NEW YORK ¨C North Korea¡¯s advancing nuclear weapons program isn¡¯t the only news to unnerve arms-control experts this summer. A new survey has revealed that Americans are surprisingly willing to make a first nuclear strike ¡ª and kill millions of civilians abroad.
The survey casts doubt on the power of what experts call the ¡°nuclear taboo,¡± said Stanford University historian David Holloway, author of ¡°Stalin and the Bomb.¡± The idea, or hope, behind the concept is that it¡¯s not just luck that humans haven¡¯t dropped any nuclear weapons for 70 years ¡ª that there¡¯s a stigma that makes the use of nuclear weapons unthinkable.
But many Americans say it¡¯s quite thinkable. The taboo may be eroding, or it may never have been the protective barrier people thought it was.
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