ABSTRACT
Renouncing a particular national nuclear strategy by the United States might sacrifice millions of innocent Americans and Europeans. Nuclear weapons and nuclear strategies are deployed by nations for the pursuit of policies that are the temporary culmination of loyalties, histories, and customs that have their character precisely because they are not universal. The reader should ask whether the use of the nuclear option is made more or less likely by the existence of a US nuclear strategic arsenal and whether a policy of deterrence, in these contexts, can be managed by the United States without nuclear elements. Nuclear strategies are national strategies. Ethical systems that treat all nations alike and permit no political preferences ignore the very objective of strategy—namely, to preserve, protect, and often to promote certain cultural values rather than individual preferences. New, nonnuclear weapons of remarkable accuracy are about to be deployed by North Atlantic Treaty Organization to replace obsolete systems.
