Seeing this thread from @RadioFreeTom on nuclear deterrence and #MAD, and it recalls the role @FPRI Orbis played in the 1970s in hosting some of these debates. Amazing that 50 years later, we are revisiting the same issues. A 🧵. 1/
https://twitter.com/RadioFreeTom/status/1517870845619847169
Specifically, Albert Wohlstetter, “Threats and Promises of Peace: Europe and America in the New Era,” Orbis vol. 2, no. 4 (Winter 1974), and William R. Van Cleave and Roger W. Barnett, “Strategic Adaptability,” Orbis vol. 28, no. 3 (Autumn 1974). 2/
(And not to ignore Michael May, “Some Advantages of a Counterforce Deterrent,” in Summer 1970). These pieces helped shape the debate about the desirability of strategic arms limitation talks & the role of nuclear weapons in maintaining deterrence. 3/
Michael May argued that it was absolutely necessary for any attacker to be unable “from following up his attack with steps that would lead to further destruction or domination of this country and its allies.” 4/
Van Cleave &Barnett argued that the credibility of deterrence depended on a capability “to use nuclear forces in a rational and non-apocalyptic fashion.” If the use of nuclear weapons were taken off the agenda, 5/
then the concept of the nuclear balance of terror as an effective restraint would be removed. Wohlstetter focused on the question of what happened if deterrence failed, one which could not be addressed by simply declaring that war “would be an unlimited catastrophe.” 6/
Moreover, one could not assume that the unthinkability of war would therefore prevent its occurrence. 7/
Events today suggest that old concepts may be getting a new lease on life. END fpri.org/article/2020/0…
Addendum: passing this along from @ElbridgeColby … discussions over numbers & size of the nuclear force were also part of these discussions in Orbis in the 1970s …
https://twitter.com/elbridgecolby/status/1518277952814911492
• • •
Missing some Tweet in this thread? You can try to
force a refresh
