The Fourth Nuclear Window of Vulnerability

By Peter Huessy, President of Geo-Strategic Analysis, Potomac, Maryland and Warrior Maven, Nuclear Weapons, Senior Analyst 

The Russian invasion of Ukraine has fully opened the fourth nuclear window of vulnerability facing the US in the nuclear age, threatening the security of the United States, and requiring a robust US response.

Some six decades ago, the Kennedy administration fixed the first nuclear vulnerability by adopting a more credible “flexible response” alternative to the inherited Eisenhower deterrent strategy of massive retaliation sometimes described as Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD).

That was followed by the second new danger of a massive Soviet nuclear buildup during the 1970-79 era of détente and peaceful coexistence that threatened to so change the correlation of forces with the United States that Soviet aggression would go unchallenged.

Peace through strength ended this threat and collapsed the Soviet empire.

Ironically, the third window flowed from this success, as the breakup of the Soviet Union engendered fear of loose Russian nukes in the hands of terrorists, the parallel emergence of new nuclear armed rogue states such as North Korea, and the continued fear of a nuclear armed Iran.

These factors in part pushed the US into war against Iraq as the culmination of fears about a nuclear armed rogue state working with terror groups reached the top of the national security worries of the United States. Nuclear technology programs in Iraq and Libya were subsequently eliminated, although not in North Korea and Iran. That “window” remains open.

With the 2022 Russian invasion of Ukraine, and the breathtaking growth in Chinese nuclear forces, a new fourth window of vulnerability has opened.