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88   Use of Nuclear Weapons Is
     An Invitation to Disaster
     The Washington Post  Saturday, March 9, 1968

     If I were running for the Presidency, I would first learn one
lesson from the primer.  Use imperative, and sometimes declarative,
but never conditional sentences!

     A few weeks ago I reacted to the rumors that tactical nuclear
weapons might be used at Khesanh.  The White House has already heard
so much about the hazards of nuclear escalation that it must be deaf to
any further reference to this particular argument.  What else remains
to be said?  I wrote on an obvious point but one which has not been 
mentioned enough, that an independent nuclear policy on this issue 
would complete the alienation of the U.S. from its alliances for 
collective defense.  This political disruption would be immensely more
costly than any possible stake in Southeast Asia.

     To my astonishment, some of my friends and readers thought I must
be condoning the use of tactical nuclear weapons.  They may have
reached this conclusion because I attempted to quote and discuss  the
arguments that might be used by the proponents of such a policy, to
understand them before condemning them.  Scientist by nature must make
studied hypotheses however repugnant.  No politician would ever make 
such a mistake!

     It is widely asserted that a nuclear attack even at the lowest
tactical level might inevitably escalate to nuclear annihilation.  
This belief may be useful as a deterrent to nuclear military 
experiments; but its utility turns into ashes if the deterrent should 
ever fail.  Therefore I might like many other people to maintain such a
belief, but shudder to have to believe it myself.

     Why then a tactical nuclear bombing "lunacy," as Prime Minister
Wilson calls it? If the Vietcong had nuclear weapons, their tactics 
would not be likely to depend on ours.  Until they do, where would
the escalation come from? The answer is unhappily only too obvious
from the U.S. itself.

     At the moment there is a real distinction between a kiloton of
nuclear weaponry and 40 conventional B-52 bomb loads.  The distinction
is not in military efficacy or in human and physical destruction, but
in the public perception of these events.  However irrational, the
distinction is real if it inhibits starting on the path of nuclear 
deployment, a path which has no currently visible barricades before the
end.  If the first barrier is once broken by the United States, how
will our own military planning hereafter resist the compulsion to save
American lives in any tight situation by repeating the exercise? And
why not routinely use ten kilotons if it costs no more than one? In
fact, it is more humane to be sure of reaching the military objectives
at the first strike once there is any commitment to this kind of force.
  
     The main danger of even a minimal tactical deployment of nuclear
weapons is that the door is opened to our own reliance on infinite
destructive technology.

     If, then, the President was ever so foolish as to lead the United
States into a situation (like a Dunkirk evacuation) where the overt 
threat or use of nuclear weaponry  seemed the only way out, he must
not stop with ordering the rescue.  He must have a credible plan to 
assure that this is a unique event which dampens further reliance on 
such weapons.

     That kind of assurance is so implausible that I do indeed condemn
the folly in the first place.

     Nuclear armaments are a necessary defense against nuclear 
blackmail.  To rely upon them for any other purpose is an invitation to
disaster.  The U.S. already knows the taste of it if its confidence in
its nuclear stockpile has impelled an unrealistic sense of one 
nation's power to pacify the world by the force of arms rather than
ideas.

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