Teoria globalnej wojny jądrowej

Nuclear weapon appeared as a fighting means and was used in 1945. It was recognised as revolutionary for the art of war. The theory of a global nuclear war as developed in the field of war theory in the late 40s of the 20th century. Its creators were mainly Americans, partly the French and the British. The author outlines the history of this theory development, its creators and the basic assumptions. He proves that in the initial stage nuclear weapon was supposed to be carried by strategic bombers, whereas in the late 50s by missiles, mainly ballistic ones. There are presented viewpoints of such theoreticians as: the Americans - Henry Kahn, Maxwell d. Taylor, William Kaufmann, Henry Kissingier, Bernard Brodie, the British - Brasil Henri Liddell-Hart and the French - Charles Ailleret and A. Beaufre. The common feature of their viewpoints was the assumption that nuclear weapon was to dominate military operations in a future war. Some theoreticians even wrote about eliminating other combat means. Thereby the necessity to break away with currently existing principles of art of war and to develop new ones was proved. The theory of a global nuclear war dominated the military thought and doctrines of leading world countries until the 60s. Since then it was gradually replaced by realistic deterrence concepts and thus going away from the vision of a global nuclear war. It became history at the beginning of the 70s when the superpowers adopted the strategy of realistic deterrence.