This essay critically assesses the Bush Administration’s strategic and nuclear weapons policy initiatives in historical context. The assessment first delineates the genuinely original elements of the 2002 Nuclear Posture Review. The analysis then considers the potential impact of tactical nuclear weapons planning on prospects for deterring WMD attacks by both ‘rogue’ states and non-state (terrorist) groups, and explores how this planning risks creating ‘commitment traps’ increasing pressures to follow through on nuclear threats. The essay concludes that Bush Administration strategic policy initiatives are less explicable by ‘realist’ criteria than by a more ‘idealist’ strategy premising a militantly active US global role.