Nixon’s North Korea Dilemma Illuminates Why It’s So Hard To Bomb Small Countries Long before Iraq and Iran, the United States was wrestling with the problem of how to strike North Korea, where planning for the use of nuclear weapons ran into various dead-ends.By Tom Nichols
August 10, 2017 The current situation with North Korea is not the first time Americans have wrestled with the problem of nuclear conflict with small states. In 1969, Richard Nixon ordered options for nuclear targets against North Korea, and eventually abandoned his plan for punitive strikes. Little has changed in the nature of the dilemmas facing U.S. planners in North Korea and (should all else fail) Iran. Below is an excerpt from my 2014 book, “No Use,” in which I discussed the Nixon plan and the problem of American nuclear use against smaller powers.I just don’t think nuclear weapons are usable . . . I’m not saying that we militarily disarm. I’m saying that I have nuclear weapons, and you’re North Korea and you have a nuclear weapon. You can use yours. I can’t use mine. What am I going to use it on? What are nuclear weapons good for? Busting cities. What President of the United States is going to take out Pyongyang?
—General Charles Horner, U.S. Air Force, 1994
The post-Cold War problem of rogue state nuclear proliferation is no longer hypothetical. These small powers, whom Clinton administration national security advisor Anthony Lake in 1994 termed “outlaw” or “backlash” states, not only remain “outside the family of nations,” in Lake’s words, but also “assault its basic values.”
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http://thefederalist.com/2017/08/10/nixons-north-korea-dilemma-illuminates-hard-bomb-small-countries/
