Nuclear strategy involves the development of

doctrine Doctrine (from la, doctrina, meaning "teaching, instruction") is a codification of beliefs or a body of teachings or instructions, taught principles or positions, as the essence of teachings in a given branch of knowledge or in a belief syste ...

s and strategies for the production and use of

nuclear weapon A nuclear weapon is an explosive device that derives its destructive force from nuclear reactions, either fission (fission bomb) or a combination of fission and fusion reactions ( thermonuclear bomb), producing a nuclear explosion. Both bomb ...

s. As a sub-branch of

military strategy Military strategy is a set of ideas implemented by military organizations to pursue desired strategic goals. Derived from the Greek word '' strategos'', the term strategy, when it appeared in use during the 18th century, was seen in its narrow ...

, nuclear strategy attempts to match nuclear weapons as means to political ends. In addition to the actual use of nuclear weapons whether in the battlefield or

strategically Strategy (from Greek στρατηγία ''stratēgia'', "art of troop leader; office of general, command, generalship") is a general plan to achieve one or more long-term or overall goals under conditions of uncertainty. In the sense of the "art ...

, a large part of nuclear strategy involves their use as a bargaining tool. Some of the issues considered within nuclear strategy include: *Conditions which serve a nation's interest to develop nuclear weapons *Types of nuclear weapons to be developed *How and when weapons are to be used Many strategists argue that nuclear strategy differs from other forms of

. The immense and terrifying power of the weapons makes their use, in seeking victory in a traditional military sense, impossible. Perhaps counterintuitively, an important focus of nuclear strategy has been determining how to prevent and deter their use, a crucial part of

mutual assured destruction Mutual assured destruction (MAD) is a doctrine of military strategy and national security policy which posits that a full-scale use of nuclear weapons by an attacker on a nuclear-armed defender with second-strike capabilities would cause the ...

. In the context of

nuclear proliferation Nuclear proliferation is the spread of nuclear weapons, fissionable material, and weapons-applicable nuclear technology and information to nations not recognized as " Nuclear Weapon States" by the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Wea ...

and maintaining the balance of power, states also seek to prevent other states from acquiring nuclear weapons as part of nuclear strategy.

Nuclear deterrent composition

The doctrine of

(MAD) assumes that a nuclear deterrent force must be credible and survivable. That is, each deterrent force must survive a first strike with sufficient capability to effectively destroy the other country in a

second strike In nuclear strategy, a retaliatory strike or second-strike capability is a country's assured ability to respond to a nuclear attack with powerful nuclear retaliation against the attacker. To have such an ability (and to convince an opponent of it ...

. Therefore, a first strike would be suicidal for the launching country. In the late 1940s and 1950s as the

Cold War The Cold War is a term commonly used to refer to a period of geopolitical tension between the United States and the Soviet Union and their respective allies, the Western Bloc and the Eastern Bloc. The term '' cold war'' is used because t ...

developed, the

United States The United States of America (U.S.A. or USA), commonly known as the United States (U.S. or US) or America, is a country Continental United States, primarily located in North America. It consists of 50 U.S. state, states, a Washington, D.C., ...

and

Soviet Union The Soviet Union,. officially the Union of Soviet Socialist Republics. (USSR),. was a transcontinental country that spanned much of Eurasia from 1922 to 1991. A flagship communist state, it was nominally a federal union of fifteen nationa ...

pursued multiple delivery methods and platforms to deliver nuclear weapons. Three types of platforms proved most successful and are collectively called a " nuclear triad". These are air-delivered weapons (bombs or missiles),

ballistic missile submarines A ballistic missile submarine is a submarine capable of deploying submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) with nuclear warheads. The United States Navy's hull classification symbols for ballistic missile submarines are SSB and SSBN – ...

(usually nuclear-powered and called SSBNs), and intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), usually deployed in land-based hardened

missile silo A missile launch facility, also known as an underground missile silo, launch facility (LF), or nuclear silo, is a vertical cylindrical structure constructed underground, for the storage and launching of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs ...

s or on vehicles. Although not considered part of the deterrent forces, all of the nuclear powers deployed large numbers of

tactical nuclear weapon A tactical nuclear weapon (TNW) or non-strategic nuclear weapon (NSNW) is a nuclear weapon that is designed to be used on a battlefield in military situations, mostly with friendly forces in proximity and perhaps even on contested friendly territo ...

s in the Cold War. These could be delivered by virtually all platforms capable of delivering large conventional weapons. During the 1970s there was growing concern that the combined conventional forces of the Soviet Union and the Warsaw Pact could overwhelm the forces of

NATO The North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO, ; french: Organisation du traité de l'Atlantique nord, ), also called the North Atlantic Alliance, is an intergovernmental military alliance between 30 member states – 28 European and two N ...

. It seemed unthinkable to respond to a Soviet/Warsaw Pact incursion into Western Europe with strategic nuclear weapons, inviting a catastrophic exchange. Thus, technologies were developed to greatly reduce collateral damage while being effective against advancing conventional military forces. Some of these were low-yield neutron bombs, which were lethal to tank crews, especially with tanks massed in tight formation, while producing relatively little blast, thermal radiation, or radioactive fallout. Other technologies were so-called "suppressed radiation devices," which produced mostly blast with little radioactivity, making them much like conventional explosives, but with much more energy.

Bibliography

Early texts

* Brodie, Bernard. ''The Absolute Weapon''. Freeport, N.Y.: Books for Libraries Press, 1946. * Brodie, Bernard
''Strategy in the Missile Age''
Princeton: Princeton University Press, 1959. * Dunn, Lewis A
''Deterrence Today – Roles, Challenges, and Responses''
Paris: IFRI Proliferation Papers n° 19, 2007. * Kahn, Herman. ''On Thermonuclear War''. 2nd ed. Princeton, N.J.: Princeton University Press, 1961. * Kissinger, Henry A. ''Nuclear Weapons and Foreign Policy''. New York: Harper, 1957. * Schelling, Thomas C. ''Arms and Influence''. New Haven: Yale University Press, 1966. * Wohlstetter, Albert
"The Delicate Balance of Terror."
''Foreign Affairs'' 37, 211 (1958): 211–233.

Secondary literature

* Baylis, John, and John Garnett. ''Makers of Nuclear Strategy''. London: Pinter, 1991. . * Buzan, Barry, and Herring, Eric. "The Arms Dynamic in World Politics". London: Lynne Rienner Publishers, 1998. . * Freedman, Lawrence. ''The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy''. 2nd ed. New York: St. Martin's Press, 1989. . * Heuser, Beatrice. ''NATO, Britain, France and the FRG: Nuclear Strategies and Forces for Europe, 1949–2000'' (London: Macmillan, hardback 1997, paperback 1999), 256p., * Heuser, Beatrice. ''Nuclear Mentalities? Strategies and Belief Systems in Britain, France and the FRG'' (London: Macmillan, July 1998), 277p., Index, Tables. * Heuser, Beatrice.
Victory in a Nuclear War? A Comparison of NATO and WTO War Aims and Strategies
, ''Contemporary European History'' Vol. 7 Part 3 (November 1998), pp. 311–328. * Heuser, Beatrice. "Warsaw Pact Military Doctrines in the 70s and 80s: Findings in the East German Archives", ''Comparative Strategy'' Vol. 12 No. 4 (Oct.–Dec. 1993), pp. 437–457. * Kaplan, Fred M. ''The Wizards of Armageddon''. New York: Simon and Schuster, 1983. . * Rai Chowdhuri, Satyabrata. '' Nuclear Politics: Towards A Safer World'', Ilford: New Dawn Press, 2004. * Rosenberg, David. "The Origins of Overkill: Nuclear Weapons and American Strategy, 1945–1960." ''International Security'' 7, 4 (Spring, 1983): 3–71. * Schelling, Thomas C. ''The Strategy of Conflict''. Cambridge: Harvard University Press, 1960. * Smoke, Richard. National Security and the Nuclear Dilemma. 3rd ed. New York: McGraw–Hill, 1993. {{ISBN, 0-07-059352-3.

References

Nuclear warfare

Nuclear deterrent composition

See also

Bibliography

Early texts

Secondary literature

References