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

the North Atlantic Treaty Organization (<strong>NATO</strong>) <strong>and</strong>
to parts of the Middle East through the Baghdad Pact.
The tremendous growth in requirements on U.S.
military forces implicit in these new obligations coincided
with the early stages of the nuclear revolution,
<strong>and</strong> the combination of these factors led to the
thoroughgoing integration of nuclear weapons into
the U.S. military posture in Asia <strong>and</strong> throughout the
world. Judging that the Communist bloc possessed a
superiority in manpower <strong>and</strong> a steely willingness to
suffer casualties to achieve its objectives, an assessment
fortified by the Communists’ prolongation of the
war in Korea, the United States elected to employ its
advantages in the size <strong>and</strong> technology of its nuclear
arsenal to balance the mass <strong>and</strong> fervor of the Communist
bloc. Beginning in 1953, the Dwight Eisenhower
administration, in order to ensure the conservation
of the United States as a free market society, further
accentuated U.S. emphasis on nuclear weapons as it
sought to reduce the burden of military expenditure
<strong>and</strong> to avoid enmeshment in costly conventional
ground wars like Korea. 3 These decisions were enabled
by the fact that, beginning in the early 1950s,
nuclear weapons were becoming plentifully available
to the U.S. military. 4 In combination, these factors led
to a dramatically increased reliance on nuclear forces
by the United States, with the result that the United
States deployed nuclear weapons on a large scale, integrating
them into nearly every facet of U.S. military
doctrine <strong>and</strong> with U.S. forces throughout the world. 5
The U.S. public posture <strong>and</strong> warfighting doctrine also
reflected reliance on nuclear weapons, as throughout
the Eisenhower administration the United States held
to a policy of “massive retaliation,” both threatening
<strong>and</strong> planning to escalate to a massive nuclear strike
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