Obama--Cutting Back The Nukes: Good Idea?

The Obama Administration just announced that it is going to change certain aspects of American nuclear war policy. Specifically it is going to list situations in which it would NOT resort to nuclear weaponry. That reverses policy that has been in place most of my life.
The idea makes me nervous. I understand that there has always been pressure to take nukes out of the military equation because they scare the liver out of everybody. But, I remind you, that’s the whole point of nuclear deterrence.
Let’s not forget that it has worked. It’s been sixty-five years since the last major war. There were only twenty-one years between World War I and World War II. There were 99 years between World War I and the previous world war (the Napoleonic wars). That century without major war lasted only so long as one nation maintained an absolute preponderance of naval power.
So long as no would could sneeze or speak without British concurrence you had peace. When Germany built a fleet to rival England’s, war became as inevitable as a fallen soufflé in a fireworks display. The atomic/hydrogen bomb eliminated the need for any one nation to have absolute military superiority. You didn’t mess with anybody who had nukes and a credible willingness to use them.
When I was in graduate school, former President Eisenhower’s foreign policy was a thing of contempt and distain among modern young (and liberal) professors. Eisenhower was a major architect of the policy of massive nuclear retaliation.
Kennedy won the election of 1960 in part because he demanded that we limit our dependence on nukes and come up with more conventional options. Like Obama, he worked to limit situations under which we would use nuclear or hydrogen weapons.
In a seminar course, a professor of mine sneeringly asked if anyone wanted to try to defend Eisenhower/Dulles foreign policy. (It was also an article of faith among liberal scholars that Ike was merely a puppet for John Foster Dulles.) I agreed to try.
I did lots of reading. I soon could demonstrate that, if anyone was the puppet, it was Dulles. I came up with a lot of other facts that definitely indicated Eisenhower’s methods of preserving the stalemate peace between the Soviets and the US had a lot to be said for it.
I summed up what I had learned in a simple allegory with which I began my presentation. I created the verbal image of an old western bar room (pre-atomic Europe, if you will). Every Saturday night there was a shooting (The Napoleonic Wars, World War I, The Seven Years War, etc.). and every Sunday bodies were buried.
A new sheriff was elected—who had seen enough gun fights and didn’t like them (Ike). The first Saturday night he was on duty, he carried a beaker of liquid into the bar. “This,” he announced, ” is a jar full of nitro-glycerin.” He sat down, set the jar on the edge of his table and ordered his dinner. “Golly,” he said, “I hope no one knocks this glass over.”
No shooting that night, or the next or the next. Things went on for a few years until a young fellow (named Kennedy) ran for sheriff. “How awful,” he proclaimed, “to have such dangerous stuff as nitro in a bar full of people!!! Let’s get rid of it!”
He got elected. He removed the jar of liquid that scared people so much and came into the bar with the latest model Colt pistols on his hips (remember McNamara and the Whiz Kids at the Pentagon?). A couple of Saturday nights later there was a shooting, and then another. The undertaker was back in business.
My instructor was enraged. He ranted at me for a full hour after class was supposed to end. He walked out muttering, “I didn’t think it could be done” and gave me an “A”. Today, of course, most historians think better of Eisenhower than they did in 1966.
Let’s not forget WHY he had that bottle of nitro sitting on the table.