The indelicate balance of nuclear modernization

Adam Mount

Adam Mount Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow DC.jpg

Adam Mount

Adam Mount is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. Previously, he was a Stanton Nuclear Security Fellow at the Council on Foreign Relations. Before that, he worked on nuclear...
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In 1983’s The Wizards of Armageddon, journalist Fred Kaplan describes the grim work of the RAND Corporation at the end of the 1950s. Over the course of that decade, RAND analysts had warned that US Strategic Air Command forces were dangerously vulnerable. The analysts cautioned that bombers stationed overseas were at risk of being hit by a Soviet first strike before they could reach their targets, and that therefore it was necessary to disperse and defend them. These arguments were instrumental in shaping modern nuclear strategy and the US arsenal throughout the Cold War.

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