Correspondence

Correspondence ON MUTUAL DETERRENCE: A REPLY TO DON. To the Editors: iLD BRENNAN I welcome Dr. Brennan’s commentary (Vol. 3, No. 3) on my recent article on “Mutual Deterrence and Strategic Arms Limitation in Soviet Policy,” (Vol. 3, No. 1)although for reasons that will become clear presently I was disappointed in it. First let me deal briefly with one secondary point, and then turn to the main argument. On the question of certain statements on the threat of nuclear war to life on earth, Dr. Brennan expresses uncertainty over whether I am aware of the “egregious hyperbole.” Yes, I am. He suggests that “The fact that some Western spokesmen (such as Henry Kissinger)have indulged in the same hyperbole does not exculpate Soviet spokesmen.” If one considers that all American presidents since Eisenhower (and all top Soviet leaders since Ma1enkov)-in short all in the thermonuclear age-are among those who have ”indulged in the same hyperbole,” it seems clear that the vision of world statesmen is focused on a broad political horizon rather than on the calibrated measures of defense/arms control analysts, and that the political purposes and uses of such hyperbole do not stand in need of ”exculpation.” Similarly, to suggest (even ”somewhat parenthetically”) that such Soviet statements ”impair the credibility of other Soviet statements [all other statements ?] related to nuclear war” would require similar judgments to be made on the credibility of ”other American statements” too-except that the idea should instead be dropped, as it obviously does not in fact impair most such statements. Now to the main point. Dr. Brennan has chosen to challenge the idea that there is a Soviet constituency for “MADvocacy,” ”MADvocate” being a term of his coinage for ”anyone (Soviet or American) who advocates that the opposing side should have good deterrence of his own side.” MAD (for Mutual Assured Destruction), of course, is a cleverly pejorative acronym also, I believe, of Dr. Brennan’s earlier coinage, and denoting a posture in which the United States and the Soviet Union, in his words, each “would hold the other side’s population hostage.” Now it so happens that in the article I eschewed use of the term “Mutual Assured Destruction” precisely because the Soviet conception of mutual deterrence is broader and differently expressed-as I explicitly state and explain in the article (page 124). I am, in short, taken to task for failing to 197 International Security I 198 supply evidence of a Soviet ”MADvocacy” which I myself have said is not there! What Soviet military and political leaders have said is: (1)Soviet deterrence of the West is their principal military task; (2) that there is a “nuclear balance,” strategic “parity,” and a reciprocal capability for overwhelming retaliation by either side if attacked; (3) that this balance of mutual retaliatory capability should be maintained; (4)that nuclear parity, rather than superiority , is the goal of Soviet military policy; and (5) that negotiated strategic arms limitation is a desirable means to contribute to this maintenance of parity and a balance. There is a substantial body of evidence in the article to support all of those points. I call this acceptance of mutual deterrence. Dr. Brennan accepts my point that “There are those-again in Moscow and in Washington-who are apprehensive as to whether this [prevailing] parity will be upset by some successful effort of the other side.” “True,” he says, but relentlessly pursuing the chimera of MADvocacy, he goes on to state, ”but there are many in Washington who are apprehensive that this parity will be upset by some successful effort in the American side, while there are-so far as can be seen-none in Moscow apprehensive over the possibility that parity might be upset by some successful effort on the Soviet side.” In fact, I have reason to believe there are such people in Moscow, but I readily agree that no Soviet leader or writer would publish such a view because of the ideological and political constraints against stating what we in the West have no compunctions about saying-that we too are deterred, or to be more accurate would be deterred if we had any...