Obama thought it was crazy for any American president to use nuclear weapons first, under any circumstances. For one thing, given the U.S. military’s conventional superiority, it wasn’t necessary. For another, he had read enough history to know that the “nuclear taboo,” as some called it, was real: the destructiveness of the bomb was too enormous; the risk of escalation to global catastrophe was too high. Still, Obama recognized the distinction between believing in no-first-use and declaring it as national policy, and, in that context, he saw that Gates had a point.
