countervalue targeting

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Alternate titles: countervalue strike

countervalue targeting, also called countervalue strike,  in nuclear strategy, the targeting of an enemy’s cities and civilian population with nuclear weapons. The goal of countervalue targeting is to threaten an adversary with the destruction of its socioeconomic base in order to keep it from initiating a surprise nuclear attack (first strike). Coupled with the theory of mutually assured destruction (MAD), countervalue targeting is thought to substantially reduce the chances of a first strike. It is differentiated from counterforce targeting (that is, the targeting of an enemy’s nuclear weapons and other military and industrial infrastructure).

Countervalue targeting provides an effective deterrent to nuclear war only if both sides have a secure second-strike capability. This means that each side must have confidence that sufficient numbers of intact operational nuclear forces would remain after having absorbed a surprise nuclear attack by the other and that those forces could be delivered in retaliation.

The targeting of civilian populations is also associated with MAD. With both sides expected to retain enough nuclear weapons to carry out a second strike, neither side in a conflict could be expected to rationally start a nuclear war for fear that its cities would be destroyed by a retaliatory strike. In effect, both countries would simultaneously deter a first strike by the other, since a first strike would not be decisive (that is, eliminate the nuclear weapons of the other), and incurring such devastating losses from the adversary’s retaliatory strike would be unacceptable.

Countervalue doctrine was emphasized in U.S. defense policy after counterforce targeting fell out of favour in the 1960s and 1970s. Because a relatively small nuclear arsenal is sufficient to strike an adversary’s civilian population, both the United States and the Soviet Union attempted throughout the 1960s and 1970s, with varying degrees of success, to reduce their nuclear arsenals. Countervalue targeting was seen as providing the most stable nuclear deterrent, because its only possible outcome would be suicide.

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