ABSTRACT
Political targeting requires the ability to find meaningful, decisive targets, and destroy them during the course of a nuclear war; all in the hope that the U.S.S.R. will surrender and obey the political will of the United States. Judicious US targeting and weapon procurement policies might be able to deny the USSR the assurance of political survival. The positive twin effects of a US nuclear war-winning plan would be to deny the Politburo itself of a Soviet ‘plausible theory of military victory’ against the United States, and to reduce Moscow’s ability ‘to project military power abroad’. To dominate an escalation process via the threat of victory denial, the United States must be capable of denying the Soviets any post-attack or post-war preponderance of nuclear capability. The military and political deficiencies of comand and control of limited nuclear war, indicate that there is little chance that such a war could ever be managed and terminated in any coherent way.
