BACKING INTO THE FUTURE.

• Author: Marsh, Gerald E.
• Position: WORLDVIEW

"... The cornerstone of U.S. strategic nuclear policy... is based on the ability to respond to any potential nuclear attack in such a manner that the costs exacted will substantially exceed any gains an aggressor might hope to achieve."

THE ANCIENT Mesopotamians and Greeks thought that we face the past and back into the future. There is no better way to express U.S. nuclear weapons policy today. During the Cold War with the Soviet Union, the real danger we faced did not result from the number of nuclear weapons per se, but under what conditions they would be used. Both sides knew that despite having smaller options in their war plans, war games often led to the worst possible scenario--an all-out exchange. Although this was contrary to the intent of U.S. declaratory policy, which was "massive retaliation" from 1953-61 and "flexible response" from 1961 on, independent of what it was called, the war games did not indicate much flexibility.

Despite past instabilities in the command and control of nuclear weapons, the system worked and the world survived for more than 70 years after nuclear weapons were created without them being used again following the atomic bombing of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in World War II. We have been very lucky.

Prior to the advent of nuclear weapons, military force could be viewed, a la Prussian general and military theorist Carl von Clausewitz, as an extension of diplomacy by other means. Since then, the existence of nuclear weapons has set the stage upon which diplomacy is performed. Ironically, the bipolar world of the past lent a kind of stability to international relations that is rapidly being degraded.

Deterrence has been, and will remain, the cornerstone of U.S. strategic nuclear policy: it is based on the ability to respond to any potential nuclear attack in such a manner that the costs exacted will substantially exceed any gains an aggressor might hope to achieve. Thus, it is essential that the U.S. maintain nuclear forces capable of convincing the leadership of any country contemplating an attack on the U.S. that there can be no circumstance under which it could benefit by beginning a nuclear war at any level or of any duration.

Submarine launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) provide a unique foundation for enhancing crisis stability. Their invisibility and mobility make them ideal platforms for the strategic nuclear mission; invisibility translates into survivability and mobility into flexibility. Most importantly, they do not have to be launched on warning of an attack.

Many now think we are headed towards a tripolar nuclear-armed world, with the People's Republic of China (PRC) being the third major power. China is developing intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) that...