The full text of this item is not available at this time because the student has placed this item under an embargo for a period of time. The Libraries are not authorized to provide a copy of this work during the embargo period, even for Texas A&M users with NetID.
Struggling with Satan: U.S. Nuclear Strategy and Capabilities in the First Half of the 1970s
Abstract
Concepts of and requirements for limited nuclear war (LNW) precipitated the rise of a fear of vulnerability of the U.S. intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM) force among U.S. policymakers and military planners. During the Nixon and Ford Administrations, only the Minuteman ICBM possessed the suite of capabilities required to successfully execute LNW. Thus, there was no redundancy in U.S. strategic forces to execute LNW missions. The destruction or severe degradation of the Minuteman force would rob the U.S. leadership of its preferred nuclear strategy and force a President to contemplate holocaust or surrender. In the period under discussion herein, ICBM vulnerability is irrelevant from an assured destruction standpoint (from which most scholars approach the validity of concerns over ICBM vulnerability); if the lens of analysis is shifted away from assured destruction and towards limited nuclear war, it is clear that an imperiled Minuteman force would in turn imperil the new strategy.
Citation
Fasulo, Micheal Joseph (2022). Struggling with Satan: U.S. Nuclear Strategy and Capabilities in the First Half of the 1970s. Doctoral dissertation, Texas A&M University. Available electronically from https : / /hdl .handle .net /1969 .1 /198081.