Oo The Counterforce [GR]: Did we know? ...... More Sixties research.

[Mark Kohut]

That Robert McNamara employed the word 'counterforce' in internal memos
when he was
working for the Vietnam War killing machine?

The idea meant to disrupt the enemy's gaining of strategic arms *before *they
were
in the enemy's arms. .....

it was a first strike, *pre-emptive* strategy. (Don't know about then but
think this hasn't changed much: it is
against international law to strike first, the very meaning of causing a
war,  without lots of just war justifications that are hard to meet.
(Perhaps
the massing of a country's military on their border when the states are
contiguous and they've vowed to be against you)

So, later, Nixon just bombed *in secret *two sovereign countries, Cambodia
and Laos, to try to stop the flow of men and arms.

It---the counterforce plan-- did not get deployed by McNamara and Johnson.