JON WOLFSTHAL
During the tense days of the Cold War, the United States deployed many kinds of small-yield nuclear weapons in the field. The “logic” of the ladder of escalation led Washington to field nuclear landmines, anti-ship demolition mines to be attached to the hulls of ships by atomic frog men, and even close-range rocket-propelled nuclear weapons. We managed to avoid all-out nuclear war at each rung on the ladder through a combination of luck and careful efforts to avoid miscalculation.
Now, as the Trump administration develops its Nuclear Posture Review, the temptation of small nuclear weapons is back. The review will try to lay out for the American public and the world President Donald Trump’s views on what American nuclear weapons are for, when they might be used, and what kinds of and how many weapons are needed to carry out U.S. strategy. Some respected analysts and nuclear experts have suggested that the review once again consider the pursuit of new, smaller, and more usable nuclear weapons, despite the dangerous experiences with small nuclear weapons in the past and the fact that the United States already has a number of these weapons. These experts, increasingly and understandably concerned about Russia’s nuclear doctrine and its large deployments of tactical nuclear weapons, argue that the United States should enhance deterrence by threatening to use its own smaller nuclear weapons, and to make those threats more credible by building more of these weapons. The thinking is that this buildup will make adversaries believe the United States is more likely to use nuclear weapons, thus reducing the prospects of nuclear use altogether – an admittedly worthy goal.
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