Research for Mutual Assured Destruction

In January 1977, General Secretary L.I. Brezhnev delivered an address in the city of Tula whose impact on Soviet doctrine and capabilities continues to this day. By rejecting the possibility of a means of defense against nuclear weapons, or a damage-limiting capacity in nuclear war, Brezhnev closed the door on a debate that had lasted over a decade in Soviet military thought. Since Tula, the Soviet politico-military leadership has presented a consensus on the reality of 'Mutual Assured Destruction' in present-day conditions. The Soviet debate on the viability of nuclear war as an instrument of policy was likewise resolved by a consensus: nuclear war is so unpromising and dangerous that it remains an instrument of policy only in theory, an instrument of policy that cannot be used. While the Soviet consensus on the diminishing military utility of nuclear weapons represents a ground-breaking shift in doctrine since the heyday of Marshal Solokovskiy, there is scant evidence of any dispute on the new correlation of war and policy in a nuclear age. Marshal N.V. Ogarkov and other hard-minded military figures have themselves emerged as the architects of the Soviet shift away from a nuclear war-fighting and war-winning strategy, while General Secretary Gorbachev has fashioned a corresponding arms control agenda.