Ensuring Strategic Stability in the Past and Present:

Chapter 1: On the Path toward Defining Strategic StabilityThe USSR and United States de facto crafted the main elements of the approach toward strategicstability in the sphere of nuclear weapons in the period that began in the late 1960s, when theylaunched a serious discussion on problems of reducing and limiting strategic weapons, includingboth offensive and defensive weapons (although different terminology was used in the discussionsthat took place in the 1960s and 1970s).Those discussions took place at a time when there were formidable differences in the structure ofSoviet and U.S. strategic nuclear forces, as well as in the two sides’ political and strategic cultures.But these differences were neutralized by the fact that the elites on both sides (which includedincreasing numbers of technocrats and neo-technocrats) recognized the reality of technologicalevolution in the domain of nuclear missiles—an evolution whose logic was identical to the logicof scientific and technical development. By that time, both sides had also developed and accumulatedassessments of the incredibly devastating consequences that a war with use of nuclearweapons would entail. These assessments, which political leaders on both sides were able to comprehend,played an important role in the aforementioned discussions.The majority of the political elites and military-industrial complex leaders began to view nuclearwar (to be more precise, a war with massive use of nuclear weapons) as suicidal, even as bothsides continued to work at an increasingly fast pace on the development of advanced means ofwaging nuclear war. These leaders’ perceptions were in part shaped by their memories of the horrorsof World War II; they remembered that the Soviet Union and the United States were alliedin the fight against the Nazis. Their memories of the October 1962 Cuban Missile Crisis werealso fresh. Back then, the Soviet Union and the United States found themselves on the brink of anuclear war with each other. 5 (Some estimated that a nuclear war between the Soviet Union andthe U.S. would have killed 100 million American and Soviet citizens while causing many millionsof casualties in Western and Eastern Europe.) 6 In the aftermath of that crisis, a hotline was establishedbetween Moscow and Washington in June 1963, and this hotline is operational to date.Also, in August 1963, the Treaty banning Nuclear Weapon Tests in the Atmosphere, in OuterSpace and Under Water was signed in Moscow in what became an important contribution to thecause of strengthening strategic stability. And in 1968, the Treaty on the Non-Proliferation ofNuclear Weapons (NPT) was concluded. Article VI of that treaty committed the nuclear powers“to pursue negotiations in good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nucleararms race at an early date and to nuclear disarmament, and on a Treaty on general and completedisarmament under strict and effective international control.” (For instance, while developing itsnuclear weapons, India was continuously criticizing the USSR and the U.S. for not properly fulfillingtheir Article VI commitments.) As for countries that had no nuclear weapons as of 1967, theycommitted to not seeking such weapons by signing the treaty. Four American thinkers (GeorgeShultz, 7 William Perry, 8 Henry Kissinger, 9 and Sam Nunn 10 ) wrote a widely acclaimed article titled“A World Free of Nuclear Weapons” that was published in the Wall Street Journal on 8 January2007. That article, to which the author has referred above, underscores that the NPT commits allnuclear powers that have signed this treaty to rid the world of nuclear weapons.10Ensuring Strategic Stability in the Past and Present: Theoretical and Applied Questions