ABSTRACT
Technological dominance became in fact the most important component of post-war American military strategy. It would ensure that the US could once again live in relative security, knowing in all confidence that a direct attack on its land would inescapably lead to a devastating counteraction against its opponent. The fact of the matter is that the conventional academic strategic theory in the United States has had a fundamental impact in shaping the American nuclear posture. The US nuclear strategy has been largely dependent upon some main assumptions underlining conventional deterrence theories because a number of academics had and still have so much influence on policy-makers. The American style of nuclear strategy is dominated by an engineering approach to warfare: problems arising from the atomic relationship with the Soviet Union are to be dealt with technically. Strategic theorists like Heman Kahn and Thomas Schelling have developed several concepts which have become central to the American style of nuclear strategy.
