The West decided years ago that its security lay in deterrence, achieved through, among other things, threat of nuclear retaliation.

Hence, the Soviets would be deterred from launching such an attack by a valid threat of nuclear retaliation.

But cold war political chess included an enemy that could be targeted for nuclear retaliation, the missing factor in the age of terror.

Deterrence can no longer be based solely on the threat of nuclear retaliation.

The Bush administration should also drop its provocative policy of threatening nuclear retaliation against non-nuclear threats.

"We need to rethink the concept of deterrence that was in the past based on massive nuclear retaliation," the official said.

Only the threat of nuclear retaliation had kept them from using them during the Gulf War.

But this was the first time that a French president had publicly spelled out the possibility of nuclear retaliation for state-backed terrorism.

Bombing through an intermediary has its advantages: deniability is, after all, the name of the game for a government trying to avoid nuclear retaliation.

"At the risk of having our factories destroyed and our nations threatened with nuclear retaliation?"