SAY WHAT? – AT 7:59 A.M. ET:  The New York Times is running an op-ed that will get a lot of play by Dems wanting to justify Obama's new nuclear-weapons policy.  CAUTION LIGHTS SHOULD BE ON:

IN the spring of 1957, President Dwight D. Eisenhower made a sweeping change in the American approach to nuclear war. Henceforth, the United States would rule out waging nuclear war against non-nuclear states. It would eliminate the “ambiguity” of previous strategies, drawing a stark line between conventional and nuclear wars. And the primary role of nuclear weapons would henceforth be to deter nuclear war: to indicate to American adversaries (namely, the Soviet Union) that any attack would engender overwhelming retaliation and hence amount to national suicide...

...On Monday, President Obama announced, in his Nuclear Posture Review, a new American approach to nuclear war that comes right out of Eisenhower’s playbook. And, indeed, Mr. Obama quickly came under criticism from those who have argued that new American technologies, together with the diminished capacity of traditional adversaries, have now made nuclear war winnable.

COMMENT:  First, let me concede that I am not familar with the exact text of Eisenhower's order.  But if you Google the subject, you'll find that there was a massive amount of paper coming out of the Eisenhower administration on the subject of nuclear weapons during this period.  There was also raging debate inside the U.S. Government, leading to the resignations of some very high-profile military men, like Gen. James Gavin. 

The op-ed piece does not give exact wording.  But please note that Eisenhower had already threatened the use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear powers when he threatened to use them to end the Korean War.  It is inconceivable to me that Ike would have ruled, in advance, the use of tactical nuclear weapons to respond to a massive conventional attack by, say, China, whose conventional forces dwarfed ours.

This is going to be a continuing discussion.  I'm hopeful that someone with detailed knowledge of the Eisenhower administration will elaborate on this op-ed, which I have to believe is over-simplified.

April 9,  2010