ABSTRACT
Counterforce weapons are viewed as shaping the basic Soviet plans for strategic and theatre operations. Advocacy of counterforce is intimately related to another important assumption, which has for years pervaded conventional analysis: the fear of a Soviet surprise attack. Beyond advocating a nuclear doctrine of counterforce on the basis of its intellectual merit, conventional nuclear strategists support it for two other reasons: the fear of a Soviet victory in thermonuclear war and the fear of a Soviet surprise attack. The existing imbalance between Soviet and American nuclear forces, Paul Nitze cautioned, would give Moscow the initiative of a surprise attack and weaken the US strategic deterrent. Nitze’s vulnerability theory again seems to regard nuclear strategy as similar to conventional strategy, in the sense that nuclear weapons are looked at as ‘tools of foreign policy whose use can, must, and will be contemplated’.
