It suggests making a distinction between the kinds of weapons that are peculiarly suitable to the exploitation of a first strike and weapons that are peculiarly suitable to the retaliatory role. At one extreme is the “pure” strike-back type of weapon: the relatively inaccurate vehicle with a super-dirty bomb that can kill just about everything in the enemy’s country except a well-protected or well-hidden retaliatory force, and that itself is so well-protected or well-hidden as to be invulnerable to any weapons that the other side might possess. Ideally, this weapon would suffer no disadvantage in waiting to strike second and gain no advantage in striking first. At the opposite extreme is a weapon that is itself so vulnerable that it could not survive to strike second, or a weapon so specialized for finding and destroying the enemy’s retaliatory forces before they are launched that it would lose most of its usefulness if it were held until the other side has already started. These “strike-first” weapons not only give their possessor a powerful incentive to strike first, and an incentive to jump the gun in the event of ambiguous warning rather than to wait and make absolutely sure; they are a tacit declaration to the enemy that one expects to strike first. They consequently invite the enemy to strike a little before that and to act with haste in the event he thinks that we think it’s time to act quickly.

DEFINE: Schelling introduces the strike-back vs. strike-first weapon distinction as a conceptual framework for nuclear deterrence. XREF: This is the classic deterrence theory logic that also applies to cybersecurity, market strategy, and competitive posturing in other domains.

Thomas C. Schelling, The Strategy of Conflict, loc. 547