A month ago Defense Secretary James R. Schlesinger formally announced that the United States would pursue a counterforce strategy in order to give the president "greater flexibility and selectivity" if the United States should become involved in a nuclear war. Why Schlesinger made this announcement is unclear. Perhaps he intended it as a polite threat to the Soviets: Come to terms in the Strategic Arms Limitation Talks now resuming in Geneva or suffer the consequences. Perhaps it was meant for domestic U.S. consumption as a rationale to justify new expenditures on strategic forces.

Whatever his original intent, Schlesinger has brought into the open a strategic issue of the greatest importance, and for that we should be thankful. It is a subject which concerns all, and deserves a full debate. If war is too important a subject to be left to the generals, then surely nuclear strategy is too important to be left to the strategists.

No one should be happy with the paradox of mutual assured destruction. It is in effect a mutual suicide pact signed by the two nuclear superpowers.

We would all prefer a world in which our nation were invulnerable to nuclear attack, an international system in which national survival would not depend on our ability to slaughter a hundred million Russians. But such a world is not feasible today, nor is it likely in the foreseeable future.

Counterforce is certainly not the answer. It solves none of the dilemmas of assured destruction and introduces a whole new range of instabilities and temptations. It creates a need for new generations of strategic weapons, and in giving us weapons which can kill other weapons, may make nuclear war more likely.

In the perverse world of nuclear strategy, M.A.D. is as close as we can come to sanity.

Joseph Kruzel is a tutor in Adams House, and was on the American negotiating team at the SALT talks.