No one would change national policy based on a single report of such gravity - but the report would initiate a frenzied search for confirmation, which would all but certainly be forthcoming. At that point, the United States loses the Cold War.
Really. Do you not know how MAD worked? Rough parity of force was the whole point - specifically, that neither side could expect to launch a country-devastating strike without receiving one in return. If one missile force turns out mostly not to exist, it becomes possible for the other side to contemplate starting a nuclear war that leaves it, but not its enemy, a functioning country, and the whole Cold War strategic calculus goes right out the window.
That's the same unstable outcome that made things like FOBS and ABM systems
such a matter of concern, and drove the Cuban missile crisis - whose proximate cause was the Soviet Union seeking to achieve parity with short-ranged, forward-deployed US missiles which might enable a decapitation strike, which in turn might allow a full countervalue strike with little fear of response from a shattered government lacking anyone with the authority to launch a counterstrike. (The same fear motivated the creation of the Soviet "Dead Hand" or "Perimeter" system, whose purpose was to ensure a response even after a decapitation strike.)
I agree this has gotten silly, but we don't agree on when that happened. The idea that the US nuclear deterrent mostly never existed is entirely novel to me, and I've been unable to find even one source for it, credible or otherwise. Where on Earth are you getting this crazy stuff?
