Points of Self-Deterrence

In early 1979, Major General Jasper A. Welch of the US Air Force came to the Central Intelligence Agency to brief me and several agency experts on nuclear arms control. Despite the fact that nuclear missiles do not engage enemy nuclear missiles as, for instance, tanks fight enemy tanks, that discrepancy galled our nuclear strategists. The point of self-deterrence defines the level of nuclear damage in retaliation that would deter a nation from initiating nuclear war. During the Cold War we implicitly accepted the idea that it might be necessary to absorb considerable nuclear damage to the United States as a result of employing nuclear weapons in defense of European allies. To estimate the points of self-deterrence as one detonation for the United States and hundreds or even thousands for Russia is illogical. Since the end of the Cold War there is growing evidence that Soviet leaders were quite realistic in understanding the unacceptability of nuclear damage.