ABSTRACT
This chapter explores the complex relations among technology, policy, strategy, and doctrine. Preeminent though political factors tend to be in the history of conflict, there should be no denying that technological change affects the military capabilities of states and can affect them decisively, and that assessments of capability fuel and help direct assessments of threat. Military history is by no means exclusively a history of technological change. Even if the prospects for offensive counterforce competence are better than has been suggested here, the Western Alliance has very pressing reasons to explore the feasibility of an important change in the terms of deterrence to be triggered by a new efficacy in strategic defense. Technological change in the balance of advantage between offense and defense, even to the point at which, in President Reagan’s words, ballistic missiles are rendered “impotent and obsolete,” need challenge deterrence itself.
