Keeping the Strategic Balance

The Soviet Union and the United States are rival superpowers not simply because of their wealth, numbers, size, geographical position, social cohesion, strong government, but because they have translated these potentialities into overwhelmingly strong military forces which, measured on any historic or current standard, are comparable only with each other. For nearly fifteen years, the central strength of these forces has been their respective long-range strategic striking arms, each designed to be capable of a large-scale attack with nuclear weapons on the home territory of the other. Over the past decade, more or less, each nation has become increasingly aware that the chief utility of his strategic force was to prevent his adversary from using his own. This result was achieved primarily by offering the adversary the prospect that any attack by his strategic forces would be met by a counterblow so devastating as to convert a decision to attack into a suicide pact. So the strategic equilibrium commonly termed "mutual deterrence" was recognized.