Through the Nuclear Strategic Looking Glass,or Reflections off the Window of Vulnerability

Abstract

Admiral James Watkins, then Chief of Naval Operations, published an article in 1986 indicating that the U.S. Navy would seek to destroy Soviet ballistic-missile submarines in the event of a conventional war in Europe, thus very much contradicting the assumptions of mutual assured destruction. This statement sheds light on current trends in American strategic thinking, in a mirror-image of the suposed Soviet “window of vulnerability” threat to U.S. land-based missile silos. The U.S. threat may be more than a reflection, for it perhaps offers some much more plausible counterforce options. It is important to consider the origions of this kind of war planning in the United States, and the possible costs of such planning.