David C. Gompert

About the author: David C. Gompert is vice president of the Rand Corporation in Santa Monica, California, where he runs the National Security Research Division. He served as senior director for Europe and Eurasia on the National Security Council staff during the Bush administration. This article is an expansion of a paper written for the Strategic Forum of the National Defense University. It is based on ideas he developed with former Rand colleagues, Dean Wilkening and Kenneth Watman.

During the Cold War a nuclear arsenal was a means to deter the Soviet Union from launching a nuclear strike against the United States. Now that the Soviet Union has disintegrated, America should not stand down its nuclear deterrence. Indeed, even if the United States...