Volume 30, Number 8 · May 12, 1983
Zero Options
By George F. Kennan
Any consideration of the problem of the stationing of intermediate-range nuclear weapons in Europe must depart from the recognition that the nuclear weapon is, for war-fighting purposes, an unusable one. This is now so widely recognized in both East and West that the assertion needs little substantiation. This weapon is not a 'defense' against itself. No one has ever found, nor will anyone ever find, a way to attain superiority in the development of it or a plausible defense against it. Attempts to use it as the basis of a national military-political strategy have invariably failed. There is no way of initiating its use in warfare among the major nuclear powers that would not invite upon the initiating party disasters of such enormity that they would make a mockery of all normal concepts of victory or defeat.
Feature, 1478 words
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