The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy Also by Lawrence Freedman ARMS CONTROL: Management or Reform ARMS CONTROL IN EUROPE ARMS PRODUCTION IN THE UNITED KING DOM: Problems and Prospects THE ATLAS OF GLOBAL STRATEGY BRITAIN AND THE FALKLANDS WAR BRITAIN AND NUCLEAR WEAPONS BRITAIN IN THE WORLD tco-edited with Michael Clarke) THECOLDWAR EUROPE TRANSFORMED THE EVOLUTION OF NUCLEAR STRATEGY THE GULF CONFLICT 1990-91 (with Efraim Karsh) INDEPENDENCE IN CONCERT (with Martin Navias and Nicholas Wheeler) KENNEDY'S WARS MILITARY INTERVENTION IN EUROPE MILITARY POWER IN EURO PE: Essays in Memory ofJonathan Alford THE MILITARY THREAT NUCLEAR WAR AND NUCLEAR PEACE twith Edwina Moreton. Gerald Segal and lohn Baylis) THE POLITICS OF BRITISH DEFENCE POLICY, 1979-1998 POPULATION CHANGE AND EUROPEAN SECURITY (co-edited with lohn Saunders) THE REVOLUTION IN STRATEGIe AFFAIRS SIGNALS OF WAR (with Virginia Gamba-Stonehousei THE SOUTH ATLANTIC CRISIS OF 1982: Implications for Nuclear Crisis Management STRATEGIC COERCION STRATEGIC DEFENCE IN THE NUCLEAR AGE SUPERTERRORISM THE TREATY ON CONVENTIONAL ARMED FORCES IN EUROPE (with Cathetine McArdle Kelleher and [ane Sharpi THE TROUBLED ALLIANCE: Atlantic Relations in the 1980s US INTELLIGENCE AND THE SOVIET STRATEGIC THREAT US NUCLEAR STRATEGY: AReader tco-edited with Philip Bobbitt and Gregory Treverton) WAR: AReader WAR, STRATEGY AND INTERNATIONAL POLITICS (co-edited with Paul Hayes and Robert O'Neill) THE WEST AND THE MODERNIZATION OF CHINA The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy
Third Edition
Lawrence Freedman Professor of WarStudies King's College, London © Lawrence Freedman 2003 All rights reserved. No reproduction, copy or transmission of this publication may be made without written permission. No paragraph of this publication may be reproduced, copied or transmitted save with written permission or in accordance with the provisions of the * Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988, or under the terms of any licence permitting limited copying issued by the Copyright Licensing Agency, 90 Tottenham Court Road, London WH 4LP. Any person who does any unauthorized act in relation to this publication may be liable to criminal prosecution and civil claims for damages. The author has asserted his right to be identified as the author of this work in accordance with the Copyright, Designs and Patents Act 1988. First edition published 1981 Reprinted seven times Second edition 1989 Third edition 2003 First published 2003 by PALGRAVE MACMILLAN Houndmills, Basingstoke, Hampshire RG21 6XS and 175 Fifth Avenue, NewYork, N.Y.10010 Companies and representatives throughout the world PALGRAVE MACMILLAN is the global academic imprint of the Palgrave Macmillan division of St. Martin's Press, LLC and of Palgrave Macmillan Ltd. Macmillan® is a registered trademark in the United States, United Kingdom and other countries. Palgrave is a registered trademark in the European Union and other countries.
ISBN 978-0-333-97239-7 ISBN 978-0-230-37943-5 (eBook) DOI 10.1057/9780230379435 This book is printed on paper suitable for recycling and made from fully managed and sustained forest sources. A catalogue record for this book is available from the British Library. Library of Congress Cataloging-in-Publication Data Freedman, Lawrence. The evolution of nuclear strategy/Lawrence Freedman. - 3rd ed. p.cm. Includes bibliographical references and index. ISBN 978-0-333-97239-7 (pbk.) 1. Nuclear warfare. 2. Military policy.1.Title. U263.F698 2003 3SS.02'17-dc21 2002192654 10 9 8 7 6 S 4 3 2 1 12 11 10 09 08 07 06 OS 04 03 Contents
Acknowledgements xi
Introduction xiii
Seetion 1 First and Seeond Thoughts 1
1 The Arrival of the Bomb 3 The transformation of war 3 Strategie bombardment 4 The politieal seienee of airpower 6 The experienee of World War 11 9 Retaliation and the 'V' weapons 12 The atom bomb 13 The strategy of Hiroshima 16
2 Offenee and Defenee 21 The persistenee of the doetrine of strategie bombardment 21 The new strategie environment 23 The possibility of defenee 28
3 Aggression and Retaliation 32 The vital first blow 32 The atom bomb and aggressors 34 Early thoughts on deterrenee 37
Seetion 2 Towards a Poliey of Deterrenee 43
4 Strategy for an Atomic Monopoly 45 Atom bombs and the Ameriean way of war 45 The limits of the bomb 46 First or last resort 49 The bomb enters war plans 51 Atom bombs and the Soviet way of war 53 The Permanently Operating Faetors 56
v vl Contents
5 Strategy for an Atomic Stalcmate 60 The Soviet bomb 60 The 'super' bomb 61 Tactical nuclear weapons 64 NSC-68 66 Korea 68 The conventional strategy 69
6 Massive Retaliation 72 The British conversion 74 The New Look 76 Dulles and massive retaliation 79 The spirit of the offence 84
Section 3 Limited War 87
7 Limited Objectives 89 Consensus on a nuclear strategy 89 The concept of limited war 93 Limited objectives 97
8 Limited Means 101 Limited nuclear war 101 The Soviet view 105 Graduated deterrence 107 On strategy and tactics 111
Sectio n 4 The Fear of Surprise Attack 115
9 The Importance of Being First 117 On winning nuclear wars 117 Prevention or pre-emption 119 The virtues of counter-force 121 The blunting mission 123 Preparing for war 125 A sense of vulnerability 128 The delicacy of the balance 130
10 Sputniks and t he Soviet Threat 131 The impact of Sputnik 131 First strikes for whom? 132 Contents vii
Soviet strategy after Stalin 136 The logic of pre-emption 138 Conclusion 144
11 The Technological Arms Race 146 The Killian Report 149 The Gaither Report 151 Mutual fears of surprise attack 153 Technology and stability ISS
Section 5 The Strategy of Stable Conflict 163 12 The Formal Strategists 165 Military problems and the scientific method 166 Game Theory 171 Prisoner's Dilemma and Chicken 175
13 Arms Control 179 The strategy of stable conflict 180 Disarmament to arms control 184 The disarmers disarmed 188
14 Bargaining and Escalation 196 Bargaining 196 Escalation 198 Tactics in escalation 199 Escalation dominance 203 The threat that leaves something to chance 206
Section 6 From Counter-Force to Assured Destruction 213 15 City-Avoidance 215 McNamara's band 216 A strategy of multiple options 220 City-avoidance 222 Retreat from city-avoidance 226
16 Assured Destruction 232 Assured destruction 233 Mutual assured destruction 234 viii Contents
Disillusion with defence 236 The action-reaction phenomenon 240
17 The Soviet Approach to Deterrence 243 The strategie learning curve 243 Guidelines for stability 245 A 'second-best deterrent' 247 The Ameriean challenge 250 The Brezhnev years 254
18 The Chinese Connection 258 The People's War 259 Atom bombs as paper tigers 261
Seetion 7 The European Dimension 269 19 A Conventional Defence for Europe 271 Theories of conventional war 273 European attitudes 278 Towards a conventional balance 281 Conclusion 286
20 The European Nuclear Option: (i) Anglo-Saxon Views 288 NATO and the Nth problem 289 The British nuclear force 292
21 The European Nuclear Option: (ii) French and German Views 298 Gallois 299 Beaufre 302 De Gaulle 305 German strategy 309 The multilateral force (MLF) 311 Conclusion 313
Seetion 8 Retreat from Assured Destruction 315 22 Military-lndustrial Complexities 317 The McNamara legacy 319 The military-industrial complex 321 Force planning under Nixon 324 Contents ix
23 The Consensus Undermined 328 The Soviet build-up 329 The action-inaction phenomenon 330 The shame of assured destruction 331 New technologies 334 Arms control 338
24 Parity 342 Calm over parity 343 Concern over superiority 346 Perceptions 349 Measuring the balance 352
25 Selective Options 355 If deterrence should 'fail' 355 The search for options 358 'The Schlesinger doctrine' 360 Options for a European war 365 ICBM vulnerability 369 The political science of nuclear strategy 375
26 The Reagan Administration and the Great Nuclear Debate 378 From the second cold war to the second detente 378 The rise of anti-nuclear protest 381 The changing American climate 383 To prevail or countervail 385 The counter-attack 388 From prevailing to defending 391 From defence to arms control 397 Soviet doctrine 400 Extended deterrence 404
27 The Threat Evaporates 407 The revolution in military affairs 411 Mutual assured security 414 The last great debate 418 Elimination or marginalization 424 The return of missile defences 429 Employment options 431 x Contents
28 The Second Nuclear Age 435 Arguing about deterrence 437 Pessimism and proliferation 440 Multipolarity 441 The GulfWar 447 Pre-emption 451
29 Can there be a Nuclear Strategy? 458
Notes 465 Bibliography 519 Subiect Index 549 Name Index 558 Acknowledgements
The issues discussed in the following pages have been the common fare of strategists wherever and whenever they have met for almost sixty years. Since 1975, when I began writing this book, I have been fortunate enough, as a member of the staff of, first the International Institute for Strategie Studies, then the Royal Institute of International Affairs and now King's College, London, to have had many opportunities to discuss questions of contemporary strategy with most of the leading members of the profession. In the course of my research I have therefore benefited from discussion and often argument with large numbers of people on aspects of this study. They are too numerous to mention by name but some deserve particular thanks. My thoughts still go back to the late Alastair Buchan, as responsible as anyone for not only encouraging independent analysis of the big issues of war and peace but also for insti• tutionalizing it at IISS. Not long before his premature death, as I was starting to organize my thoughts on how best to approach this subject, I was able to talk to hirn a number of times. The advice he gave wh ich stuck most firmly in my mind was 'if you are writing a history of ideas you must be bold'. It is this advice that I have tried to follow. Whether the attempt has been successful I leave it to the reader to judge. Christoph Bertram, then Alastair's successor at IISS, asked me to undertake this study in the first place, and gave me constant encour• agement, and not a little prodding, to complete it. In this he was ably assisted by the late Jonathan Alford who suggested some valuable improvements to an early version of this manuscript. Sir Michael Howard, who served as my mentor from my days as a graduate student at Oxford, and thankfully still does so, provided not only guidance on how to treat the subject but, in his own books, offers a model for any aspiring historian of strategic thought. In 1976 he chaired aseries of seminars I gave at Oxford, which provided an early opportunity to try out my ideas on a critical audience. During the course of drafting the first edition of this book a number of people either read individual chap• ters or have served as asounding board for my ideas: Des Ball; Richard Burt; Richard Haas; Frank Klotz; Barry Posen; Greg Treverton; and Phi! Williams. The late Albert Wohlstetter showed kindness not only in dis• cussing the development of strategie studies but in providing copies of relevant documents. Iames King, now also sadly deceased, permitted me
xi xii Acknowledgements to read a copy of his own masterly unpublished study entitled The New Strategy. Debbie Van Opstall Ginsberg, who also read and commented upon many of the chapters, helped in the construction of the bibliogra• phy. jean Pell typed many of the chapters. jane Capper took on the main burden of typing and organizing the manuscript into a form suitable für the publishers as well as helping with the bibliography and occasionally advising on syntax. Since those days I have been fortunate to come into contact with many of the people whose writings I have used and commented upon. I hope that they will excuse me for not mentioning them all by name. My colleagues and students at King's College have also provided a ready source of ideas and criticisms. I can think of no place where I would have rather worked over the past two decades. In the first edition I was able to thank my wife judith für her remarkable tolerance with my continued fascination with the rather disagreeable sub• ject of nuclear war. It is another part of my good fortune that I am still able to do so.
Some of material in Chapter 26 first appeared as 'The Reagan Legacy' in Ioe Kruzel (ed.), The American Defense Annual 1988/89 (Lexington, MA: Lexington Books, 1988).
L.D.F. Introduction
On 6 August 1945 the first atomic bomb was dropped on the ]apanese city of Hiroshima. At least 66,000 people died almost immediately from the explosion and fire-storm that followed. Tens of thousands more died in the aftermath. Three days after the first explosion, a second bomb was dropped on the ]apanese city of Nagasaki. The immediate dead nu m• bered some 40,000 people. The smaller size of the city and the hilly ter• rain meant that the devastation was not as complete as with Hiroshima. About 40 per cent of the city's structures were destroyed or severely damaged, as against 80 per cent in Hiroshima. The weapons that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki produced explosions equivalent to that produced with 14,000 and 20,000 tons of TNT respectively, an explosive power described as being 14 or 20 kilo• tons. Many of the nuclear warheads now in the possession of the major powers are in the megaton range; that is they would result in explo• sions equivalent to that produced with 1 million or more tons of TNT. lf a 1-megaton bomb is exploded at the height necessary to achieve maximum destruction, all brick houses would be destroyed out to 31!z miles, with comparatively minor damage out to 13 miles. The blast would create winds sufficient to hurl objects (and even people) 1 through the air at lethal speeds, out to 6 /2 miles. Within a radius of about 6 miles most fabrics and paper will burst into flame. As far out as 11 miles the explosion could cause second-degree bums and ignite dry leaves. The explosion would take its toll in human life for the follow• ing weeks and months through radiation sickness and the spread of disease and hunger that can be expected to follow the breakdown of social organization. Any unborn children subjected to irradiation would be likely to be born deformed. It is not altogether clear whether or not a human society could recover from the aftermath of a nuclear war. The material, physical, and psychic destruction might weil be too severe. The sense of immediate danger may have eased with the end of the cold war: the arsenals remain, even in reduced form, as its most frightful legacy. This is still the most developed and best understood means by which whole countries can be destroyed in an instant. lf the deed were to be done it could be done quickly. Our collective future is still hostage to continuing acts of self-restraint by the leaders of the world's major powers.
xiii xiv lniroduction
Whatever the prior security commitments or stakes in a particular conflict, few events would rock national, regional or global society more than aseries of nuclear detonations, or even just one. While a war involving small nuclear powers need not necessarily raise such apoca• lyptic seenarios as those developed for a superpower war - with the spectre of a true end to history as the northern hemisphere is desolated and possibly even blacked out - there has yet to be developed any con• cept of a 'small' nuclear war. Any nuclear use still moves us into the area of unimaginable catastrophe. This disproportionate character guarantees some deterrent effect in any situation in which there is the slightest chance of the employment of nuclear weapons. For this reason their presence has been considered beneficial as a means of consolidating a political status qua. They pro• vide those who possess them with an ultimate guarantee of security against external aggression and thus, in principle, the possibility of pro• tecting the most vital interests in the most hostile environments, while avoiding dependence upon allies. However, for the same reason the skewed distribution of nuclear power leaves those without their own capabilities potentially more insecure. Moreover, even for those in pos• session, this power is best applied against putative threats from other states with expansionist tendencies. There is little experience against which to assess its relevance in the face of internal threats to the security of states or non-state actors. The cost of developing and maintaining this enormous destructive capacity has been huge. The most thorough estimate, in 1996 dollars, suggested that it had consumed $409.4 billion on construction, $3,241 billion on deployment, $831.1 billion on targeting and controlling, $937.2 billion on defences and then $31.1 billion on dismantling ele• ments of the arsenal with another $365.1 billion on waste management, making for a grand total of $5,821 billion. Every year just sustaining the nuclear arsenal required another $35 billion. In addition, possibly tens of thousands of people died prematurely as a result of the radioactive materials thrown into the atmosphere until tests were forced under• ground after 1963.] Nuclear fallout does not recognize international borders. These costs, accumulated over time, would obviously be dwarfed by a nuclear war, to a level which would defy all accounting. But they would also be dwarfed by the costs of non-nuclear war among the great powers. In this respect there is a respectable case that this was all money well spent, or at least, that it has enabled humankind to make the best of a bad job by providing a compelling case for restraint and accommodation lntroduction xv in areas of confrontation. In particular, during the cold war, which pitted two ideologica11y-opposed alliances against each other, the risk of nuclear disaster was credited as being the source of a welcome caution that allowed the most dangerous days of this conflict to be endured. When this a11 came to an end, ho pes rose that at last there could be movement towards a nuclear-free world. Unfortunately its practical real• ization remains distant. The knowledge of how to develop and produce nuclear weapons is widely known. So long as we do not have a conflict• free world the fear that this knowledge will be exploited by the unscrupulous limits the possibilities for complete disarmament. Even if current stocks were eliminated, during the course of a conflict new stocks could be produced (especia11y if civilian nuclear facilities had not been eliminated). Nor do nuclear explosions exhaust the possible hor• rors that human beings can inflict on each other. Given a11 this, it is as difficult to be optimistic about a future without nuclear weapons as it is to comprehend the consequences of their use. At least the awfulness of the weapons, and the inescapable vulnerabil• ity of a11 to nuclear attack, continues to provide comfort that their use as instruments of policy might be degraded. This now appears to be the view of a11 the major powers. Their military planning is no longer built around nuclear contingencies. At the same time the possibility that the regimes of desperate or reckless states or even non-state groups might not only get hold of these weapons but also that they might even be in some sense beyond deterrence when contemplating their use has created new anxieties. When 1 first began work on this topic, the difficulty of keeping up to date with the detail of new weapons or the latest arms control proposals, plus the desire to influence future decisions, meant that those engaged in contemporary strategic studies tended to be technica11y sophisticated, forward-Iooking and policy-orientated. This had led, with a few notable exceptions.? to a neglect of the history of the subject. During the 1980s there was a growing interest in the history of nuclear weapons, doctrines and strategies and a number of studies catered to this interest. A major international endeavour - the Nuclear History Project - was set up to pul! together the efforts of researchers.:' As post-war archives were opened, and as scholars learned to exploit the American Freedom of Information Act and new archives from the communist bloc, the first post-war decades were thoroughly studied.? These studies include excel• lent histories of the construction of the atomic and hydrogen bornbs," the attempts to use the new atomic weapons to support post-war American drplomacy," the later röle of nuclear weapons in East-West xvi Introduction relations.? analysis of key decisions, such as that to build the hydrogen bomb," and the detailed development of nuclear plans.? Transcripts of the meetings of senior policy-makers during the Cuban Missile Crisis cast a completely new light on the established views of the crists.!" In addition to one book based on interviews with key figures in the devel• opment of nuclear thinking.!' there have been studies of some of the key figures who have helped to shape both policy and our general understanding of nuclear issues, such as Paul Nitze.l'' while others such as Glenn Seaborg and Herbert York have written valuable memoirs.l' In Britain and France too there has been a growing interest in both early thinking about nuclear weapons.!" and the continuity in doctrine." The opening up of Soviet and Chinese archives has meant that there is now the possibility of a two-sided nuclear history, 16 and even the policies of lesser nuclear countries, such as India and Israel, can now be investi• gated using first-rate studiesY The International disarmament move• ment also enjoys an excellent history.l" There are now some studies of key figures in the strategic studies cornmuntty,!? some of the key concepts.s" and also the strategic studies communtty.P It is now more than twenty years since the first edition of this book was published. When the second edition was published, on the eve of the end of the cold war, I decided against a major revision on the grounds that my main focus was on the public and academic debates surrounding nuclear strategy, and while it was important to know the nature of the deliberations that had taken place in governments this was not my main concern. This provided a useful excuse for not incorporat• ing what was already a substantial literature on the history of nuclear policies. This literature has grown even more since then. I have still decided against a complete rewrite, for reasons both of length and Iocus, so while the bulk of this book remains as it was first published, I have brought the manuscript up to date to reflect the post-cold war era. In addition to two new chapters, I have rewritten the introduction as weil as the conclusions. This is not to say that my own analysis would not also have evolved over the years. 22 The other thing that I have not changed is the title. I noted in 1981 that the use of the word 'evolution' was somewhat mis• leading for it suggested progress along a learning curve, implying a higher level of present understanding than in previous years. This had been the assumption with which I had begun my research. By the time I had completed the study, I believed it to be false. What impressed me was the cyclical character of the debates. Much of what was offered as a profound and new insight was said yesterday; and usually in a more Introduction xvii concise and literate manner. The rich literature of earlier decades was barely appreciated by many contemporary students of strategy, espe• cially those close to policy-making circles. Even after the cold war the debates remain remarkably cyclical, with, for example, the question of ballistic missile defence now in its third great debate. The richness of the literature provides a powerful disincentive to any• one contemplating a eomprehensive survey. It still remains difficult not to be overwhelmed by the sheer volume of the material that has been generated. In addition to professional writings of military men and refleetions of politicians presiding over nuclear arsenals, there has been a vast outpouring of books, articles, papers and memos from civilians representing many academic disciplines and often organized into research institutes concerned with few things other than the problems of national security. Their writings were replete with new and arcane eoneepts, wh ich sometimes served to clarify but often only obfuscated, and were caught up with a forbidding miasma of acronyms and jargon. Since the end of the cold war the extremely technical material is no longer so prominent, with one welcome result that the new literature on the topic shows great improvements in lucidity and style. In the same way that a military historian is not expected to reeord every campaign so a historian of ideas does not have to reeord every documented thought, especially when so much is repetitive and deriva• tive. This work is selective, and in eonsequenee the discussion of some areas such as conventional strategy, and particularly naval warfare, is inadequate; also, I have concentrated on the strategie debate in the United States, the most vigorous and fertile, though without neglecting the parallel debates in the Soviet Union, Britain, Franee and China. The aim is to provide a systematic and reasonably comprehensive treatment of the major themes of nuclear strategy. To this end, the most import• ant individual contributions to the debate have been analysed in some detail, but this is not a colleetion of critiques of great texts and so some favourite authors may not have got the attention they deserve. Similarly, while I have been eoneerned to examine the interaction between theory and poliey, this is not a history of decision-making. Finally, to eomplete this list of wh at the book does not offer, it pro• vides neither a theory of strategy nor a new strategie theory. What it does attempt to offer is a detailed and eritieal history of official and unofficial attempts to construet a plausible nuclear strategy. As these attempts have eome from a variety of sources and appeared in a variety of forms there is no fixed pattern to this investigation and it is only loosely ehronologieal. I believe this approach to be neeessary, not only xviii Introduction to highlight the major issues, but also to illuminate the more general expeetations, understandings and preoeeupations that have character• ized strategie thinking sinee 1945. A book about strategy ought to begin with adefinition of the subjeet. There has been no eonstant and generally aeeepted definition of strat• egy, even during the post-war years. The origins of the word 'strategy' lie in the Greek strategos, meaning the art of the general. There was little need to signifieantly alter the meaning even up to the time of General von Clausewitz (1780-1831) who defined the eoneept of strategy as the use of battles to forward the aim of war. By the twentieth eentury such a definition was blatantly inadequate. The preoeeupation with battles, always questionable, failed to aIlow for the great variety in the methods of employing military forees and the ehoiee of targets. Furthermore, the link with war itself was too direet. When war-fighting was so distasteful, it might be as important to preserve the peaee by reminding a potential enemy of the eosts of war or even to aehieve aggressive objeetives by encouraging a weaker eountry to give in without a fight. The definition of strategy developed by Basil LiddeIl Hart - 'the art of distributing and applying military means to fulfil ends of poliey'23 - seems more appro• priate. It is non-comrnittal about how the military means are to be dis• tributed while stressing, as would Clausewitz, the röle of the politieal sphere as the souree of strategie objeetives. It also maintains the eon• neetion with military means, and in this differs from other eontending definitions. Such adefinition clearly also rejeets the view that when the value of military instruments has been blunted by the exeessive eosts attendant on their use, aIl the means of national power - politieal and eeonomie as weIl as military - should be incorporated into adefinition of strategy. If we have to foeus on aIl methods of prevailing in any given eonfliet, the study of strategy eeases to be distinet from the study of diplomaey or of international relations in general and the sense that we are dealing with 'funetional and purposive violence' is 10st.24 If some have sought to broaden the term, others have sought to eonstriet it. When fledgling air forces, after World War 1,were anxious to demonstrate that they possessed a means for getting right to the heart of the enemy's power and destroying it with some well-chosen blows, they deseribed this as a 'strategie' eapability. Thus they spoke of 'strategie bombardment', using 'strategie bombers', eventually under a 'Strategie Air Command' (SAC). After 1945, nuclear weapons, best able to perform this mission, eame to be known as 'strategie weapons', and a war in whieh they were to be used would be a 'strategie war'. This use of the adjeetive 'strategie' has very little to do with the noun 'strategy'. Introduction xix
The eonneetion has beeome even more tenuous, with 'strategie' tightly defined, in the 'strategie arms reduetion talks' by referenee to the ranges of eertain weapons. A weapon that eould be direeted from the homeland of one superpower against the homeland of the other was strategie. During the cold war, it was diffieult to avoid this sort of use, as it was the language in whieh nuclear issues were diseussed. Sinee the end of the cold war this narrow use has fallen from favour, and while there is still talk of the strategie uses of air power, strategy is being used again in its wider context." The muddled use of this fundamental term prepares us for the muddle of nuclear strategy itself. Initially, when atom bombs first made their dramatic entranee onto the international stage, they were diseussed and understood in terms derived from the established theories of airpower. Eventually, nuclear weapons became more powerful, more numerous and, crucially, possessed by more than one nation. New eoneepts and approaehes developed in an attempt to come to terms with a situation in whieh a war in which the most formidable weapons available were used would, in all probability, be eatastrophie for all eoneerned. The question has been whether any useful purpose eould be served by employment of devices which invited diseussion using words such as 'holocaust', 'doomsday' and 'armageddon', and whether any employ• ment could be sufficiently deliberate and eontrolled to ensure that politieal objeetives were met. Whieh means that at issue has been whether a 'nuclear strategy' is a eontradiction in terms.