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Abstract
Responding to Derrin Culp's critique, the author argues that distinguished nuclear theorists may be wrong because groups of experts have been wrong in the past, that city attacks are central to nuclear deterrence theory because killing civilians en masse is what nuclear weapons do best, and that understanding how effective city attacks would be in war is crucial to understanding how well they would work as threats. Moreover, while it is undeniable that nuclear deterrence works some of the time, this simply is not good enough. Because any failure of nuclear deterrence could end in catastrophic nuclear war, nuclear deterrence must be perfect or almost perfect. This is a very difficult standard to reach.
Notes
1. Herman Kahn, On Escalation: Metaphors and Scenarios (New York: Frederick A. Praeger, 1965), p. 134.
2. Lawrence Freedman, The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy (New York: St. Martin's Press, 1981), p. 94.
3. Henry L. Stimson, “The Decision to Use the Atomic Bomb,” Harper's Magazine, February 1947, p. 105.
4. Famously, Secretary of State Dean Acheson did not include South Korea within the Asian Defense Perimeter in a speech on January 12, 1950.
5. I discuss these questions and several of the new failures at some length in my forthcoming book, Five Myths about Nuclear Deterrence, available from Houghton Mifflin Harcourt in fall 2012.