Do not undermine the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). That’s the message two physics professors at the University of California, San Diego, are trying to spread with a web-based petition they launched last fall.
Kim Griest, an astrophysicist, and Jorge Hirsch, a condensed matter physicist, started the petition after reading newspaper accounts of changes in US nuclear policy. The policy is recapped in the “Doctrine for Joint Nuclear Operations,” a document from the Joint Chiefs of Staff, a body composed of the highest-ranking member from each branch of the military. The policy, says Griest, blurs the distinctions between nuclear weapons and other weapons and endorses preemptive nuclear strikes on non-nuclear states.
Among the reasons listed in the doctrine for which “combatant commanders may request presidential approval for use of nuclear weapons” are “to counter potentially overwhelming adversary conventional forces,” “for rapid and favorable war termination on US terms,” and “to...
