The "Schlesinger Doctrine" is the name, given by the press, to a major re-alignment of United States nuclear strike policy that was announced in January 1974 by the US Secretary of Defense, James Schlesinger. It outlined a broad selection of counterforce options against a wide variety of potential enemy actions, a major change from earlier SIOP policies of the Kennedy and Johnson eras that focused on Mutually Assured Destruction and typically included only one or two "all-out" plans of action that used the entire U.S. nuclear arsenal in a single strike. A key element of the new plans were a variety of limited strikes solely against enemy military targets while ensuring the survivability of the U.S. second-strike capability, which was intended to leave an opening for a negotiated settlement.

The first coordinated nuclear attack policy in the United States was codified as SIOP-62 at the prompting of the Science Advisor in the Eisenhower Administration, George Kistiakowsky. Prior to SIOP-62, each of the U.S.'s military branches had drawn up their own target lists and action plans, which led to a wide variety of overkill situations and the possibility of blue-on-blue fire. After Kistiakowsky reported on the problems this caused, Eisenhower took nuclear planning away from the individual branches, centralized it, and gave it to RAND for extensive oversight.

However, the plan that developed was still based on the same basic concept of an all-out war, or what Herman Kahn referred to as a "wargasm". SIOP-62 called for a single coordinated attack that used up all of the U.S.'s arsenal on a wide variety of targets in the Soviet Union and China. Concerns about the inflexibility of the plan were expressed early and often; U.S. Marine Commandant David Shoup noted that an attack by the Soviets would result in a retaliation that included China whether or not they were involved, and observed that "any plan that kills millions of Chinese when it isn't even their war is not a good plan. This is not the American way."

In the late 1950s a number of parties pointed out another serious problem with the all-or-nothing approach. If the Soviets launched a limited attack against isolated U.S. military targets, they could cause significant damage to the U.S.'s own nuclear forces without causing serious civilian casualties. If such an attack was successful, the Soviets would still have the capability of launching a second strike against U.S. cities, while the U.S. would be so reduced in power that their only militarily effective response would be an attack on Soviet cities, knowing the Soviets would respond. This would leave the Soviets in an extremely advantageous position for a negotiated peace. SIOP-62 simply had no response to this threat.

The "solution" to this problem was developed under the Kennedy Administration, and consisted of responding to limited attacks in kind. In this case, if the same scenario were to develop, the Soviets would be placed in the extremely uncomfortable position of having to allow the U.S. counterattack to land and damage their own forces, or immediately launching as soon as the attack was discovered. Neither course of action would preserve any advantage, and so it was believed this policy would render the limited attack untenable. As early as 1962 Robert McNamara had proposed a flexible strategy starting with a number of limited counterforce strikes before proceeding to full-out exchanges. These plans, codified in SIOP-62, remained virtually unchanged for over a decade.

However, as nuclear forces moved from bombers to ICBMs with limited accuracy but high survivability, the ability to carry out a counterforce strike while the enemy forces were still on the ground became increasingly difficult. This difficulty further increased with every new iteration of missile, which continued to reduce reaction time to the point where catching them still in their silos would be extremely difficult. As these weapons were, at the time at least, relatively inaccurate, they were limited primarily to countervalue attacks on the enemy's cities, further eroding the idea of a limited attack against them being responded to in-kind.

As a result of these technical changes, the idea of flexible response ossified, while mutually assured destruction (MAD) became the primary strategic concept of the era. McNamara became a major proponent of MAD, and used it as a reason to cancel other nuclear delivery systems, like the B-1 Lancer bomber. In testimony before Congress he stated that "The strategic missile forces for 1967-71 will provide more force than is required for 'Assured Destruction' ... a new advanced strategic aircraft does not at this time appear justified."

With the rise of MAD, all of the earlier problems with the "wargasm" approach returned. Adding to the problems, the U.S. now had obligations under various treaties to protect allies using their nuclear arms, the so-called "nuclear umbrella". This meant that the Soviets could launch a limited attack against an ally, leaving the U.S. with the choice of backing down, or accepting a full-scale exchange.