The threat of massive retaliation, if “massive” is interpreted to mean unlimited retaliation, does indeed lose credibility with the loss of our hope that a skillfully conducted all-out strike might succeed in precluding counter-retaliation. But if we were ever to consider limited or graduated reprisals as a means of putting pressure on the Russians to desist from actions intolerable to us, or to consider extending a limited local war inside Russian borders in a way that maintained the presence of local military action but was really intended to work through the sanction of civilian pain and the threat of more, this kind of retaliatory action, and the threat of it, might enjoy increased credibility with a reduction in the vulnerability of both sides’ strategic forces. It does, paradoxically, for the same reason that all kinds of limited war might become less inhibited as the possibility of all-out surprise attack became unavailable. The risk involved in a bit of less-than-massive retaliation should be less than it is now because the fear of an all-out strike in return should be a good deal less.

Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, loc. 585