Nuclear Superiority in the Age of Parity: US Planning, Intelligence Analysis, Weapons Innovation and the Search for a Qualitative Edge 1969-1976

This paper argues that between 1969 and 1976 US policy-makers actively sought to transcend nuclear parity. The Nixon and Ford administrations demonstrated increasing uneasiness toward nuclear parity and yet, proved unwilling to match the Soviet Union quantitatively. In the search for an answer to the question of what strategic superiority was in the age of parity, they came to understand it in distinctly qualitative terms, adopting a number of decisions related to nuclear planning, intelligence analysis of the nuclear balance, and nuclear weapons innovation and modernization, aimed at securing a qualitative edge over the USSR.