Originally posted by Octavius
But how is Team Bush benefitting from this leakage?
Before I respond to that, Bravo to Toad for using the FAS website. Great site full of information. Even if you don't agree with thier analysis.
The Bush team benefits from this disclosure so long as they are dead set on a policy of nuclear deterrence. Republican administrations have historicaly been very vocal in their support I think the Reagan administration best reflects this with thier "Kill the Bastards" (Copyright: The Onion lol) policy. Anyhow, for deterrence to work the US needs to ensure that the rest of the world knows what to expect if they cross a certain threshold. In the past, our public policy was "No first use." We essentially said "if you use nukes against us, there will be a devestating response, and we'll turn your cities to glass and sew your crops with salt. Considering there has been a shift in Russian Nuclear Doctrine (see
this paper for more information) it seems logical that we alter our own nuclear policy to reflect the depolorization of geopolitics in the post cold war era ( or the post-post cold war era, or whatever we're going to call this).
So, this release of information helps contribute to the over all policy of deterrence, by reminding the world that despite the fact that we did not use nukes in response to Sept. 11th, we do still have them, and indeed we have our eyes on nations that are on a short list of potential targets. But even better, because this is a leak, and not an official release, the Bush Administration can say "well of course we're looking into our nuclear posture, that's a given, but we didn't mean for this to get out, and we didn't want to jerk the interntaional community by the chain" The fact that it wasn't an official release insulates them from some of the "Cowboy" criticism that they would have surely gotten had it been official. I mean, they did get criticized, but I think it would have been much worse had they been bragging about this.
-Sikboy
PS:
For a deeper look at deterrence, check out the lit review of this paper It's very similar to the lit review from the above cited paper, but draws a different conclusion.
