PLAIN SPEAKING
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James Joyner | Friday, January 31, 2003 |
Nicolas Kralev of the Washington Times breaks the story that the Administration has changed its national security strategy to say that the US will consider using nuclear weapons in response to an attack with chemical or biological weapons. (Lead headline on Drudge right now). While this will fuel more “Bush is a cowboy” talk, I prefer the more direct rhetorical approach–if our policy is that we’d consider using nucs if hit by chem/bio weapons, why not say so? I think clarity is a better deterrent than ambiguity in this case; if our policy were the opposite–we’d only use nucs if hit by nucs first–then ambiguity would be more advantageous.
About the Author: James Joyner is the publisher of Outside the Beltway and the managing editor of the Atlantic Council. He's a former Army officer, Desert Storm vet, and college professor with a PhD in political science from The University of Alabama. He lives just outside the Beltway in Alexandria, Virginia.
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