Pentagon Revises Nuclear Strike Plan

In the book Of Paradise and Power: America and Europe In The New World Order, by Robert Kagan, our AP History class saw how the United States tends to lean towards a more coerce way to resolving international conflicts. A perfect example of this can be found in the current article in the Washington Post. According to this article, the Pentagon is revising a doctrine which would allow the use of nuclear weapons in order to prevent attacks by terrorist groups or other nations possessing weapons of mass destruction. In other words, the United States would be using nuclear weapons in order to prevent other countries from using such weapons. Though supporters of this plan may see this act as reasonable, irony is quite evident.
Supporters believe that if they can make other countries believe that the United States is determined into using nuclear arms against possible threats, these threats would perhaps diminish. It is possible, however, that instead of installing a sense of fear into these nations they may instead install anger, which would cause the nations not to disarm, but re-arm.
This "Nuclear Strike Plan" can be applied to many occurrences in the past and even current events, including World War II, the Cold War, and the present War In Iraq. It can also relate to previous attempts of creating similar strategies, which are found in the article, such as the Bush preemption doctrine.