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been to show the Soviets that the United States meant business, testing
nearly twice a month throughout the entire Cold War would have been
overkill. In fact, Operation Sandstone -- a series of three tests at Enewetak
Atoll in 1948 -- was not intended to warn off the Soviets as tensions rose
over Berlin. Nor was the series of 48 underground tests launched in the
summer of 1964 designed to impress the newly installed premier, Leonid
Brezhnev. And the United States would not have conducted a dozen
atomic blasts at its Nevada test site in the first half of 1977 -- including the
Cove, Dofino, Marsilly, Bulkhead, Crewline, Forefoot, Carnelian, Strake,
Flotost, Gruyere, Scantling, and Scupper detonations -- just because new
President Jimmy Carter was vulnerable to right-wing criticism.

The United States did what it did because it needed its ultimate deterrent
to actually work, and because the technical requirements of the nuclear
mission continually changed. The ruins of Hiroshima and Nagasaki were
evidence enough that the United States could destroy cities, but deterring
the Soviet Union was a far greater challenge. If the Soviets had invaded
Western Europe, for example, U.S. bombers would have had to penetrate
alerted Soviet air defenses, identify Soviet ground forces and industrial
centers, and attack them. Accordingly, U.S. bombers had to be highly
maneuverable and able to carry multiple weapons, so the bombs
themselves had to be lighter and smaller than the ones the United States
used against Japan. The Soviets put another wrinkle in Washington's plans
when they began to deploy large numbers of their own nuclear weapons.
The United States needed to find a way to potentially destroy the Soviet
arsenal on the ground. Eliminating those targets -- numerous and often
hardened -- required even greater numbers of bombs, even lighter designs,
and more accurate delivery systems. So the United States updated its
designs and tested. And tested. And tested again.

Like the United States during the Cold War, North Korea has apparently
decided that nuclear weapons are central to its national security strategy.
With few friends, its conventional military forces outgunned, an economy
in tatters, and facing off against a superpower prone to deposing
dictatorships across the globe, the Kim regime set about building an
operational nuclear arsenal. And just as NATO planned to thwart a Soviet

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