Word: counterblows
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Dates: during 1980-1989
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...bomb "airfields, plus the aircraft... plus all potential nuclear [warhead] storage sites." The President's brother, Attorney General Robert F. Kennedy, fretted that such extensive bombing would "kill an awful lot of people," in which case it would be "almost incumbent on the Russians" to threaten a strong counterblow, perhaps far from Cuba. Moreover, the secrecy necessary for successful military action would preclude consultation with allies, and that worried Secretary of State Dean Rusk. He warned that if the U.S. took "an action of this sort without letting our closer allies know of a matter which could subject them...
...first salvo from Washington prompted an unprecedented counterblow from Moscow, which in turn triggered a second strike from the U.S. Fortunately, this intercontinental escalation involved only words about nuclear missiles-in fact, competing proposals for getting rid of them. But the public relations battle, essentially for the mind of Western Europe, could not have been more serious...
...painstaking studies to determine the lowest level above which a strategically significant violation could not be concealed. The culmination was the SALT agreements of 1972. These accords severely limited antiballistic missile defenses to discourage an aggressor from believing he could launch a surprise attack and then defend against a counterblow. The agreements also froze the number of offensive missiles for five years. At that point the Soviets had a numerical edge in missiles-though not nearly enough for a surprise attack with single warheads. But this advantage was counterbalanced, first, by our very large-and growing-advantage in warheads, since...
...retain its credibility, argues the Administration, the U.S. must be able to respond in land to a Soviet attack. A strike against a U.S. missile site, for example, would be answered by a U.S. counterblow against a Soviet military installation. Though the language of Presidential Directive 59 has the highest security classification and will not be made public, officials acknowledge that it calls for U.S. counterstrikes against military targets on whose survival the Soviet Union depends to continue fighting and eventually to capture and hold Western territory after a nuclear exchange. These targets include civilian and military commands, control...