Nukes you can use

Remember the days when the concept of limited nuclear war was out of favor? As one noted military strategist (Kennan?) put it: "Like Judas of old / You lie and deceive / A world war can be won / You want me to believe."

Escalation would be inevitable, went the argument, so it was better to think in terms of deterrence and mutually assured destruction, aka M.A.D.

In the November/December 2009 issue of Foreign Affairs, however, Keir A. Lieber, of Georgetown's School of Foreign Service, and Daryl G. Press, a professor of government at Dartmouth, make the case for retaining and maintaining small-yield nuclear weapons that could be deployed in scenarios falling well short of Armageddon. If Iran, for example, used nuclear weapons to destroy a U.S. carrier fleet or other essentially military target (an Army base far from civilian centers, say), and the U.S. had in its arsenal only high-yield bombs, the two scholars write, it would find its hands tied. The world would see the destruction of Tehran as a disproportionate response. And a president might, not unreasonably, be unwilling to sanction the wholesale slaughter of civilians.

Small-to-medium-size atomic weapons that could take out foreign militaries and weapons systems while keeping civilian slaughter to a minimum (or "minimum") are therefore essential to a credible defense, Lieber and Press argue. Otherwise, they write, "U.S. adversaries may conclude--perhaps correctly--that the United States' strategic position abroad rests largely on a bluff."

"Critics may cringe at this analysis," the authors write. "Many of them, understandably, say that nuclear weapons are--and should remain--unusable."

There's an interesting secondary argument running through the article, which is available in full to subscribers only. The United States, these scholars argue, has not been true to its word in some of its wartime negotiations. Saddam Hussein was promised, in 1990, that his regime would survive if he did not use chemical weapons. He did not, yet the U.S. military still set out to kill him and his circle.

Given that precedent--as well as the later fates of Saddam, Milosevic, and other U.S. adversaries in recent years--future military opponents might not be inclined to trust deals aimed at reducing the risks of chemical or nuclear escalation, the Foreign Affairs writers argue.