The Mutual-Hostage Relationship between America and Russia

Wolfgang K. H. Panofsky

From Foreign Affairs, October 1973

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Summary:  For nearly two decades the strategic nuclear armaments of the Soviet Union and the United States have been great enough for each to hold the other's civilian population as hostage against a devastating nuclear attack. Living with this situation has not been and will not be easy: it has become, quite simply, one of the major tensions of modern life. Yet the mutual-hostage relationship has been given credit, and probably justly so, for the prevention of massive world wars.

For nearly two decades the strategic nuclear armaments of the Soviet Union and the United States have been great enough for each to hold the other's civilian population as hostage against a devastating nuclear attack. Living with this situation has not been and will not be easy: it has become, quite simply, one of the major tensions of modern life. Yet the mutual-hostage relationship has been given credit, and probably justly so, for the prevention of massive world wars.

During the last few years, this relationship has been exposed to broader public scrutiny as a result of the SALT I negotiations and treaty, and a number of articles and statements have appeared criticizing U.S. policy with regard to the situation.1 One critic, Donald Brennan, coined the acronym MAD, for Mutual Assured Destruction, to indicate his view of the policy underlying SALT. While others have not employed quite as harsh terms, they still assert that the terms of the SALT I treaty prohibiting extensive anti-ballistic missile (ABM) deployments do in fact signify a morally repugnant policy of leaving "mass slaughter" as the only option in case deterrence has failed in some way.

The recently named head of the Arms Control and Disarmament Agency, Fred Charles Iklé, cites three "far-reaching dogmas" as implied by current U.S. policies:

One: our nuclear forces must be designed almost exclusively for "retaliation" in response to a Soviet nuclear attack-particularly an attempt to disarm us through a sudden strike.

Two: our forces must be designed and operated in such a way that this retaliation can be swift, inflicted through a single, massive, and-above all-prompt strike. What would happen after this strike is of little concern for strategic planning.

Three: the threatened "retaliation" must be the killing of a major fraction of the Soviet population; moreover, the same ability to kill our population must be guaranteed the Soviet government in order to eliminate its main incentive for increasing Soviet forces. Thus, deterrence is "stabilized" by keeping it mutual.2

The first of these "dogmas" conforms to the technical realities: in the post-SALT I era (and under conditions prevailing throughout the past decade!) our strategic forces must be designed primarily for retaliation in response to nuclear attack. However, I take strong exception to the second and third points, which claim that such a response, according to accepted doctrine underlying SALT, must be both rapid and of massive proportion.

Naturally the present situation is far from ideal. We cannot be relieved of moral responsibility for having permitted a situation to develop in which large segments of the population of both West and East can in fact be sacrificed at the will of political leaders; neither is the situation free from acute danger in case of failure of mutual deterrence. Iklé aptly criticizes the mutual-hostage relationship which these policies imply by eloquently recalling that the threat of the killing of civilians has been condemned as immoral in the codes of both ancient and modern warfare, and by also pointing out the ...

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