ABSTRACT
The attention that focused on the resumption of strategic arms talks between the United States and the Soviet Union dramatizes the importance to the world community of improved relations between the superpowers. Douglas Lackey’s most endorsement of unilateral nuclear disarmament is based in part upon a comparison of the expected consequences of following a strategy of unilateral nuclear disarmament with the expected consequences of following what Lackey calls victory or detente strategies. The leaders of a superpower might claim that threatening or bluffing nuclear retaliation would be morally justified under present conditions on the grounds that the proclaimed defensive strategy of the other superpower is not believable. In the meantime, a nuclear force deployed for the purpose of being capable of threatening or bluffing in the future should conditions change for the worse should be capable of surviving a first strike and then inflicting either limited or massive nuclear retaliation on an aggressor.
