Over the past few years, a debate on possible scenarios of limited nuclear weapons use has surfaced again in the United States. Russian nuclear saber-rattling since 2014 and the growing tensions in the Korean peninsula have led Washington to reassess its own ability to deter, or respond to, such a limited use of nuclear weapons.

About a decade ago, the U.S. started to examine options to develop and acquire Conventional Prompt Global Strike capabilities. This move fits in an effort to conventionalize deterrence, an effort initiated decades before and undertaken for profound and diverse motives. Although it has been renewed under the Obama administration, which aims to reduce the U.S. reliance on nuclear weapons, this ambition has resulted in very little concrete progress.

On Tuesday Barack Obama called President Francois Hollande of France to explain the National Security Agency’s massive surveillance of French government offices, businesses and private citizens. Obama stated that this was a well-meaning attempt to protect both countries from Islamic terrorism. He offered to “reexamine” the program so as to determine whether the right balance was struck between public safety and privacy rights.