As for the so-called rogue states that are not inhibited in their actions by the consensus of world opinion, the United States would be wise to elimi… - Paul Nitze
" "As for the so-called rogue states that are not inhibited in their actions by the consensus of world opinion, the United States would be wise to eliminate their nuclear capabilities with the preemptive use of our conventional weapons — when necessary, and when we have unambiguous indication of these countries' intent to use their nuclear capability for purposes of aggrandizement. The same principle should apply to any threat emanating from unstable states with nuclear arsenals. By simply having our intelligence services read their mail, we can tell if there is compelling reason to take preemptive action.
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About Paul Nitze
Paul Henry Nitze (16 January 1907 – 19 October 2004) was an American politician who served as U.S. Deputy Secretary of the Defense, U.S. Secretary of the Navy, and Director of Policy Planning for the U.S. State Department. He is famous for being the principal author of the policy paper NSC 68 (1950) and a co-founder of Team B. From 1950 on, he helped shape Cold War policy over the course of numerous presidential administrations from that of Harry Truman to that of Ronald Reagan.
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Paul Henry Nitze
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Human will can be effective only at the margin of events. Freedom is not absolute either for individuals or for nations and much is determined by forces beyond their control, by events of the past, by accident, or by chance. At any given moment in time the margin of freedom left them may seem so small as to make it hardly worthwhile to exercise their will one way or the other. But the narrow margin of today becomes the foundation of the broader possibility for tomorrow. Over time the margin of freedom — the impact of will upon the possible — expands geometrically. The decision of today makes possible, or forecloses, ten decisions of tomorrow. The accumulated wisdom and experience of the past do not always give unambiguous precedents for decisions and actions at the relevant margin of freedom of the present. A new integration of general purpose with the concrete possibilities of the present may then become necessary. The most difficult issues of foreign policy and ethics arise when changes in degree, at some point, move so far as to become changes in kind, and dictate fundamental departures from past policy and direction.
For the past generation, Americans have regretted that in Vietnam, we let the passions of the moment and a lack of healthy skepticism toward presidential claims obscure a clear-headed assessment of our national interests. The result was that we were driven into a costly, divisive, and ultimately counterproductive expansion of a war that lacked adequate public support. Let's not spend the next generation wondering how we came to repeat that mistake.
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If there is little or no middle ground in the struggle for peace with justice, what resources of will and of national sacrifice are we entitled, or ethically called upon, to put into the effort to cause a system compatible with superior values to prevail? What risks are we entitled to take with the awful hazard of a nuclear war? What guidelines emerge from a comprehensive analysis of the full range of pertinent considerations? The concept of an ethical framework that has objective validity, over and beyond the values of the individual or societal groups and to which man can aspire to have some degree of understanding, seemed to me to be necessary for there to be a well-founded sense of direction to a foreign policy.
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