ABSTRACT
The military rationale of counterforce is simple: the idea is to cripple the other side’s ability to wage war without killing so many civilians as to encourage retaliation. Counterforce thinking focuses primarily on the conduct of war once deterrence fails, and it implies that ‘a better war-fighting posture is a better deterrent’. Counterforce weapons lower the nuclear threshold, making escalation all the more real and worrisome as they tend to confuse nuclear armament with conventional types of military objectives. The Soviet Union perceives the US as not capable of retaliating to a limited nuclear attack on its territory other than by a massive crushing response, maybe Washington would be self-deterred to carry out the awesome sanction. A counterforce nuclear attack, in theory and from a strict military point of view, is very remotely imaginable; it faces the awesome uncertainties of political-military escalation to an all-out war, and of the dubiousness of coherent, effective and wise decision-making under extraordinary conditions.
