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This article looks at the role of the U.S. in the international control of nuclear weapons in 1996. In the 1950s, to provide its military forces with a more accessible nuclear capability, the U.S. developed tactical nuclear weapons and deployed thousands of them abroad. In contrast to the Armageddon scenarios in vogue during the Cold War, current speculations about nuclear use often take for granted that the calamity would remain confined to the margins of the world order. History does not offer much assurance on the workings of deterrence. Deterrence is theoretical, nonuse is concrete and unambiguous. The strategic order among the major nuclear powers is fragile precisely because it rests so heavily on beliefs and untested theories. While they have switched off wartime targeting and taken some missile forces off alert, Russian strategies continue to keep part of their forces on a hair-trigger posture to enhance deterrence against an implausible U.S. surprise attack. Russian defense officials are reluctant to endorse the cuts in their missile forces that they would have to implement upon ratification of the second Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, which Russia and the U.S. signed in 1993. Although the U.S. developed the atomic bomb for use in World War II, as soon as the war ended this historically unique weapons technology was enslaved by an equally unique context and remained active for four decades. Any serious international regulation of nuclear weapons is bound to entail troublesome incursions that would challenge the traditional prerogatives of national sovereignty.

This article discusses how the time has come for Japan to develop a sense of purpose for contributing to a peaceful world on a scope commensurate with its enormous economic and technological strength as of 1990. Japan's security strategy is still shaped and circumscribed by its alliance with the U.S. Japan needs a grand strategy consonant with its self-image as a humanistic, democratic and peaceful nation and a strategy able to win broad support among the Japanese people. To this end, the geographic horizon of Japan's defense policy must expand beyond the region of the Japanese islands.

The article discusses the possibility of implementing a nuclear strategy for the prevention of nuclear war in prospect. According to the article, the most important reason for seeking to manage and control the nuclear arms competition is to reduce the risk of nuclear war. The U.S. had a monopoly during the first five years of the nuclear era and for the next 15 years, neither the U.S. nor the Soviet Union eschewed defenses against nuclear attack in pursuit of a mutual vulnerability theory. The article concludes that there is a need to accomplish a long-term transformation of nuclear strategy, the armaments serving it and the arms control policy.

The article criticizes the misconception shared by some U.S. conservatives that economic growth is the defining attribute of conservatism. The belief on this notion can be traced back from the fact that conservative economic policies have been successful in boosting national economies. However, those conservatives who advocate such views forgot that every economic growth has certain consequences. They fail to delve with the correlation between economic growth and social change, which could be either good or bad.

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In a great many wars—perhaps in most wars since the Middle Ages—one or both of the belligerents could have done significantly more to fight his enemy but chose not to do so. Whether we want to call all these wars “limited,” or only those in which both sides hobbled their military effort, is perhaps a minor matter of terminology.