Getting Dizzy

William Safire:

Hold on; nuclear pre-emption was never America's "great doctrine" during confrontation with the Soviets. Our strategic doctrine, which some of us remember, was at first "massive retaliation," later "mutual assured destruction.'' Maybe arms control negotiators listed pre-emption or preventive war as a dangerous notion of extremists, but only kooks portrayed by the likes of Peter Sellers called for a nuclear final solution to the Communist problem.

If Bush had defined pre-emption as such a "great doctrine throughout the cold war," we would have seen sustained snickering on cable and horrified eye-rolling from the Charles River Gang.

But doesn't this "quibble" with Kerry's facts also take issue with the statement of the current Administrator of the National Nuclear Security Administration, Linton Brooks?

What we are doing [developing tactical mini-nukes with "bunker-busting" capacities] is almost identical to what the last Administration did (they adapted the B61-11 to penetrate a few meters into soil; we want to do the same thing into rock). So why has this become so contentious? After all, even if deployed, this weapon does not represent a change from our policy goal of deterrence. Deterrence requires we be able to hold at risk that which an adversary values. Since more and more we see a move toward putting things underground, our efforts to determine the potential effectiveness of an earth-penetrating weapon reflect a continued emphasis on enhancing deterrence.

One possible reason is that we haven’t told a coherent overall nuclear policy story. Last year, several unrelated things happened:
• The Administration’s National Security Strategy reaffirmed a previous policy of preemption in rare circumstances; that is, the United States would not necessarily wait tobe attacked with WMD before it could address real threats.

Has it really never been our policy to allow for preemption under rare circumstances? Is the Bush Administration wrong too?

I've always assumed that "preemption" (not to be confused with "prevention") entails a first-strike designed to forestall an imminent (and provably imminent) first-strike from an opponent - say, sinking the Japanese carriers as they approached Hawaii - and has always been a right reserved by the American people.

Am I really wrong on that point?