Destabilising:

The Bush administration’s regressive plan to develop powerful “bunker busting” nuclear weapons was held in check last year only after Congress failed to come up with research money. Ominously, lawmakers from both parties see a strong chance the money will be found this year because of concern over rogue nuclear states like North Korea. Fears of a new nuclear arms race had kept this and a plan for smaller weapons bottled up for years under a Congressional ban.

If anything, the events of the past two years provide further caution against providing Pentagon planners with new nuclear options for hit-and-miss stratagems.

Even underground nuclear explosions would spew masses of radioactive material into the sky. These days, merely hypothesising their use against suspected targets in an unstable place like North Korea feeds anxiety about proliferation and threatens to end the “nuclear taboo” that has kept the world free of nuclear warfare since World War II. One lawmaker said that an opening appropriation of $8.5 million would serve as an “attention getter” for North Korea. Right, and for the rest of the world too. Although Congress has only authorised research, the military procurement tap is hard to wrench closed once the research money flows. A safer bet would be to invest the money in improving precision-guided conventional warheads. — The New York Times