Dilemmas of Common Deterrence

Abstract

Discussions of nuclear strategy typically include extensive discussions of the credibility or incredibility of extended deterrence, the process by which the United States somehow deters attacks on itself and also on its most valued allies by the prospect of an escalation to nuclear retaliatory attacks on the Soviet Union. It is in such debates about the credibility and the appropriateness of extensions of the nuclear umbrella that we find the most interesting and controversial portions of all the arguments about nuclear strategy.' Has the defense become common deterrence? And with whom is such deterrence being maintained in common? It is remarkable how deterrence is almost automatically assumed to be credible for the deterrence of attacks on the United States itself. The logic by which the rationality and the believability of massive retaliation is to be questioned on behalf of South Korea or of West Germany might, after all, be applied just as directly to responses to a Soviet conventional or nuclear attack on the home territory of the United States. If Soviet conventional ground and naval forces were invading Alaska or Arizona, or Soviet nuclear forces had destroyed some, but not all, of the targets inside the United States, would it really make sense for the United States to respond with a full-fledged version of a thermonuclear World War III? Indeed, if all the targets the U.S. values were destroyed and all Americans were killed, what would be the point of getting even by inflicting any parallel destruction on the Soviet Union? Some questions have been posed so often that we sometimes feel that we are seeing