ABSTRACT
The assumption that national leaders use a rational cost-benefit approach to decision making is essential to the Assured Vulnerability model. The Assured Vulnerability assumption that urban and industrial assets are the objects of value for deterrence purposes is also a point of theoretical weakness. This assumption may reflect convenience more than actual intellectual commitment. The notion that any use of strategic nuclear weapons would be perceived as likely to escalate to a mutually destructive central war is an essential element of Assured Vulnerability reasoning, and basically is unfalsifiable short of experiential evidence. The US has officially moved beyond the basic Assured Vulnerability model of deterrence. Flexible Targeting appears to inform American strategic doctrine. Advocates of Assured Vulnerability contend that increments of strategic superiority or inferiority are insignificant because mutual societal vulnerability assures strategic stability, and offsets incentives for large-scale provocations in regional theaters.
