ABSTRACT
During the late 1970s, President Jimmy Carter made a diligent, personal effort to understand our nuclear position. By 1989 the balance had tipped sufficiently that President George Bush, through Secretary of Defense Dick Cheney, put his hand directly on the targeting situation, eliminating thousands of unnecessary targets. And in 1991 President Bush unilaterally withdrew almost all tactical nuclear weapons from deployed positions. The author believes that additional presidential initiatives to curtail reliance on nuclear weapons could be well received. Decision process does place control of all decisions on nuclear weapons in the hands of civilian policymakers. By asking policymakers to play an even larger role in selecting targets there is a danger of merely handing authority from one bureaucracy to another, one that might be equally disposed to the traditional precepts of nuclear strategy. During a potential nuclear crisis, the Council for Nuclear Security and the National Security Council would meet jointly to advise the president.
