Rethinking the Unthinkable: Nuclear Weapons and the War on Terror

Strategic Insights, Volume III, Issue 1 (January 2004)

by Barry Zellen

After a half-century of international stability maintained by a strategy of extended nuclear deterrence, we now find ourselves in a new, chaotic and menacing world. Once the smoke and debris of 9/11 cleared, we've embarked upon an odyssey that began when America's defense-planners realized we were up against an adversary that had not been effectively deterred from attacking our homeland. With clarity borne of the horror of that day, America's strategic planners realized the most effective defense against such a foe would be the offense. So instead of deterring aggression, we felt compelled to seize the strategic advantage, and to use force to pre-empt future attacks.

Pre-emption thus became America's strategy by default, and to formalize our strategic shift, America put forth its new doctrine of pre-emption in The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, issued by the White House in September 2002. In December 2002, America articulated its National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction, which blends interdiction, pre-emption, deterrence, and enhanced intelligence into a multifaceted strategy to secure our homeland from WMD attack. In the year since, America has waged one war of pre-emption, overthrowing the regime of Saddam Hussein, and it has successfully interdicted at least one high-seas shipment of ballistic missile technology exported by North Korea. On the home front, America has enacted broad legislation to protect its ports and frontiers, setting up the necessary pieces to both defend America from a WMD attack and better deter both terror organizations and rogue states from again attacking our homeland.

Operation Iraqi Freedom

Having lost an opportunity in the first decade of the post Cold War era to transform, rebuild and democratize Iraq under the benign military occupation of the 1991 American-led Gulf War Coalition, we instead left Saddam in power; Kuwait liberated only "halfway" (and still not free of its own corrupt tyranny); an angry, seething, disaffected Arab youth culture marginalized by our own undemocratic Arab Middle Eastern partners, Saudi Arabia and Egypt; and—a few years later—a collapsing peace process between democratic Israel and the undemocratic Palestinian Authority. While visionary former Soviet Premier Gorbachev pulled the plug on further subsidizing tyrannical, one-party regimes in Central Europe (paving the way for a sudden, quick and democratic transformation of the former Communist bloc a decade ago), it appears that America—in a land where our military power was largely unchallenged—missed an historic opportunity to bring an end to continued tyranny and stagnation in the Middle East by maintaining the status quo after the first Gulf War, and as a result, the seeds of 9/11 were planted in fertile soil. Yes, we easily crushed the Republican Guard, and destroyed 4,000 Iraqi tanks in a 100-hour battle while losing just 10 of our own tanks in 1991. But we failed to translate our military victory into political change, losing a moment in history to export our values to a land craving them. For the next ten years, we sought to apply a strategy of containment to Iraq—leaving one more open, festering wound in the Middle East that begged to be healed.

The region became a breeding ground of terror and that terror, starting in 1993, was clearly aimed at America—and after Osama bin Laden's 1996 'Declaration of War Against the Americans Occupying the Land of the Two Holy Places,' and his 1998 fatwah urging jihad against Americans, it was clear a holy war was being waged against us. From the first World Trade Center attack, to the U.S. Embassy bombings in Kenya and Tanzania, to the near-sinking of the U.S.S. Cole in Yemen, the attacks against us grew bolder—and more sophisticated. In hindsight, an attack on the scale of 9/11 looks to be inevitable—but part of this inevitability, I believe, is our failure to articulate a credible strategy of deterrence of terror, or successfully adapt and extend our Cold War systems of deterrence to the emerging threat of mass terror.

That is why, after 9/11 and the loss of so much innocent blood on American soil, we were compelled to mobilize for a pre-emptive war, and finally address this failure by "finishing the job" left incomplete in 1991. With the menacing regime of Saddam Hussein quickly crushed by conventional U.S. armor, the process of democratization and reform is at last under way in the Gulf region—and though the road ahead will be rocky, there is now the promise that the roots of terror will be stamped out as hopelessness is replaced by hope, and despair is replaced by opportunity and inclusion. The Bush Administration's new and bold Middle East policy, and its vision to transform the region's breeding grounds of anti-American hate and terror into nascent democracies, offers a real opportunity to make deep, and lasting, change. But elsewhere in the world, chaos still reigns, and America faces grave risks. Most notable has been the renewed nuclear showdown on the Korean Peninsula, and the simmering, but for the moment pacified, dispute with Iran over its concealed nuclear weapons research program—suggesting we may again face an emerging nuclear nemesis. As well, the remnants of Al Qaeda are still out there, hidden in the shadows—and as such continue to present a WMD threat to us. It's therefore conceivable that our new strategy of pre-emption could again face another acid-test, this time against a nuclear-armed rogue state or WMD-equipped terror group.

Rethinking the Unthinkable

In a press release on March 9, 2002, the Pentagon released a "Statement On Nuclear Posture Review" which stated that the DoD was conducting its legally-mandated reviews of U.S. nuclear strategy, "the latest in a long series of reviews since the development of nuclear weapons." [1] Reflecting the transformed international milieu, it noted: "This administration is fashioning a more diverse set of options for deterring the threat of WMD. That is why the Administration is pursuing missile defense, advanced conventional forces, and improved intelligence capabilities. A combination of offensive and defensive, and nuclear and non-nuclear capabilities, is essential to meet the deterrence requirements of the 21st century." [2] As Secretary Rumsfeld told the media during a press conference, "The Cold War is over. The whole orientation of the United States of America for many decades was to the Soviet Union, properly so... We don't consider them an enemy today, so the orientation of our nuclear posture is significantly different today than it needed to be during the Cold War. Other countries are interested in developing nuclear weapons and engaged in activities that demonstrate their intent and their purpose. And the United States is perfectly—it's perfectly proper for the United States to take note of those things and be sensitive to them." [3]

The strategic environment has indeed changed profoundly, and America appears to finally be preparing to develop, and later deploy, its nuclear forces for both defensive and offensive purposes in pursuit of its military objectives in the post-Cold War anarchy. And, because of the inherent contradictions of nuclear strategy, by being so prepared, perhaps we may well reduce the very likelihood of ever having to do so. Just as they did during the Cold War, our war planners now hope that by preparing options for the unthinkable, and considering choices for nuclear warfighting—even against asymmetrical threats like those we face today—that it will contribute to a more credible deterrent, and thus reduce the likelihood of ever having to break the long nuclear taboo. By being ready and willing to use nuclear weapons as tools of pre-emption and not just tools of deterrence, perhaps our strengthening credibility will of itself elicit change—fostering, perhaps, the emergence of a more benign North Korea that steps back from the nuclear brink. One may even speculate that the recent Iranian acknowledgement of its long secret nuclear program could be the result of our pro-active strategy of pre-emption, and the fact of our military deployment along two of Iran's frontiers.

During the cold war, we flip-flopped between the cold logic of MAD—Mutual Assured Destruction—and the more credible doctrine of Flexible Response, where nukes, just like our conventional armory were merely another warfighting tool to be deployed as we worked our way up the escalation ladder. We never really knew for sure which strategy we preferred, nor which was the more effective. MAD—for all its madness—in theory perpetuated peace, since the threat of massive retaliation would surely deter aggression. But as we articulated our MADness, we never really knew if our adversaries believed our threat. Were we angry enough, crazy enough, stupid enough to push the button? Would we risk the end of the world to protect the freedom and independence of Western Europe? So NATO hoped—and the quietude of the central front during the Cold War was testimony to the fact that MAD seemed to successfully extend deterrence to our European allies. The risks were high but the payoff—a half century of peace—was likewise a prize worth risking much for.

But far from the Central Front, the hotspots of the Cold War—from Korea to Vietnam and Central America and South Asia—showed that outside the democratic, western, liberal club of NATO, deterrence was a lot harder to extend, and the probability of war was much higher, as was the risk of nuclear escalation in battle. That might be why, during the North Korea's nearly-successful conquest of the Korean peninsula in 1950 —and the final, successful offensive of the North Vietnamese Army in 1975—old fashioned conventional blitzkriegs were the tools of choice and why, in the end, we either fought and won the peace (as we did in Korea) using only our conventional might, or backed away and surrendered our freedom-aspiring ally (as we did in Vietnam) after we proved unwilling or unable to do the job with conventional force. Then—even as we worried about the credibility of deterrence, the sanity of MAD, the dangers of flexible response—we were clear to draw a line between what we would and would not use our nuclear firepower for.

In the back of our war planners' minds was no doubt the legacy of Hiroshima and Nagasaki, where the desperation to end a long and bloody war and the anger that festered since Pearl Harbor led us to do the unthinkable against civilians, committing an act of atomic urbicide against our attackers in our final, angry act—not once, but twice. We showed the world then and the memory remains that yes, we will, we can, we did drop atomic bombs and incinerate hundreds of thousands of men, women and children, all defenseless—and that to bring peace, end war, redress injustice or purge the anger in our veins—would become so terrible and terrifying that perhaps we would never again be so challenged. The success of our nuclear wrath in 1945 likely contributed to the stability of the post World War II world.

It no doubt taught NATO and the Warsaw Pact to limit their hostility and better understand one another's moods so war would not break out and quickly escalate beyond control. But far from the Central Front, where the risks of escalation were lower, wars did break out and millions died in proxy wars on battlefields fought in the name of competing ideologies and economic systems that seemed out of place, whether in the jungles of Central America, the deserts of Arabia, or the drought-ridden plains of the Horn of Africa. Before outsourcing was in vogue, the Cold War's logic and the balance of terror helped to offload the warfighting and death to proxy armies far from the true origins of the conflict. So powerful was the nuclear stalemate that it carved out a little sanctuary of peace and stability, within which, during the European revolutions of 1989 and 1990, one side simply joined the other—and there was no more talk of defeat.

The Global War on Terror

Skip ahead a decade or so we find ourselves in a new world—where all great powers, whether communist or democratic, freedom loving or tyrannical, or a little bit of both, are now aligned in a global war on terror (though clearly unaligned on our extension of the war on terror to our pre-emptive regime change in Iraq). Russia—fearing much from Islamic rebels on its southern flank—quickly joined forces with us, knowing that now we shared a common enemy for the first time. Even China—in many ways our greatest strategic threat, with its own nuclear arsenal and its giant modernizing economy and conventional army, knows well our fears, as it struggles to keep its union together and to fight entropy, internal corruption and a variety of rebellions and insurgencies on many of its flanks—is part of the grand coalition. This war is pitched as a war against evildoers, a war against evil, something pure and insidious in a way the threat of communism never really could claim. That evil is nothing short of international terrorism—and the host countries that nurture and sustain it.

Getting back to where we started, to fight this war will require new ways of thinking. It started with a brilliant and daring attack upon us by 19 men armed with simple box-cutters. With these tools—which cost pennies and which are available at any convenience store—they seized commercial jetliners, each worth hundreds of millions of dollars. They gained entry to their cockpits, and took control—turning them into guided missiles. And with those missiles, they destroyed two giant office towers, America's largest; killed thousands of civilians; and inflicted severe damage upon the Pentagon—the source of American military command and control and symbol of our military power. In short, they harnessed our own technology and know-how and turned it into a lethal weapon, unleashing destructive power well beyond their own offensive capabilities. Now, we wait—and wait—until we see what they are up to next. Likely, they will again turn our own technology against us—and figure out a way to, for instance, destroy a dam, flooding a city below, crippling its source of power, and causing draught on a biblical scale. Or, they may find their way onboard another jetliner and smash through a nuclear plant's outer concrete wall, exposing widespread areas and millions of their inhabitants to lethal radiation without needing their own nuclear capability. Or, taking their cue from nature, they might unleash an endless wave of forest fires upon us, choking our cities with smoke, knowing a single spark can start a prairie fire.

For the first time, we are up against a foe that we greatly outgun, but which we cannot readily find and destroy. They set up camps in foreign countries and when those are shut down, they disappear over the mountains to hidden sanctuaries. Once, Al Qaeda was based in Somalia—but we persuaded the Somalis to evict them, and they ended up in Afghanistan. After 9/11, we coordinated the collapse of their new hosts and they once again fled, into the chaos of Pakistan and beyond. Now, we face a scattered foe, but one still lethal. We have captured or killed a significant portion of their leaders, but as Secretary Rumsfeld's leaked October 16, 2003 memo suggests, "We are having mixed results with Al Qaida, although we have put considerable pressure on them—nonetheless, a great many remain at large." Additionally, we've "made reasonable progress in capturing or killing the top 55 Iraqis," and "somewhat slower progress tracking down the Taliban." [4] Rumsfeld noted that we lack the necessary "metrics to know if we are winning or losing the global war on terror. Are we capturing, killing or deterring and dissuading more terrorists every day than the madrassas and the radical clerics are recruiting, training and deploying against us?" [5] He considers the long-term need to "to fashion a broad, integrated plan to stop the next generation of terrorists." [6] But in the meantime, hidden and reconstituted terror cells continue to plot and plan—as we wait, and watch, and wonder where and when and how they will strike next.

The Logic of Pre-emption

Enter our formidable nuclear arsenal. During the Cold War, that arsenal was mainly a weapon of dissuasion—a tool to persuade the communists to stay on their side of the iron curtain. And for the most part, it succeeded. During the first post Cold War hot war, Operation Desert Shield/Storm, we faced a new enemy: Iraq. Once our would-be friend, the secular bulwark that used its own blood and steel (and our intelligence) to defend the West (and the oilfields of the Gulf) against the spread of radical Shi'ite fundamentalism after the 1979 Iranian Revolution, Iraq—upon invading Kuwait and standing massed along the Saudi border, the world's oil supply in dangerous proximity to its army—crossed the line and became a threat to international stability and the security of the West. After all the risks and fears of the Cold War's nuclear madness, it turned out that old fashioned conventional military power deployed along the world's largest oil and gas fields could potentially cripple the West in ways the Soviets never imagined.

With Iraq, we faced a new threat from a small and nasty state. And in addition to the conventional might it deployed along the Kuwaiti-Saudi border, it possessed a growing stockpile of chemical and biological weapons—and was pursuing an ambitious nuclear weapons program. And yet, as we fought Iraq and rolled its army out of Kuwait in 1991, we did not bring the battle to Baghdad, nor did we threaten to topple the regime of Saddam Hussein. On the eve of Desert Storm, then Secretary of State James Baker told Iraq that if it used chemical or biological weapons, we would consider them weapons of mass destruction and use our nuclear weapons in response. And having once used such weapons against an earlier enemy, our threat of nuclear retaliation was perceived by the Iraqis to be credible. Iraq was deterred and though it launched conventionally tipped ballistic missiles against Israel and our forces scattered throughout the Gulf, it refrained from launching CBW payloads. Iraq, in its rationality, did not call our bluff—and once the war was over and Kuwait free, we quickly withdrew and left Saddam in power, his regime unchallenged. Even as the Kurds and Shi'ites rose up against Saddam, we betrayed our new friends and let Saddam crush their rebellions and their aspirations for freedom, as if we, too, were deterred—unwilling to inspire suicidal madness from Saddam's regime, which, if pushed into a corner and threatened with collapse, would have nothing to lose. Once we achieved our stated goals, we avoided mission creep, and took no more risks of crossing the abyss. We let Saddam withdraw, and remain in power.

In the decade since—and particularly in the aftermath of 9/11—we view the lingering threat from terror groups and their sponsoring rogue states in a new light. This perspective is captured by America's new doctrine of strategic pre-emption. As encapsulated by The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, the problem of rogue states is explained as follows [7]:

In the 1990s we witnessed the emergence of a small number of rogue states that, while different in important ways, share a number of attributes. These states:

• brutalize their own people and squander their national resources for the personal gain of the rulers;
• display no regard for international law, threaten their neighbors, and callously violate international treaties to which they are party;
• are determined to acquire weapons of mass destruction, along with other advanced military technology, to be used as threats or offensively to achieve the aggressive designs of these regimes;
• sponsor terrorism around the globe; and
• reject basic human values and hate the United States and everything for which it stands.

The National Security Strategy identified Iraq and North Korea as the two most menacing rogue states, arguing that "these states' pursuit of, and global trade in, [mass destruction] weapons has become a looming threat to all nations." To combat this threat, the new strategy notes, "We must be prepared to stop rogue states and their terrorist clients before they are able to threaten or use weapons of mass destruction against the United States and our allies and friends." It continues:

Our comprehensive strategy to combat WMD includes:

• Proactive counterproliferation efforts. We must deter and defend against the threat before it is unleashed. We must ensure that key capabilities—detection, active and passive defenses, and counterforce capabilities—are integrated into our defense transformation and our homeland security systems.
• Strengthened nonproliferation efforts to prevent rogue states and terrorists from acquiring the materials, technologies, and expertise necessary for weapons of mass destruction.
• Effective consequence management to respond to the effects of WMD use, whether by terrorists or hostile states. Minimizing the effects of WMD use against our people will help deter those who possess such weapons and dissuade those who seek to acquire them by persuading enemies that they cannot attain their desired ends.

The new doctrine recognizes that WMD in the hands of rogue states is the new salient threat, in contrast to the relative stability of the Cold War, when WMD were considered to be "weapons of last resort whose use risked the destruction of those who used them." In contrast, today "our enemies see weapons of mass destruction as weapons of choice," as "tools of intimidation and military aggression against their neighbors," and as "their best means of overcoming the conventional superiority of the United States." According to our new doctrine, "Traditional concepts of deterrence will not work against a terrorist enemy whose avowed tactics are wanton destruction and the targeting of innocents; whose so-called soldiers seek martyrdom in death and whose most potent protection is statelessness. The overlap between states that sponsor terror and those that pursue WMD compels us to action." But while "traditional concepts of deterrence" may not work, since mutual deterrence depends on states acting rationally, and mutually fearing the destruction that would follow from deterrence's failure—a less "traditional" and more controversial concept of deterrence might be quite effective, one based on the doctrine of nuclear warfighting.

In December 2002's National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction, there is a section that articulates America's evolution of deterrence theory as part of its evolving strategy to counter the proliferation of WMD.[8] It states, "Today's threats are far more diverse and less predictable than those of the past. States hostile to the United States and to our friends and allies have demonstrated their willingness to take high risks to achieve their goals, and are aggressively pursuing WMD and their means of delivery as critical tools in this effort. As a consequence, we require new methods of deterrence. A strong declaratory policy and effective military forces are essential elements of our contemporary deterrent posture, along with the full range of political tools to persuade potential adversaries not to seek or use WMD. The United States will continue to make clear that it reserves the right to respond with overwhelming force—including through resort to all of our options—to the use of WMD against the United States, our forces abroad, and friends and allies." In addition to traditional conventional and nuclear responses, our WMD strategy observes that "our overall deterrent posture against WMD threats is reinforced by effective intelligence, surveillance, interdiction, and domestic law enforcement capabilities. Such combined capabilities enhance deterrence both by devaluing an adversary's WMD and missiles, and by posing the prospect of an overwhelming response to any use of such weapons."

Pre-emption In Action

After our homeland was attacked on 9/11, we traced the roots of terror throughout the Middle East and South Asia, and began to hunt down the many terror cells arrayed against us and our friends. And we looked at Iraq—unrepentant—and wondered: what shall we do? We knew Iraq aspired to possess weapons of mass destruction, and we feared what Iraq might do with its WMD know-how, and the remnants of its arsenal, in the post 9/11 world. That is why the President and his defense advisors made Iraq's weapons of mass destruction program—real or imagined—a target in our war on terror. It was its potential that scared us, not its imminent threat. As JCS Chairman General Richard B. Myers told students at the Harvard Kennedy School of Government last year, "After 9/11, I sat in situation room, and we set our goals: destroy and degrade as best we can international terrorism; make it hard for states to harbor terrorists, so they don't get a place to train, finances, and so forth; and third, that weapons of mass destruction should not fall into the hands of terrorist groups." [9] While it did not really fit, the administration knew there would be no better opportunity, no better time, to use our military power to topple Saddam and replace his government with something a little less menacing, and a little more pro-Western.

After 9/11, the new and inescapable logic of pre-emption led to our highly mobile blitz to Baghdad, and in the face of certain military defeat, the regime of Saddam Hussein collapsed as silently and quickly as the communist collapse a decade earlier. No WMD were used against our advancing wall of steel—indeed, no credible defense was waged at all. Pre-emption worked, much to the surprise of almost all observers. In 1991, we respected the regime's right to exist, and in exchange, the conflict did not escalate to WMD use. This time, we used our military power to crush a government, to topple its leadership, raising the risk that Saddam's regime would have nothing to lose this time, nothing to fear, from using the tools in its arsenal that had deterred us before. So this time, we carefully communicated a message to the same military leadership, noting that we would retaliate in kind, and view the use of WMD as a crime against humanity—and thus a legitimate trigger for our own WMD retaliation.

That is why President Bush and Secretary of Defense Rumsfeld have begun to articulate a new nuclear doctrine, one that suggests we are shifting toward nuclear warfighting and away from pure deterrence—a plan that requires developing a new generation of nuclear weapons, such as mini-nukes and deep earth-penetrating bunker-busting weapons, as tools of military preemption against targets such as underground weapons labs, terror command and control centers, and WMD armories. As we learned from Operation Enduring Freedom in Afghanistan, this war on terror can—and likely will continue to—yield high-value military targets that conventional weapons can barely reach.

Nuclear Ambiguity

This new, post-9/11 re-thinking of the unthinkable is no longer just talk of deterrence and the diplomacy of dissuasion—or is it? Just as our Cold War talk of flexible response and nuclear warfighting doctrines were meant on one level to increase credibility and thus extend, and shore up, our ability to deter aggression—current doctrinal debates over the articulation of a new post-9/11 nuclear warfighting as a tool to pre-empt and destroy the emerging threat potential of an aspiring nuclear power could, ironically, result in the resurrection of deterrence as a strategy for the post-9/11 world—this time saying, "We will crush you not only if you use WMD against us, but also if you strive to obtain WMD that can be used against us in the future." Once again, it is the threat of us using nuclear weapons first, in an act of pre-emption, and to bring the war to the enemy—nuclear war, not just conventional—in order to rid the world of a future nuclear threat, that gives us the credibility to make deterrence work. That's why pursuing research and development of a new generation of mini-nukes and bunker-busting, deep earth-penetrating nuclear weapons might help us win the war on terror.

And just as we refused to declare a policy of "No First Use" during the Cold War—not wanting to erode our own credibility and thereby increase the risk of war—we now proclaim that we, the world's most advanced nuclear power with the largest and most modern nuclear arsenal, will use those weapons for more than just deterring an attack against us. Indeed, our nuclear umbrella provided no protection against the unconventional and asymmetrical attacks of 9/11. Against terrorists, against shadow warriors operating from within the cracks of the international system, our ability to deter aggression failed.

But that doesn't mean deterrence itself can't work—just that we need to develop the right nuclear force structure to make deterrence more credible against our newest foes. At times during the Cold War, when the rationality of our Soviet foe was questioned, or when the credibility of our will to reciprocate in the event of a nuclear exchange was questioned, deterrence theorists shifted from traditional deterrence toward a strategic warfighting doctrine which sought to make nuclear warfare fightable and winnable, dictating the development of a wide panoply of nuclear forces so that flexible nuclear responses were possible in combat, so America could work its way up the escalation ladder—avoiding an overwhelming nuclear response at the outset of hostilities. We are now shifting back in this direction, but in our new, asymmetrical world, against our new asymmetrical foes.

That's why we've now turned to a doctrine of nuclear use and pre-emption, so that something a little bigger, with a little more bite than what we tasted on 9/11 does not emerge as the next threat against our security and values. But therein lies the trick: if we are prepared to use our nuclear weapons to take out emerging nuclear arsenals from rogue states, perhaps they will not bother pursuing such programs in the first place? Or, perhaps those heading down that path might be talked into abandoning their nuclear weapons programs, as North Korea and Iran seem to now be considering. Now, our willingness once more to go beyond deterrence to a more pro-active strategy of nuclear use, might just end up achieving what we wanted in the beginning: successful deterrence of further aggression and terror against us—now, and in the future.

It seems to have worked in the Gulf. As our armor bore down on Baghdad, the regime quietly slipped away into the night, dissolving with a whimper and not a WMD bang. With our pro-active, pre-emptive military strike, the regime certainly knew we were in it to the finish. And up against our nuclear arsenal, guided by our new pro-active nuclear strategy, a quick and quiet collapse was the most logical choice. That was our goal. But we can only hope that it works as well next time. With North Korea crossing the nuclear chasm, and Pyongyang admitting it is now a nuclear state, the risks next time will surely be even greater. But as Iran's recent willingness to admit its errant nuclear ways indicates, our willingness to pre-emptively engage Iraq suggests to rogue states that a step back from the nuclear brink would be the rational course. However, conventional U.S. weaponry—even the hulking MOAB—may not convey the same cold logic and commitment as does a flexible nuclear response capability. Hence our need to augment our nuclear assets, and develop a full arsenal of mini-nukes and bunker-busters to ensure our reach is not only global, but capable of pinpoint accuracy and efficacy. With America prepared for war, and willing to consider reinvigorating a flexible nuclear response to combat emerging nuclear and CBW threats, our ability to deter WMD proliferation may be rising—as the credibility of our new found will sinks in.

 About the Author

Barry Zellen is publisher and founder of TechnologyInnovator.com, a web journal chronicling the innovation of emerging technology relating to mobility, security, enterprise IT. He is also the Homeland Security and Counterterrorism Correspondent for Intersec, and a Contributing Editor for HP World Magazine. Zellen has been a journalist and editor for the last fifteen years, covering international security, indigenous and technology issues.

 References

1. Department of Defense (DoD) News Release, No. 113-02, "Statement on Nuclear Posture Review," March 9, 2002.
2. Ibid.
3. DoD News Transcript, "DoD News Briefing—Secretary Rumsfeld and Gen. Pace," March 15, 2002, 11:15 a.m.
4. As reprinted in "We Have Not Yet Made Truly Bold Moves," on SecurityInnovator.com, October 22, 2003.
5. Ibid.
6. Ibid.
7. The National Security Strategy of the United States of America, September 2002.
8. National Strategy to Combat Weapons of Mass Destruction, December 2002.
9. General Richard B. Myers, Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff. "An update on the global war on terror," November 24, 2002. SecurityInnovator.com.