^\ 18 SOCIAL SCIENTIST But this capability was indistinguishable from one which made a discerning first strike feasible. It was thm no longer deterrence by mutual vulnerability and secure second strike forces, as conceived under MAD, but deterrence through threat of war-fighting and first strike. The Reagan Administration is usually accused of radically recasting the U.S. nuclear policy. While its style has contributed towards this view, there is no real substance in it. All that Reagan did was to take U.S. nuclear strategy a few more logical steps forward from the PD59. He transformed the policy from Deterrence through war-fighting^ to a strategy based on 'deterrence through war-winning'. The Reagan nuclear doctrine is based on the principle 'victory is possible*. The doctrine is based on several propositions. First, a nuclear war can occur. Second, it can be won in some meaningful sense. And third, for the U.S. to prevail, it must have strategic superiority. Deterrence is one object of war-winning, but in contrast with assured destruction and war-fighting, deterrence is to be achieved by the threat to use nuclear weapons to "defeat" the Soviet Union, while activating measures to protect the United States, in the event of deterrence failure. The requirements of a war-winning strategy have been articulated by Colin Gray, whose views have come closest to those of the Reagan Administration on nuclear strategy. Gray has argued that the US. needs a strategy in the sense of specific political objectives to be achieved in war. Gray recommends that the U.S. "seek to impose such a military stalemate and defeat as is needed to persuade disappointed Warsaw Pact allies and ethnic minorities inside the Soviet Union that they can assert their own values in very active political ways." Here are the outlines of ethnic targeting—decimate the Russian nationality, and you will have the other Soviet ethnic groups and Warsaw Pact allies waiting to welcome the U.S. armed forces as liberators. The breakup of the Soviet Union as a nation state would only take America half way to victory. The other half involves damage limitation to insure the survival of enough of the U.S. to enable it to continue as a nation-state. Gray observes that "a combination ofcounterforce offensive targeting, civil defence, The reality of these mind-numbing strategy of Gray was soon confirmed by statements by Alexander Haig and President Reagan that a nuclear war is winnable. This was further reinforced by a leak mNew York Times of May 30, 1982 of the top secret Defence Guidance document of the Reagan Administration which set a requirement for American forces to have the capability to "prevail" in a nuclear war and "render ineffective the total Soviet (and Soviet* allied) military and political power structure." Though the public furore over this leak in Europe and America led to softening of the public posture of the U.S. leaders, the policy appears to be intact.