It's widely taken for granted that throughout the Cold War the United States and the USSR competed in a long nuclear arms race. Twin this belief with an assumption of moral equivalence between the two combatants and, hey presto, the Soviets weren't such an aggressive threat after all - they were acting defensively as much as offensively. (The idea that there is a "cycle of violence" in the conflict between Israel and Palestinian terrorist groups follows a similar logic.) In fact, Richard Perle notes in a fascinating column:
But as is often the case with conventional wisdom, little serious research was done to establish whether it was true. The most important exception was the work of the late Albert Wohlstetter, America's preeminent strategic thinker, who approached the subject with his customary rigor. In a 1976 article--"Racing Forward? Or Ambling Back?"--Wohlstetter demonstrated that U.S. and Soviet strategic weapons programs were largely independent of each other and that the number, explosive power and cost of American nuclear weapons had peaked 15 years earlier (under Defense Secretary Robert McNamara) and had been declining ever since, even as Soviet programs had expanded significantly.
