Information and Perception in Limited Strategic Conflict: Some U.S. and Soviet Differences.

摘要

The major focus of U.S. strategic planning has long been on general nuclear war, conceived of as a rapid and massive exchange of most of the U.S. and Soviet Union strategic arsenals. Lesser forms of strategic conflict have received attention from academic strategic theorists, but until recently were not considered seriously in U.S. defense planning. With President Nixon's oft quoted question in 1970 of whether or not the President should have more than one option to deal with nuclear attack on the U.S. in 1970, however, the focus slowly began to change. More recently, with ex-Defense Secretary Schlesinger's interest in the subject as an impetus, issues related to limited strategic conflict have come to figure increasingly in U.S. defense planning. This paper addresses some broad questions concerning the role of information and perception in limited strategic conflict, and the defferences between the U.S. and the Soviet Union relative to those questions. A broad perspective is adopted, in part becasue the subject itself is so ill-defined and squishy that it is not obvious how it could be sharply narrowed in a meaningful way. Narrow, technical comparisons of, say, reconnaissance or command and control systems, can be made, but without a broader context, the question of what such comparisons really mean remains open. Limited strategic conflict is, after all, an event outside the range of prior experience.