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Nautilus Institute Policy Forum Online: Assessment of the North Korean Missile Threat Nautilus Institute Policy Forum Online: Assessment of the North Korean Missile Threat PFO 03-20: March 18, 2003 Assessment of the North Korean Missile Threat By David C. Wright CONTENTS I. Introduction II. Essay by David C. Wright III. Nautilus Invites Your Responses I. […]

Michael A. Levi, Director of the Strategic Security Project at the Federation of American Scientists, asserts that today we again find the Bush Administration speaking loosely of tactical uses for nuclear weapons, in Iraq or in future contingencies. The enormous power of nuclear weapons often tempts military planners to inevitably view bigger as better. But the central lesson of the 1966 JASON study, echoed throughout fifty years of thinking about nuclear weapons, is that the wider the context in which nuclear weapons are viewed, the narrower their appeal.

Willis Stanley is Director of Regional Studies at the National Institute for Public Policy in Fairfax, Virginia. In this essay, Stanley argues that while the JASON 1966 study of Tactical Nuclear Weapons in Southeast Asia sufficiently concludes that in 1967, tactical nuclear weapons were not the tool most appropriate for the job of closing the supply routes between North and South Vietnam, it does not provide any universal truth about the utility of tactical nuclear weapons in 2003, in locales other than Vietnam. The US should not limit itself to assessing the utility of the Cold War nuclear force for the post-Cold War world-we should focus on how to best adapt and transform that force to meet the challenges of today and tomorrow. Today’s situation on the Korean peninsula is indicative of trends that will shape how we approach the future utility of nuclear weapons.