The gang got together this weekend to talk about a new Stimson Center report, “Why Strategic Superiority (Still) Doesn’t Matter: Nuclear Crises and the Failure of Theory.“ The new report by Chris Preble, Senior Fellow and Director of the Reimagining US Grand Strategy program at the Stimson Center, and Lucas Ruiz, a recent Herbert Scoville Jr. Peace Fellow in the same program, analyzes the role nuclear weapons played in four crises: the Cuban Missile Crisis, the Sino-Soviet Border Conflict of 1969, the 1973 Arab-Israeli (Yom Kippur) War, and the Kargil Crisis. Based on our read, the report functions as a rebuttal to a 2018 book by Georgetown professor Matthew Kroenig, titled "The Logic of American Nuclear Strategy: Why Strategic Superiority Matters."

The report advocates for “sufficiency” as a north star for U.S. nuclear force planning - a secure second strike capability - rather than “superiority” is suggests has dominated U.S. nuclear thinking to date. The authors note that superiority “does not enhance security; it signals offensive intent, invites countermeasures, and erodes the stability that deterrence is supposed to protect.”

We talk about the report's analysis of a few of these crises, the consequences of a "sufficiency" approach, especially for extended deterrence and nonproliferation, how non-nuclear weapons states may react to these obscure nuclear strategy debates in Washington, and discuss the connection between nuclear posture and arms control. Take a listen, and read the report below:

https://www.stimson.org/2026/why-strategic-superiority-still-doesnt-matter/#elementor-toc__heading-anchor-0

and here's a link to Kroenig's book too:

https://academic.oup.com/book/5898

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