T

Tactical Nuclear Weapons

In one sense tactical nuclear weapons, or ‘battlefield’ weapons as they are
sometimes misleadingly called, are not easily distinguishable from other ‘con-
ventional’ munitions, except in power. They are, or were originally, intended
for short-range use against purely military targets such as troop concentrations,
vital supply or communications centres and so on, rather than against civilian
or industrial targets. The ‘yield’ measured in the standard units of megatonnage
is small (it can be as little as one kiloton, though 10 kilotons would be more
usual). Originally they were deployed mainly byNATOforces in Western
Europe, and NATO doctrine had come to rely increasingly on a first and early
use (perhaps within two or three days of hostilities beginning) in order to offset
the supposedWarsaw Pactsuperiority inconventional arms. However, this
scenario, which made tactical nuclear weapons simply more devastating
versions of ordinary warfare mechanisms became increasingly inaccurate. For
several reasons the Soviet Union started, in the late 1970s, to deploy its own
version of short-range nuclear missiles, the SS-20. As these could be fired from
inside Soviet borders, effective counter-attacks by Western powers, especially
with their own new generation of such weapons, the land-based cruise missiles
and the Pershing II ballistic missile, could not easily be distinguished from more
purposive and deliberate strategic strikes against the Soviet homeland. This
would have considerably increased the risk ofescalationto all-out nuclear
war. In addition, what is known as the ‘collateral’damage to civilian centres in
the vicinity of the military targets could not be limited. As a result much of
NATO doctrine came to be seen as faulty, and began to weaken political unity
in the Western alliance. Thisarms raceat thepre-strategiclevel, triggered
when NATO announced in 1977 that it would emplace its new missiles, led,
after Mikhail Gorbachev’s rise to power and Ronald Reagan’s mid-term
conversion to arms control, to urgent and ultimately successful negotiations.
The result was the firstarms controltreaty actually to abolish a category of
weapons when these missiles, which had come to be labelled ‘intermediate’,
were subject to theIntermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treatyof 1987.