1、BackgrounderThinking Smarter About DefenseApril 2010Meeting the Challenge of a Proliferated WorldBy Andrew F.Krepinevich During the early days of the Cold War,an enormous amount of thought was given to the role of nuclear weapons in the overall US defense posture.The reason for this is simple:nuclea
2、r weapons were so destructive that they fundamentally altered the competitive environment.indeed,for several decades substantial intellectual effort was devoted to understanding the US-Soviet nuclear competition,which was a defining feature of the Cold War security environment.With the Cold Wars end
3、,nuclear weapons proliferation has become an increasingly important issue;yet there has been comparatively little analysis of the kind that characterized the early Cold War period.Moreover,the main intellectual response to this growing danger to US security has been a renewed call for the eventual a
4、bolition of nuclear weapons.However,just as the nations national security leaders at the dawn of the nuclear era had to contemplate a less-than-ideal outcome of their efforts(i.e.,a Soviet Union armed with large numbers of nuclear weapons,including thermonuclear weapons),so too must those who seek a
