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

• Symbols of the continuing U.S. nuclear commitment
to its <strong>NATO</strong> partners 117 (any changes
in nuclear posture theoretically relevant only
to those military crises serious enough to make
nuclear use imaginable—albeit hypothetical
<strong>and</strong> unlikely—would rapidly feed back into
current political atmospherics within the Alliance
<strong>and</strong> the perceptions of neighbors).
• A means of deterring historically novel potential
threats from a reckless nuclear Iran <strong>and</strong> an
unstable, proliferation-prone Middle East (but
this anxiety has not entered official public discourse;
Turkey, which would be most closely
affected by it, prefers to avoid any official mention
of it; many operationally plausible U.S.
strategic nuclear assets exist to offset it; <strong>and</strong>
<strong>NATO</strong>-wide ballistic missile defense is becoming
at least the publicly preferred Alliance response).
ENDNOTES - CHAPTER 2
1. This has been appreciated for a long time: the extract is
from the Healy/Schroeder Report presented to the <strong>NATO</strong> <strong>Nuclear</strong>
Planning Group (NPG) in May 1969 <strong>and</strong> incorporated into
the <strong>NATO</strong> Provisional Political Guidelines (PPGs) for the Initial
Defensive <strong>Tactical</strong> Use of <strong>Nuclear</strong> <strong>Weapons</strong> agreed later that year.
Christoph Bluth, Britain, Germany <strong>and</strong> Western <strong>Nuclear</strong> Strategy,
Oxford, UK: Clarendon Press, 1995, p. 188.
2. Author’s own definition.
3. “<strong>Tactical</strong> <strong>Nuclear</strong> <strong>Weapons</strong>,” Encyclopedia of the Cold War,
Ruud Van Dijk, ed., London, UK: Routledge, 2008.
4. Lawrence Freedman,The Evolution of <strong>Nuclear</strong> Strategy:
Basingstoke, UK, <strong>and</strong> New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2003,
pp. 62-66.
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