¹ An illustrative calculation is as follows: the soft target is assumed to be vulnerable to two pounds per square inch overpressures (2 p.s.i.), the bombing accuracy is measured in terms of a probability of one-half that bombs will fall one-half mile from the target or closer (C.E.P.: = 2,500 feet), and the required yield for an air-burst weapon to achieve a go per cent probability of kill is then only two kilotons. Increase the hardness of the target fifty-fold (100 p.s.i.), leave the bombing accuracy and desired probability of kill the same, and the required yield becomes two megatons for a ground-burst weapon.

² Strategic retaliation need not be massive. It can be limited—e.g., hit one city in the enemy homeland a week until he gets out of Country A. Whether it should be limited is a different matter. When, as now, it is much better to strike massively first than to strike second, and when one's attempt to hit first less than massively is apt to trigger massive retaliation, a limited strategic strike might be simply the worst way to start World War III. Later, if and when strike-second strategic capabilities approach or even surpass the power of strike-first blows—i.e., each side finds no soft spots to disrupt in the enemy's entire system of retaliation and must use up, say, two missiles to destroy one on the other side—the practice of limited retaliation would become less undesirable. There remains the problem that such a practice removes the traditional (Korean) limitations of both weaponry and geographic sanctuary, and so invites a chain of retaliation and counter-retaliation that has no natural limit and culminates in—what?

As Thomas Schelling reminds me, however, neither the bizarreness nor the current undesirability of a strategy of limited strategic retaliation should stop inquiry into this or any other strategy for bolstering our vulnerable tactical capabilities. See Kaplan, Morton A., The Strategy of Limited Retaliation, Policy Memorandum No. 19, Center of International Studies, Princeton University, 1959.Google Scholar

³ Gordon, Lincoln, “NATO in the Nuclear Age,” Yale Review, XLVIII (March 1959), p. 326Google Scholar; italics added. The crucial point of difference with Gordon's analysis is identified here. There is much else that is admirable, notably his insistence upon the continued need for strength in Europe that is, moreover, firmly rooted in transatlantic rather than merely European interdependence.

⁴ Our broad and sketchy argument necessarily avoids specifics, and hence omits vital examples where our preparations have seriously compromised our non-nuclear capabilities. These are likely to become more grievous unless the unorthodoxies advocated here become accepted. On the current dominance of nuclear over non-nuclear war planning, and for an amplification of other points in this section, see my chapter, “The Place of Limited War in NATO Strategy,” in NATO and American Security, ed. by Klaus Knorr, Princeton, N.J., 1959.

It may well be objected mat a NATO Shield designed primarily for non-nuclear war will be able to contribute less in the event of general war. To this I reply that the general war contribution of European NATO forces promises to be small anyway; cf. “NATO: Deterrent or Shield?” Foreign Affairs, XXXVI, No. 2 (January 1958), pp. 278–92.