Nuclear Strategy and Common Sense

A Soviet analysis of American nuclear strategy - counterforce and countervalue targeting, first-strike doctrine, the arithmetic of deterrence, and the negotiating history of strategic arms limitation - written by a specialist for readers abroad.

Its interest now lies partly in its layers, which can be dated almost to the month. Luzin signs his introduction in May 1979, and the body of the book belongs to that moment: SALT II unsigned, no Soviet troops in Afghanistan, Reagan still a candidate, and detente real and reversible only by American bad faith.

A thin later layer was then worked in. SALT II and the Vienna summit of June 1979 are treated at length, clause by clause. The NATO twin-track decision of December 1979 appears under a heading about missiles against detente. The Brezhnev-Schmidt meeting of summer 1980 is there, and so is Presidential Directive 59, which Carter signed in August 1980 - noted as arriving on the eve of the presidential election. There the updating stops: Reagan is not named once in eighty-two thousand words about American nuclear strategy, and the Twenty-Sixth Congress of February 1981 is absent.

So the revision closes around September or October 1980, after PD-59 and before the election result. This is a book of the last months of detente, written by a man who did not yet know detente was over, lightly patched by someone who suspected it might be, and shipped to English readers in the year of Reagan's inauguration and the first great Euromissile demonstrations.

New critical introduction by Dmitry Chasovennikov.