ABSTRACT
A limited counterforce capability was seen as having important political and strategic advantages during a period when the Soviets were themselves improving their capacity to fight a nuclear war in the advent of a deterrence failure. MX was the key to either the limited strategic options sought by Richard M. Nixon, Ford, and Jimmy Carter, to the total nuclear war-fighting capability endorsed by the Reagan administration, and to proponents of the assured destruction school. During the Carter administration, the evolution of US strategic policy from assured destruction to a war-fighting doctrine was advanced. The United States possessed a short-term counterforce advantage over the Soviet Union in the 1960s. The MX missile is the ultimate war-fighter for those interested in the strategy of flexibility with limited counterforce capability; a strategy embraced by three presidents, three secretaries of defense, and the senior officials of the air force in the 1970s.
