Obama to take middle course in new nuclear policy

[Bluebear]

A year after his groundbreaking pledge to move toward a "world without nuclear weapons," President Obama on Tuesday will unveil a policy that constrains the weapons' role but appears more cautious than what many supporters had hoped, with the president opting for a middle course in many key areas.

Under the new policy, the administration will foreswear the use of the deadly weapons against nonnuclear countries, officials said, in contrast to previous administrations, which indicated they might use nuclear arms against nonnuclear states in retaliation for a biological or chemical attack.

But Obama included a major caveat: The countries must be in compliance with their nonproliferation obligations under international treaties. That loophole would mean Iran would remain on the potential target list.

The new policy will also describe the purpose of U.S. weapons as being fundamentally for deterrence. Some Democratic legislators had urged Obama to go further and declare that the United States would not use nuclear weapons first in a conflict. But officials in the Defense and State departments worried that such a change could unnerve allies protected by the U.S. nuclear "umbrella."

http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2010/04/05/AR2010040504174.html?hpid=topnews

[frazzled]

1. It's a thousand miles further along the course than any recent president has gone before

To progress to the point of pledging not to develop any new nuclear weapons and to lay out something that is almost a "no first use" policy is not insignificant. We should be extremely happy about this.

[Bluebear]

3. What is an "almost no first use policy"? Honest question.

[frazzled]

4. There will be no first use against any nonnuclear weapons states ...

that are party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and in compliance--even in the event they attack us with chemical or biological weapons. This, of course, carves out an exemption for countries like Iran and North Korea -- and that is why it falls short of the goal.

From the Times:

Mr. Obama’s strategy is a sharp shift from those of his predecessors and seeks to revamp the nation’s nuclear posture for a new age in which rogue states and terrorist organizations are greater threats than traditional powers like Russia and China.

It eliminates much of the ambiguity that has deliberately existed in American nuclear policy since the opening days of the cold war. For the first time, the United States is explicitly committing not to use nuclear weapons against nonnuclear states that are in compliance with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, even if they attacked the United States with biological or chemical weapons or launched a crippling cyberattack.

Those threats, Mr. Obama argued, could be deterred with “a series of graded options,” a combination of old and new conventional weapons. “I’m going to preserve all the tools that are necessary in order to make sure that the American people are safe and secure,” he said in the interview in the Oval Office.

White House officials said the new strategy would include the option of reconsidering the use of nuclear retaliation against a biological attack, if the development of such weapons reached a level that made the United States vulnerable to a devastating strike.

http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/06/world/06arms.html?ref=us

From another source:

Compared with Bush-era threat of nuclear retaliation in the event of a biological or chemical attack, Obama administration's declaration of conditional no-use of nuclear forces could be regarded as significant progress in maintaining the non- proliferation regime.

But this new strategy still disappointed some progressives who argued that the U.S. should renounce the longstanding threat to use nuclear weapons first and declare unconditional no-use of nuclear arsenals against non-nuclear states, as some other major nuclear states have done.

http://english.cri.cn/6966/2010/04/07/1721s561571.htm

[Mari333]

2. color me not surprised.

pffft.