ABSTRACT
The effectiveness of mutual deterrence in creating strategic stability can be ascribed to the great uncertainty of the outcome of a nuclear exchange. The importance of that arena increases also insofar as a major power is most likely to initiate war for objectives more psychological or diplomatic than military. A political culture that absorbed the loss of twenty million in World War II and was, if anything, morally invigorated by the bloodletting, is on the face of it psychologically fit to face up to a nuclear exchange. Concerted progress in a militarily critical technology seems impossible without prior or at least concurrent movement toward political accommodation. Basic to the US-Soviet relationship is the projection of each party's fears and ambitions onto the other, resulting in the mutual attribution of aggressive intent.
