POL208Y1 Lecture Notes - Massive Retaliation, Flexible Response, Plaintext
16 Apr 2014
School
Department
Course
Professor
Document Summary
Mad- mutually assured destruction: capability- what you need to have is a capacity for second strike. Need to have an arsenal that can sustain a first attack so you can respond in kind. If your adversary believes that he can destroy all of your nuclear capacities in one strike, then there is no deterrence. Incentive to strike first- thinks he can escape total destruction of own country. Cw- technology not properly developed, us had wings of strategy bombers nuclear loaded- you wanted to have capacity to strike after in an attack. Must be convinced that a first strike is suicidal. Us tried to deprive ussr of a strike. Strike overkill- maybe we can get capacity to destroy soviet union so they cannot strike back- incentive to have a lot of nuclear capacity. 1962- put condition of deterrence between us and moscow- to reach point where you know opponent has capacity of second strike.
