Enhanced-Radiation Weapons

Abstract

The enhanced-radiation warhead is a particularly dangerous weapon insofar as it might mislead anyone into believing that its deployment would make it possible for nuclear warfare to be safely limited and tightly controlled; in this sense its very deployment could lower the threshold separating conventional warfare from nuclear warfare. Enhanced-radiation weapons are no more (and perhaps they are less) ''humane'' than chemical weapons, whose first use has long been outlawed by international treaty. Moreover, the enhanced-radiation warhead has little more military utility than any other type of low-yield nuclear weapon. Finally, the author concludes: to the extent that the USSR believes the U.S. will use enhanced-radiation weapons in a European ground war, their deployment invites a preemptive Russian nuclear attack in any extremely tense situation, perhaps as the first move in a European war. In any event, there is no reason to believe the enhanced-radiation warhead would in any way diminish the likelihood that a European-theater nuclear war would escalate to an all-out nuclear war, or that its introduction would somehow moderate the probable response of the USSR.