John F. Kennedy School of Government, p. 5. 

96. For Indian acceptance, see Gurmeet Kanwal, India’s Nuclear Doctrine 

and Policy, Vol. XXIV, No. 11, February 2001, Institute for Defence Studies and 
314

Analysis, New Delhi, from internet: www.idsa-india.org, accessed November 27, 

2002.

97. Patron Lieutenant General (Retd) Sardar FS Lodi, “Pakistan’s Nuclear 

Doctrine,” Defence Journal, April 1999, from internet: www.defencejournal.com, 

accessed November 27, 2002.

98. Ibid.

99. Ahmed, “Pakistan’s Nuclear Weapons Program,” p. 24.

100. Rodney W. Jones, “Is stable nuclear deterrence feasible?,” The Friday 

Times, February 22-28, 2002, Vol. XIII, No. 52, from internet: www.thefridaytimes.com, 

accessed February 22, 2003.

101. Ibid.

102. Kanwal, India’s Nuclear Doctrine and Policy.

103. Air Commodore (Retd) Jamal Hussain, “Dynamics of Nuclear Strategy in 

South Asia,” Defence Journal, October 2002, from internet: www.defencejournal.com, 

accessed December 11, 2002.

104. “Pakistan’s response to the Indian Nuclear Doctrine,” Foreign Minister 

Abdul Sattar; see also Zafar Iqbal Cheema, “Pakistan’s Nuclear Use Doctrine and 

Command and Control,” in Peter R. Lavoy, Scott D. Sagan, and James J. Wirtz, 

Planning the Unthinkable: How New Powers Will Use Nuclear, Biological, and Chemical 

Weapons, Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2000, passim.

105. Ahmed, “Pakistan’s Nuclear Weapons Program,” p. 5.

106. Anthony H. Cordesman, “The Threat of Pakistani Nuclear Weapons,” 

November 8, 2001, Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and International 

Studies, p. 6.

107. Natural Resources Defense Council, “The Consequences of Nuclear 

Conflict between India and Pakistan,” from internet: www.nrdc.org, accessed 

February 19, 2003; Gaurav Kampani, “Safety Concerns About the Command & 

Control of Pakistan’s Strategic Forces, Fissile Material, and Nuclear Installations,” 

September 28, 2001, Monterey: Monterey Institute of International Studies, from 

internet: http://cns.miis.edu, accessed March 5, 2003.

108. Federation of American Scientists, “Pakistan Nuclear Weapons,” from 

internet: www.fas.org, accessed December 11, 2002.

109. Jones, “Is stable nuclear deterrence feasible?”

110. Shireen M. Mazari, “Formulating a Rational Strategic Doctrine,” Pakistan 

Institute for Air Defence Studies, n.d., from internet: www.piads.com.pk, accessed 

March 5, 2003.

111. See the artist’s rendition of the method at www.piads.com.pk/users/piads/

nuke.html, accessed April 29, 2003.

112. Mazari, “Formulating a Rational Strategic Doctrine.” See also Natural 

Resources Defense Council, “The Consequences of Nuclear Conflict between India 

and Pakistan” for a similar list of expected targets.
315

113. Farzana Shaikh, “Pakistan’s nuclear bomb: beyond the non-proliferation 

regime,” International Affairs, Vol. 78, No. 1, January 2002, pp. 33-34; Federation of 

American Scientists, “Pakistan Nuclear Weapons”; and Cordesman, “The Threat 

of Pakistani Nuclear Weapons,” pp. 3-4.

114. Federation of American Scientists, “Pakistan,” from internet: www.fas.org, 

accessed December 11, 2002; Cordesman, “The Threat of Pakistani Nuclear 

Weapons,” pp. 9-10. According to Samina Ahmed in “Pakistan’s Nuclear Weapons 

Program,” pp. 14, fn. 35, the Pakistani government has repeatedly denied that the 

Ghauri is based on North Korean technology.

115. Ahmed, “Pakistan’s Nuclear Weapons Program,” p. 6

116. Cheema, “Pakistan’s Nuclear Use Doctrine,” p. 163.

117. Cordesman, “The Threat of Pakistani Nuclear Weapons,” p. 6. Another 

unverified source places the development of some kind of Command and Control 

much earlier. See See Cheema, “Pakistan’s Nuclear Use Doctrine,” p. 172.

118. Kampani, “Safety Concerns About the Command & Control of Pakistan’s 

Strategic Forces.”

119. Lodi, “Pakistan’s Nuclear Doctrine.”

317

CHAPTER 11

NUCLEAR AND OTHER RETALIATION 

AFTER DETERRENCE FAILS

Tod Lindberg

 This chapter discusses whether or not the United States is likely 

to launch a nuclear retaliatory attack against an enemy that has 

used weapons of mass destruction (WMD) against U.S. interests 

and whether or not the United States should launch such a nuclear 

counterattack or retaliate by conventional means.1

 The term “weapons of mass destruction” clearly has utility as 

a shorthand way of referring to nuclear, biological, and chemical 

weapons. It has certainly caught on. To the extent that it leads to 

the conclusion that nuclear, biological, and chemical weapons are 

essentially the same, and in a different category from everything 

else, it can be misleading as well.

 A nuclear weapon is not the same as a biological weapon or a 

chemical weapon. Several Americans died in October 2001 as a result 

of an anthrax attack through the U.S. mail. While this constituted the 

use of a WMD and while the result created widespread fear and some 

loss of life, one cannot fairly call the attack “mass destruction.” At the 

same time, al Qaeda’s use of airplanes on September 11, 2001, as fuelair bombs against skyscrapers resulted in the deaths of some 3,000 

people. Surely this was “mass destruction” as an effect. Recognizing 

this effect, some commentators have said that the airplanes were 

“turned into” WMD, and officials have taken security measures to 

prevent airplanes from again being turned into such weapons. The 

same surely is true at nuclear power plants and chemical factories. 

In these cases, one might say that things have the “potential” to 

become WMD. But this is complicated, too, because insofar as mass 

destruction is concerned, a WMD in the sense of a nuclear, biological, 

or chemical weapon is something that exists only as potential until it 

is used. But before such a weapon is used, it nevertheless exists, and 

its existence has an effect on people that is very different from the 

effect of airliners, nuclear power plants, and chemical factories. 
318

 It is important to see the ways in which things are similar, but not 

at the expense of seeing the ways in which they differ. And one must 

always avoid the deformative temptation of theory, namely, to take 

a particular situation in the here-and-now, to describe it abstractly, 

and to suppose that it thereby poses broad abstract and general 

questions.

 So if the question is what to do with or about nuclear weapons or 

other WMD, we should closely examine the categories of situations 

we may face―what is known to be possible―before venturing any 

general conclusions. 

 Here, then, are some possibilities: 

 1. Actions involving nonstate actors and/or state actors acting 

covertly:

 1.1. A conventional bombing attack against U.S. interests abroad, 

killing: 1) many people but few Americans; or 2) hundreds of 

Americans.

 1.2. A conventional bombing attack against the United States 

homeland killing 1) a few Americans; or 2) hundreds of 

Americans.

 1.3 A non-WMD attack against the United States homeland 

killing thousands of Americans. 

 1.4. A biological attack somewhere in the world sickening/

killing 1) hundreds/dozens including a few Americans; 2) 

thousands/hundreds including some Americans; 3) tens of 

thousands/thousands including many Americans.

 1.5. A biological attack on the United States homeland sickening/

killing 1) hundreds/dozens of Americans; 2) thousands/

hundreds of Americans; 3) tens of thousands/thousands of 

Americans.

 1.6. A chemical attack somewhere in the world killing 1) many 

people including a few Americans; 2) thousands of people 

including hundreds of Americans.

 1.7 A chemical attack on the United States homeland killing 1) a 

few Americans; 2) hundreds of Americans; 3) thousands of 

Americans.

 1.8 Detonation of a radiological weapon immediately killing a 

number of Americans and causing an unknown number of 

excess future cancer deaths. 
319

 1.9 Detonation of a single small nuclear weapon somewhere in the 

world killing 1) thousands including hundreds of Americans 

2) tens of thousands including thousands of Americans.

 1.10 Detonation of a single small nuclear weapon on the United 

States homeland killing 1) thousands of Americans 2) tens of 

thousands of Americans.

 1.11 Detonation of a series of nuclear weapons including some 

on the United States homeland and killing hundreds of 

thousands. 

 2. Actions taken openly by state actors (acts of war).

 2.1 Use of chemical or biological weapons against U.S. forces, 

killing 1) a few Americans 2) hundreds of Americans 3) 

thousands of Americans.

 2.2 Use of conventional weapons against U.S. civilians at home, 

killing 1) hundreds 2) thousands.

 2.3 Use of chemical weapons against U.S. civilians at home, 

killing 1) hundreds 2) thousands.

 2.4 Use of biological weapons against U.S. civilians at home, 

sickening/killing 1) hundreds/dozens of Americans 2) 

thousands/hundreds of Americans 3) tens of thousands/

thousands of Americans.

 2.5 Detonation of a radiological weapon immediately killing a 

number of Americans and causing an unknown number of 

excess future cancer deaths.

 2.6 Detonation of a small nuclear weapon against U.S. forces, 

killing thousands.

 2.7 Systematic attack using battlefield nuclear weapons against 

U.S. forces, killing 1) thousands 2) tens of thousands.

 2.8 Detonation of a single nuclear weapon in a U.S. city, killing 

tens of thousands. 

 2.9 Systematic attack using strategic nuclear weapons against 

counterforce targets in the United States, killing hundreds of 

thousands.

 2.10 All-out assault using strategic nuclear weapons against 

counterforce and countervalue targets in the United States, 

killing scores of millions.

 This catalogue of horrors illustrates the variety of potential attacks 

the United States faces and is not an exhaustive list. For example, it 
320

does not enumerate certain plausible combinations, such as wartime 

use of chemical weapons on the battlefield and detonation of a single 

nuclear weapon in the homeland as a demonstration for purposes 

of coercion. It is also possible that during wartime, an attack on 

the homeland might occur without certain knowledge of who 

was responsible for it. I would also note that notwithstanding the 

specificity of the list above, the scenarios still remain abstract. A nerve 

agent attack on a subway system is a chemical attack in accordance 

with 1.7.1-3 or 2.3.1-2, but so would the poisoning of a city’s water 

supply, even though they are very different problems. Policymakers 

facing situations in any one of these enumerated categories will face 

very real particular cases; yet in advance of the fact, the only real 

possibility is to think in terms of categories of attack.

 I would suggest that this list poses two questions: What should 

we do to prevent these things from happening? And, what should 

we do if one or more of them happens anyway?

 We come, then, to the most common answer to both questions; 

in a word, deterrence. We will threaten action so devastating in 

response the eventualities, including but not limited to those listed 

above, that no one will take such actions for fear of unleashing 

the promised response. This is the doctrine of Mutual Assured 

Destruction, according to which a nuclear power strives to maintain 

an “assured second-strike capability” that allows it to annihilate an 

enemy who has launched even a massive nuclear surprise attack. 

Short of MAD, we seek to deter the use of even a single nuclear 

weapon by the possession of nuclear weapons capable of reaching 

any nation from which an attack might come. The prospect that 

the United States might “incinerate” an attacker keeps everyone in 

line.2

 For the moment, let us assume the truth of MAD’s premise that 

the possession of nuclear weapons deters others from using nuclear 

weapons. This has obvious application to cases 2.6-10 above. But 

what about the other cases? Is deterrence operating in those cases, 

and if so, where does it come from? What is doing the deterring?

 To begin with, it is clear that whatever may be deterring the use 

of biological weapons or chemical weapons, it is not the biological 

or chemical weapons capability of the United States. Earlier in the 

20th century, the United States incorporated in-kind deterrence 
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in its defense policies, insofar as President Roosevelt articulated a 

policy not of “no first use” of chemical weapons, implicitly allowing 

for retaliation in-kind. But now, the United States is a party to the 

Biological and Toxin Weapons Convention of 1972, and the Chemical 

Weapons Convention of 1993, each intended to ban the stockpiling and 

use of these forms of WMD. In the 1925 Geneva Convention, parties 

foreswore the use of chemical and biological agents, but research and 

development continued, perhaps in the context of deterrence, though 

perhaps simply in pursuit of military advantage on the battlefield. 

The 1972 and 1993 conventions effectively foreclosed the pursuit of 

such military advantage as well as in-kind deterrence, at least among 

those willing to be bound by their international undertakings. Senior 

Bush administration officials previewing a mid-September 2001 

Afghanistan options briefing intended for the president came upon a 

slide that said “Thinking Outside the Box―Poisoning Food Supply.” 

They were appalled and ordered it deleted.3

 There is also the question of achieving deterrence through the 

threat of a nuclear response to a chemical or biological attack.4

 The 

attempt to deter by this means is very much an open question. 

For example, on the eve of the first Gulf War, Secretary of State 

James A. Baker III delivered a note to Iraq’s Foreign Minister 

Tariq Aziz, warning the Saddam regime that any use of chemical 

or biological weapons by Iraq against coalition forces could bring 

nuclear retaliation. The name subsequently given to this policy was 

“calculated ambiguity.” There was, no use of such weapons by Iraq 

in 1991.

 Although officials of the second Bush administration discussed 

reiterating the threat “to use any means at our disposal to respond 

to any use of WMD” in the aftermath of the 9/11 attack,5

 one should 

perhaps be cautious about concluding too much from the 1991 

episode. The Baker message also warned Iraq that setting oil wells 

on fire could provoke a nuclear response. Should this be an addition 

to our catalogue of WMD possibilities, a conventional attack against 

vital economic interests of the United States? Perhaps not, in that 

Saddam did burn the wells but was not penalized for it.

 But it is further possible that Saddam refrained from using 

chemical weapons against coalition forces in response to the threat of 

nuclear retaliation. The psychology here is somewhat complicated. 
322

If the threat of nuclear retaliation deterred Saddam from doing 

something he would otherwise have done, namely, using chemical 

weapons, why didn’t the same threat of nuclear retaliation deter him 

from torching the oil wells?6

 One could perhaps argue that Saddam concluded that the United 

States was bluffing on the oil wells―that there was no way the United 

States could seriously think that a nuclear response to burning oil 

fields was warranted, appropriate, acceptable to the international 

community, etc.―but that the United States was deadly serious about 

its warning on the use of chemical weapons. Certainly, the latter 

warning was more emphatic. This argument is certainly possible, 

though not without difficulty on its own terms. If Saddam Hussein 

would be deterred by the threat of nuclear retaliation, he also would 

be deterred, according to most applications of deterrence theory, by 

the mere possibility of nuclear incineration, i.e., the possibility that 

the United States is not bluffing. It’s hard (though not impossible) to 

argue that the same threat of retaliation both deterred him and failed 

to deter him. The proposition that Saddam rationally calculated our 

true intentions correctly is no better founded than the claim that the 

Baker ultimatum had no effect on Saddam’s calculations, and that 

he simultaneously decided a) not to use chemical weapons, and b) 

to burn the oil wells for reasons largely unrelated to the U.S. nuclear 

threat.

 Speculation about Saddam’s rational calculation of true U.S. 

intentions is further complicated by the contention after the fact by 

senior Bush administration officials that they were bluffing―that 

they had no intention of responding to the use of chemical or 

biological weapons against U.S. forces with a nuclear strike against 

Iraq.7 If Saddam concluded that he faced nuclear annihilation over 

chemical or biological weapons usage but not over setting oil fires, 

he concluded wrongly. 

 And this leads to the final problem. In general, the threat of using 

of nuclear weapons in response to attack is at best a “declaratory 

policy.” Even if Bush administration officials had been sincere when 

they issued their threats rather than engaged in a bluff, we do not 

know what the response to the use of chemical weapons by Iraq 

would have been. The notion that Saddam was deterred by the 

U.S. threat raises the age-old problem of how to prove deterrence 
323

worked. This is usually framed as a matter of the impossibility of 

proving a negative, namely, that someone didn’t do something 

because of a warning about consequences. I would like to embellish 

the problem by suggesting that “consequences” here is very heavily 

freighted for something with no actuality. We are asked to equate 

the threat “If A, then B” with the reality of “If A, then B,” when the 

proposition is never tested by A (or in the case of the oil wells, where 

it was tested only to have the actuality turn out to be “If A, then not 

B”). The point is that notwithstanding anything and everything that 

has been said beforehand, “A” would give rise to a decision-point at 

which one would choose “B” or “not B.” If “A” does not arise, there 

is no basis for assuming that the decision is “B” rather than “not B.” 

(The assertion that the “mere possibility” of “B” deters “A” is an 

attempt to wiggle around this difficulty.)

 At most, one can know that one is bluffing, that one will not do 

what one says one will do if provoked, having ruled it out (that is, 

having reached the decision point in advance).8

 But in the absence 

of the provocation, one does not reach the moment of decision, and 

so one cannot be said to have decided. “Declaratory policy” is not 

policy, in the strong sense of established practice; it is declaration.9

 Deterrence is generally thought to be an exercise in which one 

party tries to persuade another party not to undertake a particular 

action by making the perceived potential costs of the action 

unacceptably high.10 The deterring party promises to sufficiently 

annul the benefit of the action by counteraction to make the action 

pointless. Thus there is a substantial literature on what it takes to 

make a deterrent credible in the eyes of the party that one is seeking 

to deter.11

 This focus of attention is important. It reminds us that there is no 

sense in which the possession of a “deterrent” automatically deters. 

We must inquire into the mind of the party we wish to deter in order 

to determine whether deterrence is working.12 But in another sense, 

the focus is incomplete. Before we spend too much time on the mind 

of the party meant to be deterred, we should focus on the details of 

what’s going on in the mind of the party trying to do the deterring.

 If a deterrent works better because it is more credible, then the 

exercise of proving it credible to the party one wishes to deter begins 
324

with the effort to persuade oneself that it is credible. Credibility 

begins at home. So we ask ourselves the following question: What 

would we do if someone launched an all-out nuclear attack on us? 

Or, what would we do in certain horrendous circumstances short 

of all-out nuclear attack? The answer we proffer is that we would 

unleash fury in return, up to the limit case, the complete annihilation 

of our enemy. 

 And we do a number of things to demonstrate our intention, 

first of all to ourselves. We build an arsenal of vast power. We ensure 

that the inevitable vulnerabilities of any given component of it are 

offset by capabilities in other components. We have the “triad;” the 

ability to deliver strategic nuclear weapons by land-based missile, 

by long-range bomber, or by submarine-based missile. We develop 

weapons systems across a wide range of potential utility, from 

short-range nuclear artillery shells to intermediate-range missiles to 

multiwarhead long-range missiles. We have explosive power at our 

disposal in all magnitudes of which nuclear weapons are capable, 

from small charges for the local battlefield to the behemoth city 

incinerators of Armageddon.13 We have sought and achieved greater 

and greater precision in our targeting, enabling us to reduce the size 

of our warheads while still ensuring that the targets we are seeking 

will be destroyed. And we have “hardened” our nuclear facilities as 

well as command-communications-control (C3) links to the national 

command authority in order to withstand the worst an enemy offers 

and yet be able to strike back.14

 This is not just a matter of hardware, of course. There is an 

extensive body of military doctrine on how use the weapons 

effectively. War games simulate every imaginable contingency to test 

these doctrines. The U.S. Strategic Command headquarters at Offutt 

Air Force Base in Nebraska, one of nine unified commands world 

wide, has 2,500 personnel and coordinates the nuclear warfighting 

capability of personnel and equipment ranging in location from 

the White House and the Pentagon to Minuteman missile silos in 

Wyoming, Montana, and North Dakota, to strategic submarine 

bases in Georgia and Washington, to communications satellites 

miles overhead.15 The literature of military affairs journals takes up 

warfighting questions at the unclassified level and the Pentagon is 
325

full of classified studies on the subject, from the January 10, 2002, 

“Nuclear Posture Review” on down. 

 Beyond the capacity to wage nuclear war in response to a nuclear 

or other attack, the United States approaches the subject with a 

certain élan as well. Consider the mythos that has grown up around 

the “football,” the satchel containing the nuclear attack codes that 

is carried by a military officer who shadows the president of the 

United States at all times in case of surprise attack. Or consider 

further the psychological testing of military personnel who have 

nuclear warfighting responsibilities. We do not want a madman 

in close proximity to these weapons. Neither do we want someone 

unwilling, in a pinch, to unleash incineration when ordered.

 All of this is very real. There is no doubt that the United States 

could unleash all-out nuclear war. One day the drill could turn out 

to be the real thing and the hardware, personnel, doctrine, and 

élan (“yes, sir, it is necessary, lawful, and just to fire this missile”) 

could come together as planned. The worst-case scenario of planners’ 

nightmares could simply be the worst case―global devastation. We 

have ensured that all of this is entirely possible. 

 We set out to persuade others about what we would do. But the 

first order of business in doing so is to persuade ourselves. It is not 

surprising that we were able to do so, nor is the fact that we have 

done so very illuminating. Whenever we found something that was 

less than convincing in our nuclear weaponry or our doctrine, we 

tried to replace it or improve upon it. The problem is that while the 

apparatus is real, in relation to the central question―what would the 

United States do if attacked in certain ways?―it is only a simulacrum, 

an elaboration of a central contention that could never be proved by 

the apparatus because the construction of the apparatus presupposes 

it, namely, that we would retaliate with everything we have.

 The conceptual problems of nuclear deterrence get worse. Once 

we have satisfied ourselves that we know what we will do (even 

though we don’t), we turn the inquiry to whether our adversary is, in 

fact, persuaded. All too often, this is a neglected aspect of assessing 

nuclear deterrence. It is tempting to conclude that the deterrent―the 

vast apparatus of nuclear retaliation we have constructed―deters in 

itself. But it is not the deterrent, the thing, that deters. What deters is 
326

the idea that the deterrent is effective in the mind of the party whom 

we are seeking to deter. So we have to inquire whether our effort to 

deter has the effect of deterring. 

 This is problematic for two reasons. First, a party may refrain 

from taking an action, in particular an action from our list above, for 

any number of reasons. Consider the case of the United States and the 

United Kingdom. It is not meaningful to suggest that the reason the 

UK has refrained from undertaking a nuclear attack on the United 

States is that the UK fears massive retaliation in return. Surely, the 

bonds of friendship between the two peoples count for something. 

This friendship is far more than an epiphenomenon concealing the 

underlying reality that the UK is deterred by the nuclear weapons of 

the United States and that the United States is deterred by the UK’s. 

One could make a similar point about why Canadian intelligence 

services are unlikely to launch covert terrorist attacks from the menu 

above against the United States.16 If it is not nuclear deterrence in the 

form of the fear of massive retaliation that is working in these cases, 

we are clearly unjustified in ascribing the work of deterrence to all

cases in which matters do not come to blows. “Peace” is no proof 

that deterrence is working. “Peace” is no more than a precondition 

for the question of whether it is deterrence or something else that has 

kept the peace.

 The second problem is that the assessment of whether our 

adversaries are persuaded that we would retaliate is actually not 

much different from the question of whether we have persuaded 

ourselves that we would retaliate. Faced with evidence, for example, 

that an adversary doubted our willingness to retaliate, we might 

redouble our efforts to persuade. And no doubt we would continue 

until we were persuaded that our adversaries were persuaded―

which is to say, we are once again engaged in an exercise in 

persuading ourselves that we would act in the manner we want to 

believe we would act. This is not a hard sell.17

 The reason we set out to persuade ourselves that we would 

retaliate massively if necessary is that we know that unless we 

convince ourselves that we were prepared to wage all-out nuclear war 

in the limit case, we have little hope of persuading our adversaries 

of the same. In other words, our real purpose is and has always 
327

been to deter. It turns out that we have never been interested in the 

question “What would we do if . . .?” Our question all along has 

been, “How do we persuade our potential adversary not to attack 

us?” Our answer from the beginning has been “by persuading him 

that the benefit of attacking us could never outweigh the cost” and, 

at the limit, “by persuading him that we will annihilate him.” Our 

persuasive power has been assumed from the beginning to rest on 

our belief that we would retaliate. The purpose of our belief is to 

persuade. Unfortunately, the disclosure of this fact, which we knew 

perfectly well all along to have been true but which we, in effect, 

chose to disregard, colors our inquiry significantly. We have taken 

one possible answer to the question “What would we do if . . .?” and 

maintained it, not because we know it to be our answer, but because 

we think it would be best for us if others believe it is our answer. 

 We therefore maintain the position we do in order to ensure 

that the result is what we desire, namely, a peace that we ascribe 

to deterrence―a situation in which we are not attacked.18 Without 

an intention to deter, in fact, what we are doing makes no sense.19

Since we do not as a general rule believe that our intentions are 

expansionist and aggressive, we are clearly not acquiring a nuclear 

arsenal for offensive purposes. (Whether everyone else shares this 

interpretation is another question, as is the question of whether 

these weapons have served a coercive purpose short of detonation.) 

No, the apparatus exists for the purpose of persuading ourselves 

that we have persuaded others that, at the limit, they risk massive 

nuclear retaliation if they attack us. We have a nuclear arsenal not 

for the purpose of fighting nuclear wars but for the purpose of 

demonstrating the capability of assured destruction to any potential 

adversary. This is a product of our desire to persuade our adversaries 

not to attack us, which in turn we measure by how persuaded we 

are that they are persuaded. If we think that they don’t think that 

they risk annihilation, we take further action to demonstrate that 

they face that possibility. We enhance our capabilities in the pursuit 

of credibility. This in turn comes down to the question of whether 

we are persuaded that we will do what we say we will do, namely 

retaliate massively at the limit. This, we demonstrate to ourselves 

through the acquisition of the capability of assured destruction. 

Nuclear deterrence, and at the limit the doctrine of mutual assured 
328

destruction, is thus a closed circle of self-persuasion that coexists 

with nuclear weapons not going off.

 Let us now disrupt the equilibrium of deterrence by returning 

to the catalogue of horrors above. What could trigger nuclear 

retaliation? In the first place, it seems highly unlikely that any sort 

of conventional attack would result in a decision to retaliate with 

nuclear weapons. The record on the subject is clear. The oil field fires 

in the first Gulf War did not trigger such retaliation despite a warning 

to that effect from the United States. The United States did not 

respond to terrorist attacks traceable to Muammar Qaddafi’s Libya 

in the 1980s with a nuclear attack, but rather with a conventional 

strike (and one that fell well short of any serious attempt at “regime 

change.”) Moreover, in the wake of the destruction of 9/11, no one 

seriously proposed the use of nuclear weapons. This cannot be said 

to have been solely a product of the problem of what to do against 

terrorist organizations, which are not state actors.20 Very quickly, 

the United States determined to take action to topple the Taliban 

government, but the use of nuclear weapons was never part of the 

planning, even against al Qaeda targets, for example around Tora 

Bora.21 If a nuclear strike against a legitimate military target, such as 

a concentration of al Qaeda and Taliban fighters in an area remote 

from civilians, is out, a retaliatory strike for 9/11 aimed at a civilian 

population or at a military target located near civilians is hard to 

imagine.

 In the second place, as we have discussed above, if it seems 

inconceivable that a chemical or biological attack would be met in 

kind, it is hard to see how such an attack would be met with nuclear 

retaliation. Nuclear weapons are generally agreed to be the most 

severe WMD in terms of their lethality and the horror they arouse. 

Retaliation for a chemical or biological attack by nuclear weapon 

would be seen as an escalation. It seems far more likely that the 

United States in such a case would settle on a course of defeating the 

responsible parties militarily, whether in a conventional war against 

a state actor or against a state harboring nongovernmental terrorist 

actors. The goal might be punishment in the form of limited military 

action, but it would more likely be regime change for the state in 

question and the eradication of the terror network in a manhunt to 

the death.
329

 A radiological attack would constitute the use of a “nuclear” 

weapon because it disperses radioactive material. Even here, 

however, it seems more likely that the response would be he same 

as it would be to a chemical, biological, or a massive conventional 

attack: regime change and manhunt.

 We come now to the nuclear scenarios, ranging from a single 

limited blast up to an all-out assault by a Cold War-sized arsenal. We 

know what we have said we would do, but we said this for a specific 

reason: to deter. Our purpose was to try to prevent what we are now 

hypothesizing was not prevented. Another way to put this is that we 

have failed in our effort to deter. The threat of nuclear retaliation and 

at the limit, assured destruction, has not prevented nuclear attack. 

Now what?

 It is entirely clear that the parties responsible for unleashing a 

nuclear attack on the United States must be counterattacked and, 

if possible, destroyed. There would be at least three compelling 

reasons for doing so: first, punishment; second, incapacitation, so 

that the same parties could not undertake future attacks; third, 

deterrence again―to send a message to any persons contemplating 

similar action that they face death if they proceed. 

 It is possible that a retaliatory nuclear strike would be effective 

in achieving the desired destruction. In the case of state actors, 

destruction is near-certain. 

 This is the decision-point. We could retaliate with nuclear 

weapons. But would we really want to do that? This is an important 

question across the range of reasons for counterattacking.

 In relation to punishment, whom would we be punishing? First of 

all, we would hope to eliminate members of a regime or a terrorist 

group within the zone of total destruction. But we also eliminate 

many innocent persons, specifically, civilians. It is hard to see 

what the justification for punishing the civilians would be, unless 

populations are somehow to be held accountable for the rulers they 

have. Such a doctrine would run counter to a century’s worth of 

international effort to distinguish civilians from soldiers in order to 

protect the former.22

 What is true of nuclear punishment is also true of nuclear 

incapacitation. We would destroy the capacity of the attackers to 

repeat their actions, but at the cost of the lives of many people who 
330

did not participate in the attack and who would not be agents in any 

future attack. One presumes that the decision to launch a nuclear 

attack on the United States was not put to a plebiscite. The actual 

number of persons involved in such a decision would be tiny, yet the 

number of the dead following a retaliatory nuclear strike would be 

very high.

 Finally, deterrence. The temptation is to think of a nuclear 

counterstrike as a “restoration” of deterrence. But there are problems 

here. We might say that we have to do now what we said we would 

do before―namely, launch a retaliatory strike up to the limit case of 

complete destruction―in order to establish that we meant business 

in the first place. Except that we said we would retaliate to try to 

prevent what occurred, namely a nuclear attack. 

 “Deterrence” cannot be said to have completely failed because of 

the attack. It is possible that some parties refrained from attacking the 

United States with nuclear weapons solely because they believed that 

we would do what we said and destroy them. If we fail to retaliate, 

there is a risk that such a party would conclude that it could “safely” 

launch a nuclear attack now. But a party that would be deterred in 

the first case would in all likelihood consider the totality of the U.S. 

response in calculating whether it should remain deterred or attack. 

Such a party would likely remain deterred by the prospect of violent 

regime change or manhunt to the death, because avoidance of those 

outcomes led the party to decide to be deterred by the prospect of 

nuclear retaliation in the first place.

 But if we decide to launch a retaliatory nuclear strike, we should 

not do so under the illusion that we are “restoring” deterrence. Our 

deterrent, in the case of an attacking party, did not deter, and so 

“deterrence” cannot be said to have ever described the relationship 

between the United States and the state or party launching the nuclear 

attack. And it is the emergence or existence of such parties that is the 

problem. Launching a nuclear counterattack against an undeterrable 

party may reinforce the seriousness of our purpose in relation to 

deterrable parties―the ones who never doubted the price they would 

pay for attacking the United States would be too high. But nuclear 

retaliation will do nothing to restore “deterrence” in relation to 

undeterrable actors―those who would risk violent regime change or 

manhunt to death in order to attack us with nuclear weapons.
331

 But what about the limit case―an all-out nuclear surprise attack 

on the United States killing perhaps 100 million people?23 What 

then?

 It is reasonable to begin by asking whether this question is 

anything but entirely theoretical. The obvious counterclaim vis-àvis the United States in the 21st century is China. Several comments 

here will have to stand in for a full discussion of the subject, which is 

beyond the scope of this chapter. First, to the extent that China needs 

to be deterred from attacking the United States (or perhaps Taiwan), 

the United State currently enjoys overwhelming conventional 

military superiority that would likely deter any deterrable party. 

Second, China may have the potential to become a rival to the 

United States on the scale of the Soviet Union, but there is no reason 

to assume it will become such a rival nor is there reason to act now 

as if it is such a rival. Third, it is difficult to imagine a government 

developing a Soviet-sized nuclear capability, which would require 

formidable economic resources, without also developing a certain 

bourgeois attachment to the preservation of its own society. Some 

argue that the Soviet example disproves this proposition, since 

Soviet military planners contemplated fighting and winning a 

nuclear war.24 But what military planners are contemplating is not 

necessarily identical to what political leaders are contemplating. As 

it turned out, the Soviet external empire and then Russia’s “near 

abroad” fell away without the arrival of a nuclear crisis-point. One 

might reasonably hope that any such future arsenal would have 

deterrence as its purpose just as the U.S. arsenal has deterrence as its 

purpose.

 But hope is not policy. One could resort to a literal reading of the 

adage, Fiat justicia, pereat mundus (“Let justice be done, though the 

world should perish”). But for many decades now, presidents and 

senior officials have chafed for options other than all-out nuclear 

war. As Henry Kissinger noted of his initial review of strategic 

doctrine when he became National Security Advisor to newlyelected President Richard Nixon in 1969: 

It was all very well to threaten mutual suicide for purposes of deterrence, 

particularly in case of a direct threat to national survival. But no President 

could make such a threat credible except by conducting a diplomacy 

that suggested a high irrationality. . . . And if deterrence failed and the 
332

President was finally faced with the decision to retaliate, who would take 

the moral responsibility for recommending a strategy based on the mass 

extermination of civilians?25

Kissinger sought a doctrine of “strategic sufficiency” based on “not 

only the destruction of civilians but of military targets as well.”26

 Over time the bias has shifted markedly from the destruction of 

civilians and some military targets besides, to the minimization of 

civilian casualties in all military operations. This is consistent with 

treaty obligations and doctrinally enshrined in the military rules 

for the conduct of war. On March 5, 2003, a senior defense official 

from U.S. Central Command offered a remarkable Pentagon briefing 

on “Targeting and Collateral Damage” setting out current U.S. 

practices: “[O]ur intent is to have a process that not only looks to 

determine the target’s validity, if you will, but then find a means to 

strike that target to gain the desired military effect without creating 

an undue effect on noncombatants or surrounding structures.”27

 Some within the military take this argument to lengths that would 

no doubt astound general officers of generations past: “A military 

commander is morally obligated to do as much as he can to preserve 

the lives of all noncombatants, even if significantly increasing the 

risk to his own soldiers.”28 It is also fair to say that to the extent that 

“state practice” shapes international law, the recent practice of the 

United States in such conflicts as the Kosovo air campaign, the war 

in Afghanistan, and the second Iraq war has established that the 

United States feels obligated to be mindful of civilian casualties and 

refrains from attacking legitimate military targets where the military 

benefit would not outweigh the risk to civilians. Massive nuclear 

retaliation against civilian targets would be difficult to square with 

this pattern of practice, even in extremis. It is not entirely clear that 

an order to launch a retaliatory strike―the planned or anticipated 

result of which would be tens to hundreds of thousands or millions 

of civilian deaths―would be lawful and therefore binding.

 Nuclear stockpiles worldwide have been shrinking, from a peak 

level of over 65,000 warheads in 1986 to about 20,000 in 2002.29

Under the 2002 Strategic Offense Reductions Treaty (the Moscow 

Treaty), the United States and Russia pledge to reduce the total 

number of warheads on each side to 1,700-2,200 by 2012.30 The 

quantities remaining are sufficient on the pereat mundus question, 
333

at least insofar as their general detonation would likely create a 

world in which many of the survivors would envy the dead. This 

reduction in arsenals is related to the concern for civilian welfare in 

conventional warfare. The yields of nuclear weapons also have been 

reduced as the accuracy of their delivery systems has increased. At 

one time in the history of strategic thinking about nuclear weapons, 

war planners considered that civilian casualties were desirable as “a 

‘bonus’” when going after military targets. Henry S. Rowen noted 

in 1975, “[C]ollateral damage is now being seen increasingly as a 

‘minus.’”31 Yield reduction was by no means a necessary corollary of 

increased accuracy. 

 But increased accuracy in delivery systems is obviously something 

with broader application. It is an indication of the multiplicity of 

conventional options military planners and policymakers have at 

their disposal. A detailed discussion of these changes is beyond 

the scope of this chapter.32 Suffice it to say that conventional U.S. 

military power, as displayed in Afghanistan and Iraq, is capable of 

extraordinarily swift victory in effecting “regime change”―and with 

minimal U.S. casualties and civilian casualties.

 As Nathan Leites once asked, in the context of an argument 

against “assured destruction”-style nuclear retaliatory strikes, 

“[W]ill the enemy’s attack on us not have revealed him as one with 

whom we would not like to continue cohabiting the world?”33 That 

such an enemy must be defeated is certain. What has changed is 

the means we have at our disposal to remove that enemy from the 

world. These means are by no means exclusively nuclear. 

 As Leites dryly notes, “beginning another effort at establishing 

a peaceful world with huge destruction without obvious reason 

might not increase the chance of success.”34 In all but cases 2.9 and 

2.10 above, those scenarios involving large-scale nuclear attack on 

the United States by a state actor, U.S. nuclear weapons have little 

plausible deterrent value because the United States would be highly 

unlikely to use them. The response against such an aggressor would 

be regime change and manhunt to the death, the prospect of which 

will sufficiently deter all those who are deterrable by the threat of 

nuclear retaliation. Moreover, the threat of nuclear retaliation may 

even be counterproductive, insofar as such threats distract military 

planners from preparing and using non-nuclear military options.35
334

 Cases 2.9 and 2.10 invite the question of whether a nuclear 

counterattack would be more effective than a non-nuclear 

counterattack in terms of both defeating the enemy and “establishing a 

peaceful world.” Under no circumstances would an all-out, “assured 

destruction” counterattack meet these criteria. It is conceivable that 

limited nuclear strikes against military targets would be sufficiently 

more effective than non-nuclear attacks and justify the ensuing greater 

“collateral damage,” i.e., the civilian casualties. It is also possible that 

further research will result in mini-nukes whose effective use against 

military targets would generate no civilian casualties. If developed, 

they may come to be accepted as unexceptional and legitimate 

weapons for use in wartime—though it seems just as likely that the 

norm of nonuse of nuclear weapons would persist. And for now, 

nuclear weapons have a well-entrenched place, indeed pride of 

place, in the odious category of WMD.

 We have sufficient conventional power to deter those susceptible 

to being deterred. It is doubtful that our assertion that we are 

prepared to use nuclear weapons targeting civilians across a broad 

range of contingencies adds much to our efforts to deter. It also 

seems likely that such threats will be revealed as empty once a 

decision point arrives. We might be better off by ceasing our efforts 

to persuade ourselves we will go nuclear, putting the weapons in 

deep freeze, and augmenting our ability to deal death to precisely 

those whom we need to kill, and no others.

ENDNOTES - CHAPTER 11

1. Note that the questions under consideration here are posed not generally 

but specifically with regard to the United States in the international environment 

at the present moment. It would be a misuse of the conclusions here to apply 

them without substantial further examination to historical situations, to other 

countries at the present moment, or to a future international environment that 

differs markedly from the present.

2. Mearsheimer and Walt use this term in making the case that Saddam Hussein 

would have remained effectively deterred from smuggling a nuclear weapon to a 

terrorist network by the possibility of nuclear retaliation. John J. Mearsheimer and 

Stephen M. Walt, “An Unnecessary War,” Foreign Policy, January/February 2003, 

pp. 50-59. The discourse of nuclear deterrence often employs evocative language. 

Glaser and Fetter, for another example, refer to a “rogue state” risking “complete 

annihilation” by attacking with a nuclear weapon. Charles L. Glaser and Steve 

Fetter, “National Missile Defense and the Future of U.S. Nuclear Weapons 
335

Policy,” International Security, Vol. 26, No. 1, Summer 2001, pp. 40-92. One possible 

explanation for this is that those undertaking the discussion do not wish to be 

accused of euphemism in relation to the horror of nuclear war. Another, however, 

is that the florid language is itself meant to further the project of deterrence. 

Imagine not just death but “incineration,” not just destruction or annihilation 

but “complete annihilation.” The case that the language is not descriptive but 

rather proffered for political reasons is strengthened by the fact that scenarios 

envisioning all-out countervalue nuclear war, mutually assured destruction 

(MAD), nevertheless anticipates many millions of survivors in addition adds to 

the many millions of dead. See, e.g., endnote 23 below. Payne cites a 1979 Office 

of Technology Assessment estimate of what he calls “extreme circumstances” 

resulting in 160 million dead. Keith B. Payne, Deterrence in the Second Nuclear Age, 

Lexington, Kentucky: University Press of Kentucky, 1996, p. 6. The Census Bureau 

pegs U.S. population as of July 1 that year at just over 225 million., This figure is 

available at http://www.census.gov/population/estimates/nation/popclockest.txt.) In this 

“extreme” scenario, then, 65 million would have survived, or more than a quarter 

of the U.S. population at the time. 

3. Bob Woodward, Bush at War, New York: Simon and Schuster, 2002, pp. 

100.

4. Gompert, for example, advocates explicitly threatening a nuclear response 

to a chemical or biological attack. David G. Gompert, “Sharpen the Fear,” Bulletin 

of the Atomic Scientists, Vol. 56, No. 1, January/February 2000, pp. 22-23.

5. Woodward, p. 218. Woodward is paraphrasing the formulation offered 

by Vice President Dick Cheney. According to a report in the Washington 

Times, January 31, 2003, the classified National Security Presidential Directive 

17, the public version of which was released as “National Strategy to Combat 

Weapons of Mass Destruction” and is available at http://www.whitehouse.gov/news/

releases/2002/12/WMDStrategy.pdf. It included the sentence: “The United States will 

continue to make clear that it reserves the right to respond with overwhelming 

force―including potentially nuclear weapons―to the use of [weapons of mass 

destruction] against the United States, our forces abroad, and friends and allies.” 

6. Sagan notes, in opposition to the conclusion that the nuclear threat deterred 

Saddam, “[I]t is crucial to remember that the January 9, 1991, Bush letter . . . did 

not threaten a devastating response only in retaliation to Iraqi use of chemical or 

biological weapons; Bush also listed Iraqi support for terrorist activities or the 

destruction of the Kuwaiti oil fields as actions that would cause the U.S. public to 

‘demand the strongest possible response.’ Although Iraq did not use chemical or 

biological weapons during the war, Saddam Hussein did order terrorist attacks 

against U.S. targets, and Iraqi special forces did set fires throughout the Kuwaiti 

oil fields. It is therefore by no means self-evident that U.S. deterrent threats were 

effective in January 1991, because two of the three actions that Bush said the United 

States would ‘not tolerate’ were actually taken by Iraq during the last days of the 

Gulf War.” Scott D. Sagan, “The Commitment Trap,” International Security, Vol. 24, 

No. 4, Spring 2000, pp. 85-115.
336

7. See the discussion in Payne, pp. 81-87. 

8. This contention may also be problematic. I posit a decision point in advance 

of the possible occurrence of “A” at which decision makers conclude “if A or if not 

A, then not B”―or, more simply, “in relation to A, not B.” Sagan argues that the 

threat of nuclear retaliation in response to a chemical or biological attack may 

make such retaliation more likely, whether leaders think they are bluffing or 

not, because they create a “commitment trap, in which U.S. leaders would feel 

compelled to use nuclear weapons after a biological or chemical attack because they 

believe that adversaries and allies perceive that the U.S. reputation for honoring 

its commitments was at stake.” As will be clear from my argument here, I am less 

concerned about this danger than Sagan, because in my view such threats are not 

credible. But insofar as I am posing a normative question as well, namely, what the 

United States should do under certain circumstances, I certainly agree with Sagan 

that the United States should not issue such threats because it should not act to make 

good on them. 

9. “What cannot be used, cannot deter. Then policy reveals itself as only 

declaratory.” Paul Ramsey, War and the Christian Conscience, Durham, NC: Duke 

University Press, 1961, p. 244. 

10. Similarly, “Deterrence works, if it does, by persuading a potential aggressor 

that the risks of retaliation attached to the contemplated act of aggression outweigh 

its benefits.” Gregory V. Kavka, Moral Paradoxes of Nuclear Deterrence, Cambridge: 

Cambridge University Press, 1987, p. 48. The etymology of “deter” gives rise to a 

common but in my view inadequate definition, namely, to dissuade through fear, 

specifically, of punishment. Fear is one reason one might be dissuaded, but it is not 

the only possible reason, except in a very weak sense. Party A might be deterred 

from doing X simply because it would be difficult or expensive, having been made 

the more so by B. If this is fear, it does not rise to the level of existential fear of the 

sort one associates with nuclear weapons. Another definitional issue is that the 

term “deterrence” is commonly used in two senses. On one hand, “deterrence” 

describes the effort on the part of the would-be deterrer to deter. On the other, 

“deterrence” describes the condition said to result from such a successful effort. 

That we try to deter is not in doubt. In this sense, deterrence has actuality. But its 

actuality in this sense tells us nothing about whether deterrence has actuality in 

the second sense. 

11. See the discussion in Patrick M. Morgan, Deterrence Now, Cambridge: 

Cambridge University Press, 2003, pp. 15-20, 101-105.

12. See my extended discussion in Tod Lindberg, “Deterrence and Prevention,” 

Weekly Standard, Vol. 8, No. 20, February 3, 2003. 

13. For a brief description of the current U.S. arsenal, see Robert S. Norris, 

et al., “U.S. Nuclear Forces, 2003,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Vol. 59, No. 3, 

May/June 2003, pp. 73-76.

14. “The USSTRATCOM Command Center is a specially-designed, two-level, 

14,000-square-foot reinforced concrete and steel structure containing the critical 
337

information management and communication systems to provide the commander 

of USSTRATCOM an assured capability to manage forces world wide. In time 

of war, the underground would be sealed off. An underground emergency 

power supply, a well supplying an emergency water source, and rations would 

allow continuous operations without outside support for an extended period 

of time. Electromagnetic pulse protection is provided for critical command, 

control and communications equipment as well as supporting utilities. This 

allows the USSTRATCOM Commander to continuously exercise command over 

USSTRATCOM forces, even in the disturbed electromagnetic environment which 

would follow a high altitude nuclear burst.” U.S. Strategic Command Office of 

Public Affairs, Fact File, “Command Center,” Offutt Air Force Base, Nebraska. 

Available at: http://www.stratcom.mil/factsheetshtml/commandctr.htm.

15. This information is available at the U.S. Strategic Command website, 

http://www.stratcom.mil/.

16. My argument here and throughout is constructivist in character, as against 

the realism or neorealism typically underlying nuclear deterrence theory. “Would 

it be rational today for Canada to assume the worst about U.S. intentions? Or 

even France about German ones?” Alexander Wendt, Social Theory of International 

Politics, Cambridge, UK: Cambridge University Press, 1999, p. 109. 

17. “Because nuclear threats could be controlled and adjusted by changing 

the force structure, it was considered relatively easy to identify how to adjust the 

forces as necessary to ensure deterrence stability. Consequently, the effectiveness 

of U.S. deterrence policy could be maintained with confidence.” Payne, p. 71. 

18. As Walzer notes, “The strategy [of deterrence] works because it is easy. 

Indeed, it is easy in a double sense: not only don’t we do anything to other people, 

we also don’t believe that we will ever have to do anything. The secret of nuclear 

deterrence is that it is a kind of bluff. Perhaps we are only bluffing ourselves. . . 

.” Michael Walzer, Just and Unjust Wars, Second Edition, New York: Basic Books, 

1992, p. 271.

19. See Kavka’s discussion of “deterrent intentions,” “those conditional 

intentions whose existence is based on the agent’s desire to thereby deter others from 

actualizing the antecedent condition of the intention [emphasis added].” Kavka, p. 

20. Kavka’s concern is the morality of making a threat that one knows it would be 

immoral to carry out, what he calls a “Special Deterrent Situation”, p. 16). My main 

difference with Kavka concerns the ontological status of a “conditional intention.” 

I don’t think a “conditional intention” can properly be called an “intention” when 

there is no intention to actualize it no matter what the conditions. 

20. See Tod Lindberg, “How to Fight a Superpower,” Weekly Standard, Vol. 7, 

No. 16, December 31, 2001.

21. To my knowledge, no public accounts of internal Bush administration 

deliberation about war plans in response to the 9/11 attack have mentioned the 

contemplation of use of nuclear weapons. More generally, some have discussed 
338

the possibility of use of battlefield nuclear weapons by the United States if the 

latter found itself in danger of losing a major strategic objective, i.e., in military 

extremis. Also, the Pentagon proposes developing so-called “mini-nukes” with 

yields of less than five kilotons as a supplement to the B61-11 “bunker buster,” 

and the Bush administration proposed a substantial 11.4 percent increase in the 

nuclear weapons research and development budget from Fiscal 2003 to Fiscal 2004. 

See Physics Today, Vol. 56, No. 6, May 2003, pp. 27-28, 33. But would the United 

States actually use such weapons? No bunker has, after all, come under attack by 

the B61-11. McKivergan argues that the United States should have the capability 

of preemptively destroying a hardened underground production facility for 

WMD. Daniel McKivergan, “The No-Nukes Party,” Weekly Standard, Vol. 8, No. 

37, June 2, 2003. But such an attack would amount to a preemptive nuclear first 

strike of the sort that the nuclear-armed United States did not launch, for example, 

against the infant Soviet nuclear program. As Sagan notes, “The first use of any 

nuclear weapon in combat since World War II would be a norm-shattering event 

throughout the world.” 

22. For an overview, see the “International Humanitarian Law” section of the 

International Committee of the Red Cross’s website at: http://www.icrc.org/web/eng/

siteeng0.nsf/iwpList2/Humanitarian_law. 

23. “[T]he emphasis in [Secretary of Defense Robert] McNamara’s statements 

on nuclear forces and doctrine shifted after 1963 to that of Assured Destruction. 

The doctrine held that a nuclear exchange would, with high probability, result 

in over 100 million fatalities in both the United States and the U.S.S.R. . . . The 

principal test of the adequacy of the U.S. strategic force came to be the ability of our 

programmed force to produce civil damage, even against a greater than expected 

threat. The damage criterion settled on by McNamara for determining the size of 

the strategic force was the destruction of 20-25 percent of the Soviet population 

and 50 percent of its industrial capacity.” Henry S. Rowen, “Formulating Strategic 

Doctrine,” Part III of Vol.4, Appendix K to The Report of the Commission on the 

Organization of the Government for the Conduct of Foreign Policy, Washington, DC: 

U.S. Government Printing Office, 1975, p. 227. 

24. Richard Pipes, “Why the Soviet Union Thinks It Could Fight and Win a 

Nuclear War,” Commentary, Vol. 64, No. 1, July 1977, pp. 21-34. Another possible 

exception to my generalization here might be a government rich enough in 

exploitable natural resources to afford a large-scale nuclear program without 

acquiring the bourgeois habits that typically underlie sufficient national wealth 

for such programs.

25. Henry Kissinger, White House Years, New York: Little, Brown, 1979, p. 

216.

26. Ibid., p. 217.

27. As one of many examples the official proffered during the briefing: “[A] 

Hellfire missile has only about a 40-pound warhead. So the circle that it might cause 

damage is relatively small: 60 or 70 feet. On the other hand, a 2,000-pound bomb 
339

will create about 90 percent of its effect out to about 600 feet of the target. And 

so, depending on the kinds of weapons you would use, you would place a circle 

over the target and then look to see what’s in the circle. In the case of our example 

here, we see a civilian housing structure, a hospital, and a mosque. And those are, 

1) noncombatant facilities, and in the case of a mosque or hospital, 2) a protected 

facility. And so we want to make sure that we don’t inadvertently cause damage to 

those facilities while we’re striking that target. . . . Can we make that circle smaller, 

for example? Can we mitigate the effect of the weapon?” The briefing transcript is 

available at: http://www.defenselink.mil/news/Mar2003/t03052003_t305targ.html. 

28. Michael A. Carlino, “The Moral Limits of Strategic Attack,” Parameters, 

Vol. 32, No. 1, Spring 2002, pp. 15-30. At the time of publication, the author was a 

major in the U.S. Army.

29. Robert S. Norris and Hans M. Kristensen, “Global Nuclear Stockpiles, 

1945-2002,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Vol. 58, No. 6, November/December 

2002, pp. 103-104.

30. The treaty text is available at: http://www.state.gov/p/eur/rls/or/2002/10471.

htm.

31. Rowen, p. 221.

32. For an overview, see Bruce Berkowitz, The New Face of War: How War Will 

Be Fought in the 21st Century, New York: Free Press, 2003. For a consideration of 

the effect of the “revolution in military affairs” on deterrence, see Morgan, pp. 203-

237. 

33. Nathan Leites, “Once More About What We Should Not Do Even in 

the Worst Case: The Assured Destruction Attack,” California Seminar on Arms 

Control and Foreign Policy Discussion Paper, June 1974, p. 10.

34. Ibid.

35. “[T]he current policy of calculated ambiguity―with its over-reliance on 

the nuclear ‘big stick’―is a cop-out. America is paying full price for this half-policy, 

the result of which is that the Armed Forces may be strategically unprepared to 

respond when the time comes.” Harry W. Conley, “Not with Impunity: Assessing 

U.S. Policy for Retaliating to a Chemical or Biological Attack,” Essays 2001: Chairman 

of the Joint Chiefs of Staff Strategy Essay Competition, Washington, DC: National 

Defense University Press, pp. 23-37. The paper includes an excellent discussion of 

“calculated ambiguity.” 

341

CHAPTER 12

TAKING PROLIFERATION SERIOUSLY

Henry D. Sokolski

With America’s departure from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) 

Treaty late in 2002, Bush officials have claimed that America has 

begun to lead the world away from security policies based on 

mutual assured destruction (MAD). The administration’s decision 

to deploy a national missile defense system in Alaska certainly is a 

clear refutation of MAD-based opposition to such protection. What’s 

less clear, however, is how America’s rejection of MAD might affect 

U.S. nuclear weapons policies beyond missile defense. Specifically, 

does America plan to stem the spread of nuclear weapons or to use 

nuclear weapons in certain circumstances? 

MAD AND THE NONPROLIFERATION TREATY (NPT)

To an extent not generally appreciated, U.S. and international 

nonproliferation policies have had a fairly tight relation to MAD. 

During the Cold War, the most popular view concerning nuclear 

weapons reflected the MAD view that having a nuclear force capable 

of killing large numbers of civilians afforded nations basic security 

against attack. There also was a MAD fear that any attempt by nations 

to go beyond the finite force levels needed to attack undefended 

cities would lead to war-prone arms races. 

 The thinking here was that if the superpowers targeted more 

than their opponents’ vulnerable cities, they would be forced to 

develop ever-quicker, more accurate nuclear delivery systems 

(necessary to evade or destroy opposing weapons). They also would 

have to place their weapons on hair-trigger alert and risk deploying 

them tactically to an ever-growing number of military commanders. 

All of this, it was argued, would only increase the chances of nuclear 

war.1

 These views certainly were common during the mid-1960s 

and were quite prevalent among those negotiating the Nuclear 
342

Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT). Thus, by the late 1960s, most of those 

crafting the NPT argued that the real proliferation danger emanated 

not so much from the spread of nuclear weapons to more nations 

as from as the superpowers’ own never-ending arms race. This 

rivalry, these diplomats argued, was more likely to result in world 

wide destruction than smaller states’ “independent manufacture” of 

nuclear weapons.2 They agreed that all nations had a right to acquire 

nuclear weapons to defend themselves not only against possible 

nuclear neighbors, but as a hedge against the superpowers if they 

refused to curb their own nuclear arming. But if nonweapons states 

(“because of higher considerations of the interests of mankind”) 

decided not to exercise this right, they were equally convinced that 

these states deserved to be compensated.3

 Under the NPT, nonweapon states compensation consisted of: (1) 

having an “inalienable right” to acquire all forms of nuclear energy 

technology (Article IV); (2) the demand that the superpowers engage 

in good faith negotiations on “effective measures relating to the 

cessation of the nuclear arms race” (Article VI); and (3) the right of 

nonweapons states to withdraw from the NPT and develop nuclear 

weapons “if extraordinary events . . . have jeopardized the[ir] 

supreme interests” (Article X).

 For nearly 30 years, this “grand bargain” was interpreted 

in a manner that focused greatest attention on the need for the 

superpowers to end the arms race--i.e., to stop nuclear innovation 

through nuclear testing and to reduce the size of their arsenals to 

levels no larger than needed to absorb an attack (a few hundred 

weapons) and yet be able to target other countries’ undefended 

cities. Thus, the NPT’s preamble calls for “the cessation of the arms 

race” and of nuclear weapons production and testing. The treaty’s 

negotiating record, meanwhile, speaks approvingly of restraints on 

national missile defenses (later to become the ABM Treaty) and on 

nuclear missile delivery systems (later to become Strategic Arms 

Limitations Talks [SALT] and Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty 

[START]). As such, the various NPT review conferences that have 

been held on almost an annual basis since the NPT came into force 

have focused on these issues almost exclusively. 

 Finally, throughout the past 3 decades, members of the NPT have 

pushed for ever-freer access to civilian nuclear energy technology. 
343

The view is almost identical to that voiced at the time of the NPT’s 

signing: If a state forswears exercising its right to acquire nuclear 

weapons, it nonetheless retains a natural right to all forms of nuclear 

technology for peaceful purposes. This right has been interpreted to 

stockpiling large quantities of nuclear weapons-usable plutonium 

and highly enriched uranium, and developing nuclear weapons 

implosion and gun assembly devices that do not have nuclear 

weapons material cores. 

 All that was required of non-weapons states to engage in these 

activities, besides signing the NPT, was to afford NPT’s nuclear 

watchdog agency or its equivalent in the European Atomic Energy 

Community (EURATOM) occasional access to monitor declared 

nuclear facilities to ensure that no special nuclear material was 

unaccounted for. If a nation’s amount of special nuclear material 

(including even large amounts of nuclear weapons-usable material) 

was what it should be, the International Atomic Energy Agency 

(IAEA) would issue a clean bill of health and protect whatever it 

knew about the amounts of these nuclear weapons-usable materials 

from being sought or shared.4 It was understood that, consistent 

with the treaty, members of the NPT could develop a nuclear 

weapons breakout capability. As the U.S. State Department’s own 

policy planning staff explained in an internal study in 1968:

After the NPT, many nations can be expected to take advantage of the 

terms of the treaty to produce quantities of fissionable material. Plutonium 

separation plants will be built; fast breeder reactors developed. It is 

possible that experimentation with conventional explosives that might 

be relevant to detonating a nuclear bomb core may take place. In this 

way, various nations will attain a well-developed option on a bomb. A 

number of nations will be able to detonate a bomb within a year following 

withdrawal from the treaty; others may even shorten this period.5

Under this interpretation of the NPT, adherence to the treaty required 

only minimal enforcement or monitoring. The key protection against 

proliferation, after all, was the willingness of nations signing the 

treaty to forswear exercising their natural right to acquire nuclear 

weapons. This also meant that the nonproliferation secured by the 

treaty was potentially quite fragile.
344

NPT AFTER THE COLD WAR

 Despite these shortcomings, the NPT until recently was heralded 

as a clear success. Following the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, 

achievement of the NPT’s ultimate goals actually seemed within 

reach. South Africa and Ukraine renounced their possession of 

nuclear weapons and joined the NPT. Similarly, Brazil and Argentina 

gave up their nuclear weapons programs and became NPT members. 

In 1995, the NPT, which was up for a 25-year review, was extended 

indefinitely. Also, Russia and the United States began to reduce their 

deployment of nuclear weapons systems dramatically. By 2001, both 

had agreed to reduce their strategic nuclear weapons deployments 

to less than 4,400 weapons. This is in stark comparison to their 

deployments at the height of the Cold War when both had deployed 

a total of well over 60,000 strategic and tactical nuclear weapons. 

 After the mid-1990s, though, the NPT and its MAD-inspired 

interpretation began to falter. First, whatever limited utility MAD

thinking may have had to describe or channel the Cold War 

competition between the Soviet and U.S.-led alliances, it was a 

tolerable view only so long as the two superpowers actively kept 

nations under their influence from acquiring nuclear weapons. 

During the Cold War, to a great extent, this worked. The Soviets 

kept Eastern Europe from going nuclear, and the United States and 

the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) curbed the nuclear 

ambitions of most of Western Europe and much of the Middle East 

and Asia. 

 With the end of the Cold War competition, though, nations had a 

greater incentive to go their own way and MAD and finite deterrence 

arguments only tended to make this impulse stronger. Indeed, if 

acquisition of a relatively few nuclear weapons targeted against an 

adversary’s undefended cities was a sure guarantee against being 

attacked by a neighbor or a larger outside power, why wouldn’t 

most nations choose to go nuclear? In 1998, India and Pakistan’s 

nuclear tests seemed to validate this view. Both nations essentially 

affirmed that they felt more secure with bombs of their own than 

they did with any military, political, or economic support they might 

get from others. 
345

 Second, after the Cold War several NPT members exploited the 

generous nuclear compensation that a MAD-inspired view of the 

NPT required. North Korea, which became a member of the NPT

in 1985, managed to secure all the nuclear assistance it needed to 

generate and separate plutonium for bombs and launch a covert 

uranium enrichment program. Although it only allowed the IAEA to 

inspect its facilities in 1992, Pyongyang was able to remain a member 

of the NPT even after it was found in violation of its safeguards 

agreement in 1993. IN 2003, even after North Korea claimed it had 

withdrawn from the treaty, it remained a NOT member.

 Iran, meanwhile, acquired virtually the entire fuel cycle--fuel 

fabrication plants, uranium enrichment facilities, a large light water 

reactor, a heavy water production facility--without being found in 

violation of either the NPT or its IAEA safeguards agreement. Now 

there is that Tehran, in little more than 30 months, could be within 

weeks of having a nuclear arsenal of 50-75 weapons and still be a 

member of the NPT in good standing.

 Third, after the Cold War, enforcement of the NPT was tested 

and found wanting. In the case of Iraq, it was only after its defeat 

in Operation DESERT STORM that the United Nations (UN) voted 

to restrict Iraq’s full access to nuclear energy technology. At no 

time prior to the war was Iraq ever found in violation of its IAEA

safeguards obligations. North Korea, meanwhile, was able to evade 

the NPT requirement that it permit IAEA inspections of its facilities 

18 months after signature and did so for almost 5 more years with 

no repercussions. Then in 1993, when the UN finally found North 

Korea in violation of its safeguards agreement, no action was taken. 

 Rather than sanction North Korea, the United States, its allies, 

and the UN allowed Pyongyang to evade inspection under the NPT

for yet another decade. The reason was a U.S.-formulated deal to give 

North Korea two large, modern light water reactors in exchange for 

its eventual compliance with its IAEA safeguards agreement. Even 

after Pyongyang made it clear that it had violated this agreement 

and withdrew from the NPT, no enforcement action was taken 

against it. The promised reactors are still being built. 

 North Korean officials recently suggested that they might export 

their nuclear weapons to other states. As a state that has withdrawn 
346

from the NPT, this is a perfectly legal thing for North Korea to do. It 

could even export warheads to an NPT nonweapons state membe. 

If the warheads remained under North Korean control--as the 

United States currently maintains control of its nuclear weapons in 

Germany--no provision of the NPT would be violated.

WHAT’S MAD THAT REMAINS

Given this worrisome review of the NPT’s current implementation, one can only hope that the popularity of MAD-inspired 

views of the treaty might finally give way to a safer set of policies. 

This is conceivable, but only if the United States and its allies are 

willing to drop their attachment to MAD thinking and MADinspired nonproliferation. This will require much more than the 

United States merely backing out of the ABM Treaty. 

 First, the United States and its allies would have to further reduce 

their security reliance on forms of nuclear retaliation that still entail 

the killing of large numbers of people. American officials are now 

openly raising doubts about the deterrent value of our nuclear forces 

against rogue states and terrorist organizations. Yet they still claim 

that retention of 1,700 to 2,200 deployed nuclear weapons is needed 

to deter “mature” or “advanced” states (e.g., Russia and China). 

Use of large numbers of these weapons to target Russia’s weapons 

capabilities, however, could kill several million civilians. How well 

retaining such an “option” accords with moving away from MAD is 

unclear. 

 Also, the threatened use of such weapons is presented publicly 

as a possible means to deal with smaller, badly behaving states 

(i.e., those that might threaten use of chemical or biological 

weapons). American officials particularly are interested in being 

able to surgically disarm hostile states with nuclear bunker buster 

warheads. Yet many command bunkers are located in or near these 

states’ largest cities (e.g., Baghdad, Tehran, etc.) as are a fair number 

of the weapons of mass destruction (WMD) storage and production 

facilities that might be targeted. Attacking these targets could easily 

entail the slaughter of large numbers of people.

 It is not clear what can be done about this. Perhaps non-nuclear 

technologies, such as kinetic ballistic missile warheads, could be 
347

developed to put hardened bunkers at risk. Perhaps targets could be 

selected that would keep potential collateral damage to a minimum 

or that would obviate the need to destroy the bunkers in question. 

Perhaps not. What is clear, however, is that relying heavily on 

nuclear targeting that entails heavy casualties will undermine the 

credibility of U.S. efforts to move away from MAD and to get other 

nations to follow.

 Second, the United States and its allies would have to actively 

contest the notion that all states have a natural right to acquire 

nuclear weapons. Certainly, the notion that if a nation’s security 

is threatened, it has a right to break out of the NPT needs to be 

challenged. If it is not, North Korea’s recent accumulation of nuclear 

technology under false “peaceful” pretenses, and its withdrawal 

from the treaty is sure to be only the first of many such frauds. Any 

credible challenge to similar abrogations, however, requires the 

United States and its allies to take a much firmer line against states 

outside the NPT’s five recognized nuclear weapons powers. This 

requires discipline that has yet to be demonstrated. 

 In fact, the United States and its allies all too frequently have done 

the opposite. For example, Israel’s, India’s, and Pakistan’s possession 

of nuclear weapons has been excused as being “understandable.” 

Recently, the chairman of the U.S. Nuclear Regulatory Commission 

visited two of India’s nuclear weapons production reactors and 

extended American nuclear “safety” cooperation to New Delhi. 

Earlier, the U.S. Government did all it could to waive and bend 

mandatory legal sanctions directed against India’s and Pakistan’s 

nuclear tests in 1998.

6

 More recently, the United States refused to 

identify Pakistan as a nuclear proliferator despite repeated reports 

of Pakistani nuclear assistance to North Korea and Iran. As for 

Israel, the United States did far too little to stop its nuclear weapons 

program and has done nothing publicly to get it to stop production 

of plutonium at its weapons plant at Dimona.

 Such proliferation “realism” is not limited to friendly nuclear 

weapons states outside the NPT. Nor is it confined to how the 

United States relates to friendly nonweapon state members of the 

NPT. The United States protested North Korea’s violation of the 

NPT and is seeking a resolution condemning it. It protested little or 

not at all, however, Pyongyang’s actual withdrawal from the treaty. 
348

Is the rationale that the United States recognizes North Korea’s right 

to nuclear weapons and its right to keep all the nuclear technology it 

illicitly gained while a member of the NPT? 

 Then there is the argument U.S. officials make that if North Korea 

does not disarm, Japan might acquire nuclear weapons as well. This 

is something China should fear, American officials have explained, 

but is it also something Washington welcomes or expects? Perhaps 

the United States could “live” with such a good nation acquiring 

nuclear weapons so long as Japan acquires them to assure mutual 

deterrence of North Korea. Is the United States ready to make the 

best of such proliferation? Is it prepared to let other friends--South 

Korea, Taiwan, Saudi Arabia, Egypt, Turkey--follow suit?

 Again, if the United States is to move away from MAD, it must 

eschew even indirectly endorsing the notion that nuclear weapons 

can assure a nation protection from attack or that acquisition of them 

is simply the exercise of a nation’s right to self-defense. Certainly, if 

nations perceive that the United States is willing to look the other 

way or to endorse some nuclear proliferation as good, inevitable, or 

manageable, further proliferation will be more likely.

 Third, the United States and its allies would actually have 

to enforce the current set of nuclear nonproliferation rules and 

make them less generous with regard to what is safe and what is 

dangerous. As noted before, the MAD or finite deterrence-inspired 

notion that states have a right to nuclear weapons and that, if this 

right is not exercised, they should be compensated with free access 

to all types of nuclear technology has more than run its course in 

the case of Iraq, Iran, and North Korea. Article IV of the NPT makes 

it clear that nations’ inalienable right to develop nuclear energy for 

peaceful purposes must nonetheless be exercised “in conformity with 

Articles I and II,” which prohibit states from assisting nonweapons 

states “in any way” to acquire nuclear explosives or control over 

such weapons. 

 This Article I and II prohibition, it should be noted, was 

originally inspired not by the finite deterrence or MAD thinking 

of the late 1960s, but by the original Irish UN Resolutions of 1958

and 1959, which were the first to call for an international nuclear 

nonproliferation treaty. In requesting that the UN establish a 

committee to study the dangers inherent in the further spread of 
349

nuclear weapons, the Irish representative to the UN held no brief 

for nations having any “right” to acquire atomic explosives, much 

less for them being compensated with unrestricted access to nuclear 

technology for “peaceful” purposes. Nor did he argue that the key 

nuclear threat was the innovation and growth of superpower nuclear 

weapons. 

 Instead, Ireland’s call for a nuclear nonproliferation treaty was 

premised on the fear that the spread of nuclear weapons to additional 

states would make nuclear disarmament and reductions less likely 

and accidental or catalytic wars--ones instigated by smaller powers 

to draw the superpowers to their defense--more probable. Against 

this threat, the Irish representative urged adoption of the most basic 

restraint: states with nuclear weapons should agree not to share or 

spread them, and states without them should agree not to acquire 

them. As for the sharing of nuclear technology for civilian purposes, 

the Irish recognized that the spread of such civilian capabilities would 

actually make the spread of nuclear weapons more likely and that, 

therefore, the proliferation of such technology had to be controlled. 

Finally, the Irish downplayed the idea that the superpowers had to 

disarm themselves before any progress could be made to reduce the 

spread of nuclear weapons to other states.7

 Clearly, this original Irish Resolution is the one to which we need 

to return if we want a NPT agreement that will reduce rather than 

fan further nuclear proliferation. This will require that the United 

States and other nuclear technology-exporting states recognize that 

much of what they are willing to share is too close to bombmaking 

and a nation quickly diverting such technology military ends cannot 

be safeguarded against. Certainly, light water reactors in Iran will 

bring it dangerously close to having a large arsenal of near-weaponsgrade plutonium after only 15 months of operation. The same is true 

of North Korea if either of the two light water reactors the United 

States, Japan, and South Korea are helping to build are completed. 

It is even clearer that Russia’s, Pakistan’s, and China’s sharing of 

fuel fabrication, plutonium separation, and uranium enrichment 

technology and hardware with Iran and North Korea simply is too 

close to bombmaking to allow for any monitoring that would afford 

timely warning of a possible military diversion.
350

 Unfortunately, America is still pushing international cooperation 

on advanced fuel cycles and reactors that includes cooperation on 

“proliferation resistant” breeder reactors and reprocessing (because 

of the addition of several steps that could just as easily be subtracted). 

This cooperation is being proposed for Brazil, South Africa, South 

Korea, and Argentina--states that only recently gave up nuclear 

weapons programs of their own.

 Finally, there seems to be growing U.S. and allied indifference to 

further civilian use of weapons-usable plutonium. The United States 

is proposing to reconsider President Ford’s policy of deferring the 

commercial use of such nuclear fuels. As an unannounced lead in 

this effort, Washington is plowing ahead with its efforts to convert 34

tons of weapons-grade plutonium into mixed oxide (MOX) civilian 

fuels over the next 20 years and to help pay Russia do the same. The 

U.S. Department of Energy claims that this effort has nothing to do 

with reversing the Ford policies. But, in fact, this project will result in 

over $6 billion in MOX fuel fabrication facilities being built both here 

and in Russia and the movement of over 17,000 nuclear weapons’ 

worth of plutonium into civilian commerce.8

 Such risky civilian efforts, which are consistent with a MADinspired reading of the NPT and the need for the freest exchange 

of nuclear technology for civilian purposes, are themselves bad 

enough. What’s worse is encouragement of lax enforcement of 

existing nonproliferation rules. Japan recently announced that it 

had lost between 59 and 206 kilograms (10 to 51 crude bombs’ 

worth) of nuclear weapons-usable material over the past 15 years 

inf its civilian breeder and MOX operations. Despite the significant 

amount of material “lost,” the United States made no complaint, 

and the IAEA conducted no serious investigation. In fact, the IAEA

still only makes public the special nuclear materials it believes are 

unaccounted for. It keeps no public account of the nearly 200 tons 

(25,000 to 50,000 crude weapons’ worth) of weapons-usable civilian 

plutonium that specific member states have on hand.9

 Such a cavalier attitude regarding the sharing, accounting, 

generation, and safekeeping of civilian nuclear weapons-usable 

materials and related technologies might have made sense in the 

MAD world of the NPT in 1968, but after the events of September 

11 and al Qeada’s announced interest in nuclear explosives, it is 

woefully unwise.
351

TOWARDS A SANER SET OF POLICIES

Making the changes noted above will not be easy, but it would be 

a mistake not to try. Currently, there are only five declared nuclear 

states, all of whose arsenals (except China’s) are becoming smaller. 

India, Pakistan, and Israel also have nuclear weapons, as does North 

Korea. The question is how much worse it can get? The answer is 

plenty. 

 If nothing is done to shore up U.S. and allied security relations 

with the Gulf Coordination Council states and with Iraq, Turkey, 

and Egypt, Iran’s acquisition of even a nuclear weapons breakout 

capability could prompt one or more of these states to try to acquire 

a nuclear weapons option of its own. Similarly, if the United States 

fails to hold Pyongyang accountable for its violation of the NPT

or lets Pyongyang hold on to one or more nuclear weapons while 

appearing to reward its violation with a new deal--one that heeds 

North Korea’s demand for a nonaggression pact and continued 

construction of the two light water reactors--South Korea and Japan 

(and later, perhaps, Taiwan) will have powerful basis to question 

Washington’s security commitment to them and their pledges to 

stay non-nuclear.

 In such a world, Washington’s worries would not be limited to 

gauging the military capabilities of a growing number of hostile, 

nuclear, or near-nuclear-armed nations. It also would have to gauge 

the reliability of a growing number of nuclear or near-nuclear 

friends. Washington might still be able to assemble coalitions, but 

if the coalitions are with nations like France, which has nuclear 

options of its own, it would be much, much more iffy. The amount 

of international intrigue such a world would generate would also 

easily exceed what our diplomats and leaders could manage or track. 

Rather than worry about using force for fear of producing another 

Vietnam, Washington and its very closest allies are more likely to 

grow weary of working closely with others and view military options 

through the rosy lens of their relatively quick victories in Operation 

DESERT STORM, Kosovo, and Operations IRAQI FREEDOM and 

JUST CAUSE. This would be a world disturbingly similar to that of 

1914 but with one big difference; it would be spring-loaded to go 

nuclear.
352

 To move away from such a future, is worth the effort. But what 

step should be taken first? Clearly, it would be helpful if the United 

States and its allies backed country-neutral rules that would close 

some of the worst loopholes in the NPT. These gaps principally 

consist of the NPT’s nonapplication to weapons states outside the 

treaty, the NPT’s lack of any serious enforcement measures, its 

generous inattention to risky “peaceful” nuclear cooperation, and 

its allowance of nuclear weapons transfers between states so long as 

the weapon transferred remains under the control of the exporting 

nation (e.g., U.S. nuclear weapons deployed in Germany).

 To begin to fill these loopholes and to get back to an Irish 

Resolution view of the NPT generally, one might start by trying to 

establish an “international common usage” against any state helping 

others to acquire WMD (nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons) 

such as that which already exists against piracy and the trading 

in slaves. Piracy and slaving are currently activities that can be 

conducted only outside of the protection of international law. Any 

nation that encounters someone engaged in these activities is free 

to act against them, to arrest them, seize their cargo, or force their 

vessels or vehicles to return to their point of origin. 

 One approach to help establish such a rule against WMD might 

be to establish that nations henceforth must not deploy chemical, 

biological, or nuclear weapons onto any other nation’s soil in 

peacetime, whether such weapons remain under control of the first 

nation or not. Beyond this, the United States and like-minded nations 

should propose that nations give international notification before 

shipping (1) any special nuclear materials (as defined by the IAEA

statute); (2) any item on Schedule One of the Australia Group’s list 

of biological and chemical weapons items; or (3) any item on the 

Nuclear Suppliers’ list. In fact, shippers’ export declarations laws in 

the United States and Australia already require exporters in these 

states to make prior notification of their export shipments. Other 

nations should do likewise. Posting these notifications on a website 

would make them available internationally almost immediately. 

 In addition, the United States and other like-minded nations 

should declare that, henceforth, no nation is allowed in peacetime 

to redeploy nuclear, chemical, or biological weapons onto another 

country’s soil. This rule is one the United States, with its various 
353

submarine-launched ballistic and cruise missile systems, long-range 

bombers, air-launched cruise missiles, and sea-based strike aircraft, 

can easily live with. Any nation violating this rule, whether friendly 

(e.g., Pakistan) or not (e.g., North Korea), should be subject to 

interdiction.

 Finally, if there is support for stronger action, exports made 

outside the procedures of IAEA, Australia Group, Nuclear Suppliers 

Group, and (perhaps) the Missile Technology Control Regime might 

be banned and targeted for interdiction. This rule would clearly put 

a bind on nonmembers of these organizations. It would apply not 

just to Iran, which has announced its desire to export its nuclear 

expertise, but to China, North Korea, and Pakistan, who trade in 

nuclear and missile technology. It also could include Israel, which 

has exported technology to China, and India, a state that announced 

a military cooperative agreement with Iran and its intent to export 

military technology internationally.

 If the UN Security Council quickly acted to adopt such a measure, 

all the better. If it failed to act, however, those who discover a 

violation of the proposed rules might choose to act on their own. 

In either case, an international common usage against WMD trade 

would be beneficial in a number of currently worrisome cases. 

Pakistan, for one, could no longer contemplate transferring nuclear 

warheads legally under its control to Saudi Arabia (as its generals 

have privately suggested they might). Nor could Pyongyang act on 

its threat to transfer its nuclear weapons to another state without 

risking having its shipment legally blocked or seized. Beyond this, 

any strategic weapons-related assistance a Pakistan (or a North 

Korea, China, Iran, or Russia) might want to give to other states 

would have to be announced before it was actually shipped or else 

hazard being interdicted. This, at the very least, in turn, would help 

prevent a repeat of another Iran--i.e., of another nation covertly 

acquiring all it needs to break out quickly with a large arsenal of 

weapons without quite breaking the rules. 

 This international common usage also would give the world’s 

Indias, Israels, and Pakistans, who cannot be made weapons 

state members of the NPT, a formal way to uphold international 

nonproliferation norms. In addition, it would allow other nations 
354

that have bad proliferation reputations (e.g., China and Russia) to 

work with the United States to restore their good names. Finally, 

by establishing an international rule against warhead transfers 

and dangerous covert trade, it would afford supporters of 

nonproliferation a legal basis for acting against violators even if they 

were not caught in the act.

 If the United States wanted to build additional support for this 

effort, it might offer to remove its prior deployment of nuclear arms 

in Western Europe. These weapons are almost certain to be removed 

with the planned reduction of American forces in Germany. Also, 

most of these weapons are quite old if not obsolete. Such an offer 

(to do what the United States will likely do in time anyway) would 

still have to be implemented carefully so as not to undermine NATO

alliance relations. It could not be done suddenly or appear to be 

a response to antinuclear protests. Assuming this could be done, 

though, such an offer might help persuade Russia and others to 

support an international stance against WMD proliferation both 

before and at the time of any UN vote. 

 In conjunction with the proposed ban on unannounced 

dangerous trade, a ban on redeploying WMD could set into motion 

a much more serious review of MAD-inspired nonproliferation 

policies. What should the IAEA and the world’s leading nuclear 

suppliers consider to be safe and dangerous? Should nations like 

Iran be able to get all they need to break out with a large arsenal 

virtually overnight? What constitutes timely warning of a diversion 

of civilian technology to military purposes? Is something more than 

inspection required to find special materials unaccounted for? Does it 

make sense to spread nuclear bulk handling facilities--reprocessing, 

enrichment, fuel fabrication plants--when nuclear weapons material 

sufficient to make scores of bombs will be present? What of increased 

civilian commerce in nuclear weapons materials? Is this trade worth 

the risks, or should it be put on hold? What of missile technologies? 

Should controls be tightened to prevent proliferation or relaxed to 

promote missile defense cooperation? In either case, how should this 

be done?

 A debate over all these questions is likely, assuming the United 

States and other nations choose to get serious about moving away 
355

from MAD toward a world with fewer nuclear weapons in fewer 

hands. On the other hand, without such a move, the bold steps 

Washington has already taken away from MAD’s opposition to 

missile defenses will noty get us where the United States and the 

world want to go--toward a safer, saner world where security is 

based on defenses and self-restraint, rather than offensive capability; 

the kind of peace that can only come with a world full of Canadas.

ENDNOTES - CHAPTER 12

1. See, e.g., National Planning Association, 1970 Without Arms Control, May 

1958; Howard Simons, “World-Wide Capabilities for Production and Control of 

Nuclear Weapons,” Daedalus, Summer 1959; and William C. Davidson, Marvin 

I. Kalkstein, and Christophe Hohenemeser, The Nth Country Problem and Arms 

Control, National Planning Association, January 1960. 

2. See, e.g., “Statement by the Indian Representative [Trivedi] to the First 

Committee of the General Assembly: Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons, 

October 31, 1966,” in U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, Documents on 

Disarmament, 1966, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1967, p. 679.

3. See, e.g., “Statement by the Brazilian Representative [Azeredo da Silveira] 

to the Eighteen Nation Disarmament Committee: Draft Nonproliferation Treaty, 

August 31, 1967,” in U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, Documents on 

Disarmament, 1967, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1968, p. 370.

4. See, e.g., “Statement by the Dutch Representative [Eschauzier] to the First 

Committee of the General Assembly: Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons 

[Extract], May 6, 1968,” in U.S. Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, 

Documents on Disarmament, 1968, U.S. Government Printing Office, 1969, pp. 295-

96; and “Statement by acda Director Forster to the First Committee of the General 

Assembly: Nonproliferation of Nuclear Weapons, November 9, 1966,” in U.S. 

Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, Documents on Disarmament, 1966, U.S. 

Government Printing Office, 1967, p. 271.

5. See U.S. Department of State Policy Planning Council, “After NPT, What?” 

NSF, Box 26, LBJL, May 25, 1968, as cited in Avner Cohen, Israel and the Bomb, 

Columbia University Press, 1998, p. 299.

6. See Mark Hibbs, “U.S. Confirms It Has Intelligence Pointing to DAE 

Planning Arms Tests,” NuclearFuel, April 14, 2003.

7. For documentation of these points, see Henry Sokolski, Best of Intentions: 

America’s Campaign Against Strategic Weapons Proliferation, Praeger Publishers, 

2001, pp. 39-56.

8. For a full discussion of this effort, see Daniel Horner, “Full G8 Funding for 

Construction of Russian MOX Plant Seen by Year’s End,” NuclearFuel, April 28, 

2003. 
356

9. Each year the IAEA and every second year EURATOM announce the 

total amounts of plutonium and highly enriched uranium they believe they are 

safeguarding. Both, however, are barred by rules of confidentiality from specifying 

what amounts they believe each country they are safeguarding is holding. On 

this point, see David Albright, Frans Berkhout, and William Walker, Plutonium 

and Highly Enriched Uranium 1996 World Inventories, Capabilities and Policies, 

Oxford University Press, 1997, p. 407; and Albert Wohlstetter, et al., Swords From 

Plowshares: The Military Potential of Civilian Nuclear Energy, University of Chicago 

Press, 1977, pp. 65-67.
357

ABOUT THE AUTHORS

DR. JOHN A. BATTILEGA is a senior manager and analyst with 40 years 

experience in national security programs. He is currently on the adjunct 

faculty of Graduate School of International Studies of the University of 

Denver. Dr. Battilega also serves on government advisory panels and 

as a consultant to the U.S. Department of Defense. From 1977-97 he 

directed a large multi-disciplinary, multi-lingual research team focused 

on the Soviet Union/Russia. The research program analyzed all aspects 

of Soviet/Russian military strategy, doctrine, force modernization, and 

war fighting methods in broad support to the U.S. Government. From 

1969-77 Dr. Battilega directed the development of analytic methods and 

computer models used by the U.S. Government to study U.S. and Soviet 

nuclear forces. He retired in 1999 from Science Applications International 

Corporation (SAIC) after 26 years as Corporate Vice President and Director 

of SAIC’s Foreign Systems Research Center. Previously, Dr. Battilega was a 

staff engineer with the Martin Marietta Corporation and a U.S. Army Officer 

and Vietnam veteran. He has served on the Defense Science Board, on the 

Board of Directors of the U.S. Military Operations Research Society, and 

on the graduate faculty of the Defense Intelligence College. Dr. Battilega 

has authored numerous publications on defense policy/planning and on 

international assessments. He holds a Ph.D. in Applied Mathematics from 

Oregon State University and is listed in Marquis Who’s Who in America.

DR. MARK T. CLARK is professor of political science and director of 

the National Security Studies program at California State University, 

San Bernardino. He has written on nuclear weapons and strategy, arms 

control, national security policy, collective security and peacekeeping, the 

“just war” tradition, and intelligence policy. Dr. Clark is currently working 

on a manuscript on the moral dimension to American defense policy. He 

served in the U.S. Marine Corps 1973-77.

MR. CHARLES H. FAIRBANKS, JR. is a research professor of international 

relations at the Central Asia-Caucasus Institute. His areas of expertise 

are Central Asia, Russia, oil politics, human rights, strategic and security 

issues. Mr. Fairbanks is a former deputy assistant secretary of the U.S. 

Department of State and a member of the department’s policy planning 

staff. He was a foreign policy adviser to the Reagan campaign in 1980 

and the Bush campaign in 1988, and a past member of political science 

faculty at Yale University and University of Toronto. Mr. Fairbanks is the 

editor of a forthcoming book on the lessons from the unexpected collapse 

of communism and the author of numerous articles. He holds a Ph.D. in 

political science from the University of Chicago.
358

MR. TOD LINDBERG is a research fellow at the Hoover Institution, 

Stanford University and editor of its Washington-based bimonthly journal 

Policy Review. He is editor of Beyond Paradise and Power: Europe, America 

and the Future of a Troubled Partnership (Routledge, 2004). Mr. Lindberg 

writes a weekly column about politics for the Washington Times and is a 

contributing editor to the Weekly Standard.

DR. RICHARD R. MULLER is Professor of Military History at the USAF Air 

Command and Staff College, Maxwell AFB, AL, where he teaches courses 

in military thought, national security studies, the history of airpower, and 

military history. He has served as course director, department chair, vice 

dean for academics, and dean. He specializes in World War II air power. A 

native of New Jersey, Dr. Muller earned his B.A. in history from Franklin 

and Marshall College, Lancaster PA, and his M.A. and Ph.D. degrees in 

European Military History from The Ohio State University. Dr. Muller 

has held fellowship appointments at the Smithsonian’s National Air and 

Space Museum and Yale University. He is the author of The German Air 

War in Russia (1992) and (with James S. Corum) The Luftwaffe’s Way of War: 

German Air Force Doctrine 1911-1945 (1998), as well as several articles and 

book chapters. Dr. Muller is presently collaborating on a major study of the 

aerial defense of Germany during the Second World War.

DR. JAMES MULVENON is Deputy Director, Advanced Analysis at the 

Center for Intelligence Research and Analysis (CIRA). Previously he was a 

Political Scientist at the RAND Corporation in Washington, DC, and Deputy 

Director of RAND’s Center for Asia-Pacific Policy. A specialist on the 

Chinese military, his current research focuses on Chinese C4ISR, strategic 

weapons doctrines (computer network attack and nuclear warfare), Chinese 

military commercial divestiture, and the military and civilian implications 

of the information revolution in China. His most recent book, Soldiers of 

Fortune (Armonk, NY: M. E. Sharpe, 2001), examines the Chinese military’s 

multi-billion dollar business empire. Dr. Mulvenon received his Ph.D. in 

political science from the University of California, Los Angeles.

LIEUTENANT GENERAL WILLIAM E. ODOM, U.S. Army, Retired, is 

a senior fellow at the Hudson Institute and an adjunct professor at Yale 

University. He was the director of the National Security Agency, 1985-88, 

Assistant Chief of Staff for Intelligence, Department of the Army, 1981-85, 

and served in the White House on the NSC Staff, 1977-81. One of his areas 

of staff responsibility on the NSC staff was nuclear command and control 

and nuclear employment policy.
359

MR. MICHAEL QUINLAN graduated from Oxford and served for 2 years 

in the Royal Air Force. Most of his subsequent career as a civilian official 

was spent in the defense policy field, and he worked extensively on UK 

and NATO nuclear-weapon policy, doctrine and arms control. As Policy 

Director in the Ministry of Defence from 1977 to 1981, Mr. Quinlan was 

closely involved in the move from Polaris to Trident for the UK strategic 

force, and in the NATO High-Level Group on the modernization of 

intermediate nuclear forces. His final post was as Permanent UnderSecretary of State, the senior nonpolitical civilian in the Ministry of Defence 

from 1988 to 1992. Mr. Quinlan was Director of the Ditchley Foundation 

for 7 years. He has written many articles on nuclear-weapon issues. In 

1997 the Royal United Services Institute for Defence Studies published his 

monograph Thinking About Nuclear Weapons.

MR. HENRY S. ROWEN is a senior fellow at the Hoover Institution. He 

is also Director emeritus of the Asia/Pacific Research Center at Stanford 

University and Professor of Public Policy and Management emeritus at the 

university’s Graduate School of Business. From 1989 to 1991, Mr. Rowen 

was the Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Affairs 

in the U.S. Department of Defense. He was Chairman of the National 

Intelligence Council from 1981 to 1983, served as President of the RAND 

Corporation from 1968 to 1972, and was Assistant Director of the U.S. 

Bureau of the Budget from 1965 to 1966. Currently, Mr. Rowan is a member 

of the Defense Department’s Policy Board. His recent publications are (as 

editor) Behind East Asian Growth: The Political and Social Foundations of 

Prosperity, published by Routledge Press, 1998; and The Silicon Valley Edge: 

A Habitat for Innovation and Entrepreneurship, published in November 2000 

by the Stanford University Press. His article, “Let’s Retire Kim Jong Il” was 

published in Policy Review in October 2003. Mr. Rowan is currently doing 

research on regions of innovation and entrepreneurship throughout Asia 

and on economic and political topics in Asia.

DR. HARVEY M. SAPOLSKY is Professor of Public Policy and Organization 

in the Department of Political Science and Director of the MIT Security 

Studies Program. Dr. Sapolsky completed a B.A. at Boston University 

and earned an MPA and Ph.D. at Harvard University. He has worked 

in a number of public policy areas, notably health, science, and defense 

and specializes in effects of institutional structures and bureaucratic 

politics on policy outcomes. In the defense field Dr. Sapolsky has served 

as a consultant to the Commission on Government Procurement, the 

Office of the Secretary of Defense, the Naval War College, the Office of 
360

Naval Research, the RAND Corporation, Draper Laboratory, and Johns 

Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory, and has lectured at all of the 

service academies. He is currently focusing his research on three topics; 

interservice and civil/military relations; the impact of casualties on U.S. 

use of force; and the future structure of defense industries. Dr. Sapolsky’s 

most recent defense-related book is titled Science and the Navy, and is a 

study of military support of academic research.

MR. HENRY D. SOKOLSKI is the Executive Director of the Nonproliferation 

Policy Education Center, a Washington-based nonprofit organization 

founded in l994 to promote a better understanding of strategic weapons 

proliferation issues for academics, policymakers, and the media. He served 

from 1989 to 1993 as Deputy for Nonproliferation Policy in the Office of 

the Secretary of Defense and earlier in the Office of Net Assessment and 

as a legislative military aide in the U.S. Senate. Mr. Sokolski has authored 

and edited a number of works on proliferation related issues including,

Best of Intentions: America’s Campaign Against Strategic Weapons Proliferation

(Westport, CT: Praeger, 2001).

MR. BRUNO TERTRAIS is a Senior Research Fellow for Strategic Studies at 

the Fondation pour la Recherche Stratégique as well as an Associate Researcher 

at the Centres d’Etudes des Relations Internationales. He is also a member of 

the editorial board of Critique Internationale, a member of the International 

Institute for Strategic Studies (IISS) and an associate member of the editorial 

board of Survival. Mr. Tertrais’ previous positions include Director of the 

Civilian Affairs Committee, NATO Assembly; Visiting Fellow, the Rand 

Corporation; and Special Assistant to the Director of Strategic Affairs, 

French Ministry of Defense. His publications include Nuclear Policies in 

Europe (Oxford University Press, 1999); U.S. Missile Defence: Strategically 

Sound, Politically Questionable (Center for European Reform, 2001); L’Asie 

Nucléaire (Institut Français de Relations Internationales, 2001); La GuerreSans 

Fin. L’Amérique dans l’engrenage (Seuil, 2004).

DR. DAVID S. YOST is a professor at the Naval Postgraduate School, 

Monterey, California. His publications include NATO Transformed: The 

Alliance’s New Roles in International Security (United States Institute of Peace 

Press, 1998) and The US and Nuclear Deterrence in Europe (International 

Institute for Strategic Studies, 1999). He worked in the Department of 

Defense, primarily in the Office of Net Assessment, in 1984-86, while 

holding fellowships from NATO and the Council on Foreign Relations. 

Mr. Yost has been a fellow at the Woodrow Wilson International Center 
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for Scholars, Smithsonian Institution; a visiting scholar at the School of 

Advanced International Studies, Johns Hopkins University; a Fulbright 

research fellow in Paris; a visiting professor at the Centre des Hautes 

Études de l’Armement, École Militaire, Paris; and a senior fellow at the 

United States Institute of Peace in Washington. Since September 2004, 

he has been seconded from the Naval Postgraduate School to the NATO 

Defense College in Rome, where he serves as a senior research fellow.