Crisis Management in the Nuclear Age (1987) / Chapter Skim
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Introduction
Introduction
Pages 1-7
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Students of this subject have considered many different paths that might lead to nuclear war, ranging from a so-called bolt out of the blue to an accidental or unauthorized firing of a nuclear weapon, to a terrorist or rogue nation attack. In the judgment of many careful observers, however, the most likely paths to nuclear war begin with either an international crisis directly involving the United States and the Soviet Union or a regional crisis that involves critical U.S.
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Consequently, national leaders have much less room to maneuver in the nuclear age. The advent of nuclear weapons has dramatized the limits of power that can and should be exercised to attain national goals.
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Such interactions risk the initiation of a chain of events that could lead to inadvertent nuclear war. This report explores the problem of keeping crises involving the United States and the Soviet Union from leading to nuclear war.
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For deterrence to work, each side must believe that were it to attack its opponent with nuclear weapons, the opponent would retain surviving weapons adequate to cause unacceptable retaliatory damage to the attackers In a time of crisis, stability is enhanced when both sides believe that neither would benefit significantly by striking first.5 Much of the structure of nuclear forces in both the United States and the Soviet Union can be understood in terms of the need to ensure that the forces can survive an opponent's first strike and that the opponent is fully aware of this fact (see the box entitled "Diversity in the U.S. Nuclear Force Structure".
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The box entitled "Technological Change and Strategic Stability," elaborates the effects recent technological changes may have on strategic stability.6
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The next section of this report identifies the individuals and institutions in the United States and the Soviet Union that would most likely be responsible for decisions in a superpower crisis and examines the problems of management they have faced in past crises and may confront again in the future. The final section presents some general guidelines that follow from past experience and discusses some recent proposals for controlling or averting superpower crises.
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