At least in the West nuclear “strategy” is in chaos. This is nothing new. Already in 1981 Lawrence Freedman had concluded his magisterial The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy:

Others as different as Robert Jervis and Robert McNamara have continued to point out that, in McNamara's words, “The fact is, the Emperor has no clothes. Our present nuclear policy is bankrupt.”

What is new is that we have now reached a historic juncture where the incoherence of the existing rationales for nuclear deterrence in general and for specific nuclear weapons systems in particular is more likely than ever to lead to mistaken policies that could cost hundreds of billions of dollars and hundreds of millions of lives. The Soviet Union has agreed in the Intermediate Nuclear Forces Treaty to asymmetrical reductions in nuclear weapons. It has also volunteered asymmetrical and unilateral reductions in conventional weapons and forces. The United States must decide, in the face of this, whether to spend tens of billions on the production of Stealth bombers and tens of billions on the development of strategic defenses and tens of billions on the development of a new small land-based missile and tens of billions on production of a new submarine-launched missile, among other weapons systems.