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

ments are dissimilar. Whereas Europe has the unitary
multinational <strong>NATO</strong> alliance, the United States has to
manage a diffuse hub-<strong>and</strong>-spoke alliance system in
Asia, which makes it more difficult to pool individual
national military forces into an integrated collective
asset.
Second, <strong>NATO</strong>’s formal role in shaping U.S. nuclear
weapons policy, including its dual-key arrangements
for forward-based shared TNWs, <strong>and</strong> the NPG,
considerably constrained Washington’s nuclear policies.
In contrast, the absence of such an alliance in the
Asia Pacific region allowed the United States much
more discretion in determining its nuclear weapons
policy in the Pacific. The Japanese <strong>and</strong> other allies
benefiting from U.S. nuclear deterrence guarantees
declined to probe too deeply into these arrangements
to avoid highlighting this nuclear dimension to their
nuclear-allergic publics.
Third, the regional geography is dissimilar. The
Asia Pacific theater is much larger, <strong>and</strong> U.S. allies
are located on the periphery rather than on the Asian
mainl<strong>and</strong>, thus allowing defense by U.S. air <strong>and</strong> naval
forces. In contrast, the United States needed to base
an enormous conventional force in central Europe to
defend its <strong>NATO</strong> allies from the feared Warsaw Pact
ground attack. The network of U.S. bases in the Pacific
also made a forward-based strategy relying on st<strong>and</strong>off
air <strong>and</strong> sea power effective in defending them.
Fourth, the United States enjoyed a more advantageous
conventional balance in Asia than in Europe.
U.S. naval superiority has meant that the United States
does not need to rely on nuclear weapons to protect
most Asia Pacific countries, with the major exception
of South Korea during the Cold War period. In contrast,
the United States did not enjoy conventional su-
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