Escaping Stalemate
This chapter analyzes the durability of stalemate. It investigates whether the situation can be reversed once countries reach the point where neither can disarm the other. For geopolitical competition to be greatly mitigated, the path to stalemate must be a one-way street. If the opposite were true, then even the achievement of stalemate would not eliminate competitive dynamics. The chapter shows that the survivability of nuclear arsenals has varied over time. During the later decades of the Cold War, it seemed that the superpowers were permanently locked into stalemate. It talks about “counterforce” attacks that are aimed at disarming the enemy's nuclear forces and appeared impossible because the superpower arsenals were enormous and dispersed, and some weapons seemed impossible to find.