It would be a major error to approach Soviet nuclear strategy as if it were an extant mosaic to be uncovered by the prodigious scholarly efforts of Western archaeologist-strategists. Bearing in mind the fact that the Soviet Government says next to nothing about its current thinking on its contingent nuclear operations, one should approach the subject expecting a quality of evidence more suitable for the securing, by analogy, of conviction in a civil, than in a criminal, case. There is, and is going to be, no “smoking gun,” in the form of Soviet public explanation and defense of the equivalent of a NSDM–242, or a PD–59.

Many of the people who, understandably, debate Soviet nuclear strategy in a necessarily inexpert manner, often are less than reliably informed about the doctrine which helps shape current US (and NATO) nuclear contingency plans. These plans and related matters are the most closely guarded of state secrets – in the United States as well as in the USSR. There is a night and day difference between the quality and quantity of information officially released by the US and the Soviet governments on current (and past) nuclear doctrine and strategy.

None the less, this is a subject that rightly attracts the most strenuous of official discouragement of release of classified data. Whether or not, or to what degree, the deeply classified details of nuclear targeting really matter, has to depend upon the level of questions posed. Fortunately, the more interesting issues of strategy that bear directly upon nuclear contingency planning and force structure planning do not require debate at the level of highly classified detail.