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.8Nuclear strategy evolved through a number of permutations during the ColdWar and nuclear forces and strategy options expanded rapidly through improve-ments in accuracy, weight and yield, mass production technologies and growthin potential targets through improved intelligence.New weapons includedadvanced long-range bombers, nuclear cruise missiles, submarine-launched bal-listic missiles (SLBMs), Intercontinental Ballistic Missiles (ICBMs), and a hostof tactical nuclear weapons for land, sea and air.In the 1950s President Eisenhower articulated a strategy of massive retalia-tion that put nuclear policy on the offensive.The strategy declared that Americamust be able to inflict enormous retaliatory damage on the Soviet Union inresponse to Soviet aggression in order to counter any temptation Moscow mayhave had to launch a surprise nuclear attack.It also required continued nuclearsuperiority at a time when Moscow seemed intent on building a nuclear missileforce to deliver a disarming first-strike.9 The credibility of the massive retalia-tion strategy was called into question when the Soviet Union developed thecapacity to retaliate in kind.These concerns led to a strategy of flexibleresponse.The concept of escalation dominance was at the heart of the newstrategy, which sought to develop the ability to control the escalation of a con-flict by signalling intent to move to the next level of destructive warfare if theenemy did not relent.10 It was also based on the capability to target and destroySoviet conventional and nuclear forces, rather than cities, based on the conceptof counter-force targeting.The concept of damage limitation was also intro-duced based on the idea that America should be able to quickly destroy Sovietforces and other strategic targets in a retaliatory second-strike after absorbing asurprise Soviet nuclear attack.This in turn required a large, diverse nuclear forceand nuclear superiority.11The counter-force/damage limitation strategy provided no inherent limit tothe size of the nuclear arsenal because it was proportional to the size of theSoviet nuclear force and other Soviet targets that would inevitably grow inresponse to America s nuclear expansion.Critics argued that this weakeneddeterrence and would encourage a perpetual arms race to retain the superiorityrequired by the counter-force rationale.A strategy of assured destruction wastherefore developed in the 1960s under President Johnson to set limits on thelevel of destruction considered necessary to deter a Soviet attack and the number Nuclear policy at the end of the Cold War 15of nuclear weapons needed to achieve it.This evolved into a strategy of mutualassured destruction (MAD) as the inevitability of Soviet nuclear parity wasaccepted.12 MAD rested on an acceptance of the necessity of mutual vulnerabil-ity to nuclear attack for strategic stability.This led to the SALT treaty (formallyknown as the Interim Agreement on Certain Measures with Respect to the Limi-tation of Strategic Offensive Arms) and Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) treaty inthe early 1970s period of détente.These were designed to place a ceiling (albeita high one) on the deployment of strategic nuclear delivery vehicles and to keepmissile defence systems designed to shoot down incoming enemy nuclear mis-siles to a minimum.Extensive deployment of ABM systems would, it wasargued, threaten strategic stability by undermining mutual vulnerability tonuclear attack.13 The SALT agreement was quickly superseded by the wide-scaledeployment of missiles with multiple warheads known as MIRVs (multipleindependently-targetable re-entry vehicles).It was now the number of warheadsthat counted rather than the number of missiles.The doctrine of mutual assured destruction was challenged as the détenteprocess faltered in the mid-1970s.Critics were fearful that if countries started toview the Soviet Union as superior to America then the global balance of powerwould shift in Moscow s favour as it surged ahead with a massive ICBM pro-gramme.This led to Nixon s strategy of essential equivalence based on main-taining a counter-force nuclear arsenal at least as capable as the Soviet Union s,as well as a range of pre-planned limited nuclear strike options.14President Carter reverted to a countervailing strategy when his predilectionfor détente was overwhelmed by external events in the late 1970s
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