EVERYBODY KNOWS that the United States maintains and ever strengthens its nuclear arsenal to deter the Soviet Union from realizing its aggressive designs against the West.

Everybody also knows that the two superpowers possess enough nuclear firepower to destroy the earth many times over.

To Win a Nuclear War: The Pentagon's Secret War Plans

By Michio Kaku and Daniel Axelrod.

South End Press: 356 pp.

Most everybody senses that these two truths don't quite mesh and that there must be something more to nukes than deterrence.

In To Win a Nuclear War, a disturbing history of American nuclear strategy, Drs. Michio Kaku and Daniel Axelrod, professors of physics at the City University of New York and the University of Michigan respectively, illustrate that most everybody is right.

"Despite public statements about 'deterrence' and 'defense,''' they write, "the true nuclear policy of the Pentagon has envisioned using nuclear weapons to threaten, fight, survive and even 'win' a nuclear war." Current advances in laser and computer technology, they found, are renewing the American emphasis on nuclear war-fighting capability, which was in decline in the early '70s.

The Pentagon has procured weapon systems and designed strategies in the belief that "the nuclear weapon is a pervasive influence in all aspects of diplomacy and of conventional war." Its strategists are guided by the theory of "escalation dominance," which says that America's adversaries must be convinced that the United States can prevail at any level of armed hostilities. Far from playing catch-up to a fictional Soviet nuclear edge, the U.S. is pursuing superiority at all levels of conflict.

TODAY THE United States is procuring and deploying the hardware--the neutron bomb, cruise missile, B-1 bomber and Pershing II--that will enable it to fight at the intermediate rungs. Most frighteningly, the Reagan Administration is also actively pursuing the Holy Grail of nuclear war-fighting: the capacity to launch a pre-emptive first strike that would destroy the Soviet Union's own second strike capability.

Neither the United States nor the Soviet Union has ever possessed the capability to execute a disarming first strike. But now President Reagan is intent on undermining the Soviet retaliatory force, the very basis of nuclear deterrence.

The MX and Trident II missiles, along with the Pershing II, are the most accurate ballistic missiles in the world--the ultimate first strike weapons. Their accuracy, which the authors say is "comparable to hitting the eye of a fly at a distance of 10 miles," is unnecessary for a second strike against Soviet cities. They are intended for one type of target--Soviet missile silos. They serve one function--pre-emptive first strike.

WITHIN FIVE to 10 years, according to one estimate, the U.S. will be able to destroy almost all Soviet land-based missiles in a first strike. Meanwhile, advances in U.S. antisubmarine warfare threaten the formerly invulnerable Soviet submarine fleet.

This is where the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI) comes in. As the U.S. achieves the ability to destroy more and more of the Soviet missile force in a surprise attack, SDI becomes more and more sensible--and more and more insidious. Star Wars is not primarily intended to shield the United States from a Soviet first strike. This, according to most experts, is an impossible task. Rather, its purpose would be to mop up the small percentage of Soviet missiles that would escape a U.S. first strike.

The Pentagon seeks a disarming first strike capability. The MX, Trident and SDI systems can be seen in no other way.