ABSTRACT
The term "war-fighting" is now much used as an antonym of "spasm" or "deterrence only" in describing tactics and forces concerned with how a strategic nuclear war might start is waged, and is terminated, and how post-war survival and recuperation problems can be handled. Strategy is not treated with quite the same hostility as tactics, since it does have an important, apparent, and "felt" relationship to such other national concerns as deterrence and foreign policy. If a war is to be terminated by negotiation before overwhelming damage has been done, it probably is necessary that the strategy of the war be clear to at least one of the decision-makers even before the war has started, or at least in the very early stages. This chapter suggests that there has been a systematic overestimation of the importance of the so-called "fog of war"—the inevitable uncertainties, misinformation, disorganization, or even breakdown of organized units—that must be expected to influence central war operations.
