550
PARTISAN REVIEW
they have a very specific mission in our over-all strategy. The Single
Integrated Operational Plan, the War Plan, has several types of at–
tack. You have the Basic Attack Options at the bottom which are
small attacks of dozens or perhaps a few hundred warheads . You
have Major Attack Options at the top which are thousands of war–
heads in an annihilate-the-Soviet-Union campaign. The Basic At–
tack Options down at the bottom are specifically the sorts of things
that you want to use ICBMs for. Basic Attack Options are the fun–
damental component of our extended deterrence, flexible response
strategy. What you're trying to do is use basic American forces,
ICBMs particularly, in a discriminating attack against Soviet mili–
tary assets to try to get them to stop a conventional or tactical nuclear
war in Europe . The idea is that you use these forces to go after Soviet
airbases, marshalling yards, supply depots, army bases, and that
sort of thing. And your ICBM is probably uniquely suited to that
mission. Very discriminating and accurate, they can be launched in
small numbers. You can't do that with bombers and submarines .
You also have extremely good connectivity with the ICBM , because
you have land-line communication with it, and unlike the sub–
marines, you know whether the ICBM is still in the silo . So ICBMs
are at this point our unique instrument for executing our extended
deterrent guarantees to our European allies. And if the Soviets had
the capability to destroy our ICBM force, they would be able to
knock a number of very important rungs out of current military
strategy. This is not to say that today's military strategy is wise.
There are very real questions about its credibility, about our first–
use doctrine, about deterrence, and nuclear guarantees to the allies .
And the concern about ICBM vulnerability is not a concern that we
would not be able to effectively retaliate against the Soviet Union,
but rather that the Soviets would be able to knock so many rungs out
of our escalation ladder, that we would be faced with either ex–
ecuting large attacks (using submarines and bombers), or with back–
ing down.
PETER SHAW: Isn't that what I just said?
JOHN PIKE: Not exactly, because the option at higher levels of
violence is not simply an option between doing nothing and inciner–
ating two hundred million Russians. There are lots of other things
that you can do . You can go after refineries, you can go after
railroads, you can go after critical military plants with comparatively
small collateral damage . But if the Soviets get our ICBMs we're no
longer going to be able to execute discriminating attacks . You're go-
