Ensuring Strategic Stability in the Past and Present:

differ considerably from test-launch trajectories—and give little signal regarding the trajectories’end-point target on the territories of the other side. Many experts believe that this fact also increasesthe level of uncertainty concerning the accuracy of ICBMs, SLBMs and other missiles. 31There are also the problems associated with the targeting of a single target by several warheadsto guarantee the target’s destruction—the so-called warhead “fratricide effect”—as a result of thereciprocal influence of a heavy surface-burst by the previous warhead on the next one, due tosoil particles upcast into the atmosphere. That is to say, once the first warhead explodes, the soilparticles that are upcast into the atmosphere by the explosion will inevitably obstruct the pinpointdestruction of the target by the following warheads. However, any trustworthy evaluation of thisfratricide effect would be an extremely difficult task. 32Many experts also believe that such an evaluation is practically impossible, by virtue of the existenceof the Moscow Treaty Banning Nuclear Weapon Tests in the Atmosphere, in Outer Spaceand Under Water (including nuclear surface bursts), signed by the Soviet Union, the United Statesand Great Britain. 33 The same applies to the operational and technical reliability of a synchronizedsimultaneous salvo of 1,000 missiles. This is the case when a higher degree of uncertainty for bothsides increases the stability of the military and strategic equilibrium, rather than the reverse. Andthe relevant limiting treaty is one of the factors that provide for just such a stabilizing uncertainty.However, even if we imagine the highest-precision effective strike that incapacitates an ICBM,such a strike would have enormous indirect consequences on the lives of millions of people, ashas been demonstratively corroborated by a number of research studies. Calculations made bysome American experts in the 1980s showed that in the event of a strike only on U.S. ICBMs deployedin sparsely populated areas of the United States, the number of civilian casualties primarilyresulting from radiological fallout could vary from 5 million to 18 million people. 34 Accordingto the estimates of U.S. scientists W. Dougherty, B. Levi and F. von Hippel, in the event of a 3,000warhead attack on a wider class of as many as 1,200 military targets, the number of casualties inflictedon the U.S. population would vary from 13 million to 34 million people, depending on theair-mass direction at the time of the explosions and on certain additional factors. 35“Compensated”—that is, reduced—warhead yields; reductions in the number of targets to bedestroyed by nuclear munitions; and enhancement of targeting precision could considerably decreasesuch a side effect, but still, this would mean the death of millions of people.The situation is considered to be stable when the aggressor’s anti-missile defense system cannotprotect it from the attacked side’s retaliation strike, which is intended to cause “unacceptable” or“comparable” damage. The estimates of many experts show that today the number of warheadsthat would be required to inflict unacceptable or irreparable damage to the largest state is considerablysmaller than was believed earlier. Such conclusions are based on a deeper understanding ofthe entirety of the consequences of nuclear bursts, including secondary and even tertiary, especiallyin the event of nuclear blasts in large urban areas that may result in firestorms. The biomedicalconsequences of nuclear bursts would also play a major role. 36Today, the majority of Russian and foreign experts agree that the amount of unacceptable damagecannot be fixed: in each country, the degree of unacceptable damage would be determinedby political, social, historical and economic factors. Moreover, even individual members of the22Ensuring Strategic Stability in the Past and Present: Theoretical and Applied Questions