Ensuring Strategic Stability in the Past and Present:

Chapter 2: On the Principles and Parameters of Strategic StabilityThe core of the modern military and strategic balance is its most dangerous and destructivecomponent: nuclear forces and means, starting with strategic assets. In this context, there are veryclose connections among the two sides’ separate offensive and defensive forces and within each oftheir military forces. At the same time, the stability of the balance, especially in the event of nuclearstalemate, is essentially influenced by their general-purpose forces and conventional arms.The concept of stability is implied to estimate how easy it is to startle and destabilize a system—inthis instance, the super-system of strategic nuclear interaction—out of its current state. 27 Thisconcept logically implies an estimate of the risk of an outbreak of nuclear war, in view of thegiven correlation and structure of the parties’ military forces and, first and foremost, the strategicpotential of those forces. The main aspect of stability is the existence of a certain potential barrierthat, if cleared as a result of some external disturbance, would cause the transition of the strategicmilitary super-system into a qualitatively new state—from the typical interactions of peacetime tothe interactions that are characteristic of the fundamentally different logic of military conflict, alogic that leads to a nuclear, strategic war.This potential barrier is formed by a group of political and military factors, where the principalfactor is a correlation between the following elements:• The political and military goals of nuclear war of various scales and types;• The capabilities of each side to use force in the resolution of crisis situations, and the currentlyavailable material and technical resources available for the prosecution of such a war; and• The relevant consequences of using such force.The stability of the balance is determined by the parameters, which are decisive factors in theevaluation of how easily one of the sides would disrupt the existing balance and attain superiority,and how difficult it would be for the other side to take countermeasures to restore the balance byneutralizing these steps.The concepts of balance or equilibrium, and stability formerly reflected one in the same conditionof strategic balance for each sides’ forces. In the first half of the 1970s, these concepts began todiffer in their meaning (the Soviet Union was several years behind the U.S. in the process of masstransition from single-warhead missiles to MIRVs). 28 The term “equilibrium” more likely reflectsquantitative parameters of the existing nuclear super-system, while the concept of stability characterizesits quality. (Therefore, equilibrium, or balance, may be stable or unstable). The emergentdifference does not resolve itself into the semantic nonidentity of the two concepts; rather, it isdeeply practical, since it provides for the identification of the main problems that determine theincrease or reduction of risk of nuclear conflicts, 29 including the risk of an outbreak of nuclearwar.Maintenance of military and strategic equilibrium with due regard for existing nuclear-missile armamentsdoes not stipulate maintenance of the exact symmetric equality of the two sides’ forces.To a certain extent, the enormous destructive capacity of nuclear weapons equalizes the20Ensuring Strategic Stability in the Past and Present: Theoretical and Applied Questions