welsch (07/08/82)
This month's (July 1982) Science and Citizen section of the Sceintific American contains an article on a War Game called Half-SAFE played "For more than 20 years by planners of U.S. nuclear strategy ..." "Although Half-SAFE is meant to train the commanders of American nuclear forces ... the game is curiously inconsistent with certain elements of U.S. policy. In particular the team representing the U.S. is not constrained by the doctine that nuclear weapons should serve primarily as a deterrent to war and would be put to use only in retaliation after an attack. In the game either team can launch a first srike or can 'launch on warning,' having detected what it takes to be evidence of an impending attack. Moreover, military leaders can initiate a nuclear exchange without an order from the president. The emphasis on winning a war rather than averting it suggests the game is not so much practice in thinking the unthinakable as an exercise in planning the inevitable"