Tactical Nuclear Weapons and NATO.pdf - Program on Strategic ...

power <strong>and</strong> the proliferation of nuclear <strong>and</strong> advanced
conventional weaponry in the h<strong>and</strong>s of potential U.S.
adversaries. Barring the abrupt cessation of China’s
military buildup, this trend looks certain to make U.S.
conventional naval <strong>and</strong> air operations in the Western
Pacific at the very least more contested <strong>and</strong> perhaps in
certain contexts prohibitively difficult. 54
These dynamics point to the likelihood that U.S.
nuclear weapons, while still generally absent from
overt policy consciousness <strong>and</strong> deliberation in East
Asia in the early 2010s, will grow in salience in the
coming years. U.S. extended deterrence commitments
are fundamentally highly ambitious, encompassing
most of maritime Asia. In an era of technologically
<strong>and</strong> politically unchallenged U.S. military supremacy,
such commitments could safely be wholly entrusted
to the purview of U.S. conventional military forces.
As U.S. conventional military superiority comes under
increasing challenge, however, the United States
<strong>and</strong>, more insistently, its allies will be compelled to
choose between appeasing those rising powers that
enjoy leverage gained from the diminishment of U.S.
conventional superiority, on one h<strong>and</strong>, <strong>and</strong> threatening
to impose unacceptable costs upon an aggressor
that seeks to exploit such leverage, on the other h<strong>and</strong>.
If it is to be the latter, the threat to resort to nuclear
escalation is the logical terminus <strong>and</strong> the most doubtlessly
formidable rung on the ladder of such threats.
ENDNOTES - CHAPTER 3
1. This chapter examines the history of U.S. nuclear weapons
policy <strong>and</strong> doctrine in Asia since 1945. It does not focus on the
issue of the attempted uses of such weapons for political advantage,
an extremely important <strong>and</strong> well-documented history. For
more on this, see, e.g., Richard K. Betts, <strong>Nuclear</strong> Blackmail <strong>and</strong> <strong>Nuclear</strong>
Balance, Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1987.
97