The fact that Johnson overruled Westmoreland actually shows the power of the so-called taboo in this case.https://twitter.com/kroenig/status/1048599315193778176 …
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Tannenwald's book (which I highly recommend even if you don't want to believe that there's a "taboo" motivating decisions) goes over instances in many Presidential administrations where someone pushed for thinking about nuclear use in war. It was disturbingly common.
I think it's almost MORE interesting to talk about the administrations where it was just clearly 100% off the table. I get the sense that this is how it was seen in Clinton admin (just totally unthinkable), and guess that Obama admin probably was similar.
