Highlight from the article: qualitative evidence from the past 70 years shows that leaders pay close attention to the nuclear balance of power, that they belie

Highlight from the article: qualitative evidence from the past 70 years shows that leaders pay close attention to the nuclear balance of power, that they believe superiority enhances their position, and that a nuclear advantage often translates into a geopolitical advantage. During the Cuban missile crisis, American nuclear superiority helped compel Moscow to withdraw its missiles from the island. As Gen. Maxwell Taylor, then chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, wrote in a memo to Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, “We have the strategic advantage in our general war capabilities.… This is no time to run scared.” Similarly, Secretary of State Dean Rusk argued, “One thing Mr. Khrushchev may have in mind is that he knows that we have a substantial nuclear superiority, but he also knows that we don’t really live under fear of his nuclear weapons to the extent that he has to live under fear of ours.” We see similar patterns in South Asia. When asked years later why Pakistan ultimately withdrew its forces from Indian Kashmir during the 1999 Kargil crisis, former Indian Defense Minister George Fernandes cited his country’s nuclear superiority. In the event of a nuclear exchange, he said, “We may have lost a part of our population … [but] Pakistan may have been completely wiped out.” ... Competition between nuclear powers is like a game of chicken, and in a game of chicken, we should expect the smaller car to swerve first, even if a crash would be disastrous for both. The United States has always driven a Hummer, but it is trading it in for a Prius, even though games of chicken are likely for decades to come. Rather than cutting its forces, the United States should, as President John F. Kennedy promised, maintain a nuclear arsenal “second to none.”