Discussion about this post

User's avatar
Walter Faber's avatar

"Nevertheless, both the United States and the Soviet Union made efforts to develop offensive capabilities sufficient to allow a “splendid first strike” that would destroy their enemy’s ability to retaliate."

Another factor besides showcasing your commitment to striking (back) may be that the the capability to execute a "winning" first strike is far cheaper than any insurance against this, therefore trading military expenditure at a favourable ratio. For example, the sheer existence of short reaction time first strike weapons forces your enemy into a high readiness, hardened nuclear diade or triade, which will be more expensive than your small numbers of IRBMs launched from submarines/ships or allies close to the enemy heartland.

USSR has not ICBMs with 15 minutes warning time on radar-->you can park your bombers in America on normal readiness.

USSR has ICBMs with 15 minutes warning time on radar-->you need to keep a share of the bomber force 24/7 in the air and another on quick start readiness, both massively more expensive.

Is nuclear warfare one of the few fields where the well-proven heuristic "the defence is the stronger form of combat" often does not hold?

Expand full comment

No posts