ABSTRACT
Each technology apparently enhances capability and allows contemplation of alternative nuclear strategies. Simultaneously, each capability increases uncertainty, and if that uncertainty is not acknowledged and incorporated into thinking about deterrence, it runs the risk of destabilizing what has been a remarkably enduring system stability. Uncertainty undermines this scenario in two ways. In the first place, uncertainty suggests that one will never know for sure where the threshold is in advance of an exchange and that calculations could be errant by a wide margin. The debate about appropriate declaratory deterrence strategies has centered on two basic approaches, each of which begins from a different premise about the nature of nuclear war and hence what threats best deter a nuclear attack. Looking at those approaches and how the winter concept affects them requires first defining the nature of deterrence, and second the basic dynamic of deterrence.
