Having "power" and being afraid to use that power makes you, in the end, powerless.
I won't argue over the technicalities of that odd yet common perspective, but I grasp your intended meaning. Not using nuclear weapons in response to an attack like 9/11 is not a decision made through fear. Using nuclear weapons in retaliation is not merely excessive but unconscionably so.
Correct. And thus collecting the power to commit an unconscionably excessive reaction, without the will to actually COMMIT that action, is not real "power." As I said, intimidation is not power.
We have sufficient nuclear deterrence to exact an unacceptably high cost on any nation that attacks the United States with a nuclear weapon. Strengthening that deterrent gives us no real advantage; we either have it or we don't. It does, however, produce the added DIS advantage of eroding our credibility internationally when we attempt to push a non-proliferation agenda against people like North Korea, China, Russia, India and Pakistan. They could make the case that the United States is amassing a larger arsenal as a possible aggressive act and that it is logical for them to do the same in order to deter OUR aggression.
It makes little sense to seek to appear more belligerent than you actually are (and already appear to be) when you're trying to win the cooperation of people who already question your conventional capabilities.
Ex: if you get hit once and retaliate with three blows where only one is necessary, then two blows were unnecessary, but three hits being an instance of unnecessary overkill is not wildly extremist as would killing the family of the one who hit you.
Nuclear deterrence is the DEFINITION of overkill. The whole point is that the RETALIATION for any nuclear attack would not be proportionate to the initial attack; China couldn't launch a "limited" strike and only demolish a single America city, trusting that the U.S. would respond by only demolishing a single Chinese city. Nuclear deterrence means that once you go nuclear, all bets are off, and your opponent escalates immediately to total warfare.
In your example: your neighbor across the street fires a gun from his porch and hits your front door. You respond as you have made sure he understands you will respond: you take out a miningun and spray his house with bullets until the roof caves in. The idea is, no one is ever going to take a shot at you because the retaliation will be massive and complete. Everyone on the block already knows this, and in a town full of trigger happy yokels it's kept the peace.
So now you want to go out and buy two more miniguns because the first one isn't enough. This at a time when your dad has taken to making drunken speeches about how he wants to go and kick everyone's ass and how he's best friends now with the town's biggest bully. Suddenly EVERYONE on the block wants a minigun because they don't want to be the one who gets shot without a way to retaliate. And the more people have guns, the better the odds that one of these heavily armed lunatics might make an error in judgement and do something that turns a tense situation into the mother of all crossfires.
This is the difference between nuclear deterrence and nuclear
proliferation. The former keeps your enemies from considering a really bad option. The latter leads to a nuclear arms race that makes Really Bad Option more available to more people.
