Secretary of State Pompeo
cancelled his visit to Greenland and the cover of The
Economist says Collision course. Time to reread Albert Wohlstetter: The Delicate Balance of Terror
"On the whole, I think the burden of the criticism of
deterrence has been the inadequacy of a thermonuclear capability and frequently
of, what is not really deterrence at all, the threat to strike first. But it
would be a fatal mistake to confuse the inadequacy of strategic deterrence with
its dispensability. Deterrence is not dispensable. If the picture of the world
I have drawn is rather bleak, it could nonetheless be cataclysmically worse.
Suppose both the United States and the Soviet Union had the power to destroy
each others' retaliatory forces and society, given the opportunity to
administer the opening blow. In this case, the situation would be something
like the old-fashioned Western gun duel. It would be extraordinarily risky for
one side not to attempt to destroy the other, or to delay doing so. Not only
can it emerge unscathed by striking first; this is the only way it can have a
reasonable hope of emerging at all. Such a situation is clearly extremely
unstable. On the other hand, if it is clear that the aggressor too will suffer
catastrophic damage in the event of his aggression, he then has strong reason
not to attack, even though he can administer great damage. A protected
retaliatory capability has a stabilizing influence not only in deterring rational
attack, but also in offering every inducement to both powers to reduce the
chance of accidental detonation of war. Our own interest in
"fail-safe" responses for our retaliatory forces illustrates this. A
protected power to strike back does not come automatically, but it can hardly
be stressed too much that it is worth the effort."
"A deterrent strategy is aimed at a rational
enemy."
