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

eset by conflict, deterrence seeks to build security
on the firmer foothold of a realistic view of human
nature vice utopian. The realistic view is one seeing
that the most reliable human motive is the preservation
of things one holds most dear—particularly one’s
own life.
Those who argue for the abolition of nuclear weapons
<strong>and</strong> indeed all weapons lose sight of the fact that
war—not weapons—is the real villain. As the socialist
Salvador de Madariaga, a key figure in the League of
Nations disarmament efforts, presciently noted:
The trouble with disarmament was (it still is) that
the problem of war is tacked upside down <strong>and</strong> at the
wrong end. . . . Nations don’t distrust each other because
they are armed; they are armed because they
distrust each other. And therefore to want disarmament
before a minimum of common agreement on
fundamentals is as absurd as to want people to go
undressed in winter. . . . Disarmers would avoid wars
by reducing armaments. They run to the wrong end of
the line. The only way . . . consists in dealing day by
day with the business of the world . . . the true issue is
the organization of the world on a cooperative basis. 22
Our deterrence posture is such that we believe no
regime, no matter how aggressive <strong>and</strong> risk-inclined,
would be so foolish as to attack the Alliance, a move
that would yield little advantage, <strong>and</strong> thereby incur
an attack’s clear consequence—utter destruction. Taken
together, the empty commitments made towards
a global nuclear zero <strong>and</strong> calls by the strategicallyilliterate
to remove the last U.S. nuclear forces from
Europe, make the world’s nuclear future more dangerous,
not less so.
In 2010 certain officials from Belgium, Germany,
Luxembourg, the Netherl<strong>and</strong>s, <strong>and</strong> Norway proposed
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