ABSTRACT
As the sole nation with a nuclear capability in the initial years after World War II, the United States (US) pursued a policy of deterrence, by which it sought to prevent the advance of Soviet ground forces on Western Europe by threatening to retaliate with its entire atomic arsenal. The US and the Soviet Union continue to develop their nuclear arsenals with this goal in mind, each attempting to make its arsenal more sophisticated and, at the same time, more credible. The US Navy made the first official minimum nuclear deterrent proposal when it took the position in 1958 and 1959 during the Eisenhower administration that the US required only 232 Polaris missiles to decimate the Soviet Union. Perhaps the most significant and comprehensive proposal for a minimum deterrent has been formulated by Harold Feiveson, Richard Ullman, and Frank von Hippel, three Princeton professors who published their ideas jointly in the August 1985 issue of Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists.
