Alwaght- The US is expected to unveil a new hawkish nuclear war doctrine, which reportedly incorporates more cases in which it would use nuclear weapons, and also mandates the development of smaller-yield, simpler warheads.
The new Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) is expected to be revealed sometime after President Donald Trump’s state-of-the-union address in late January and will be the first update of the key strategy document in eight years.
According to Jon Wolfsthal, a former special assistant to Barack Obama on arms control and non-proliferation, the final draft that he reviewed is pretty hawkish, but some of the more aggressive suggestions from the initial variant have been dropped. Wolfsthal described the document to The Guardian.
“My read is this is a walk-back from how extreme it was early on. It doesn’t have as much terrible stuff in it as it did originally,” Wolfsthal said. “But it’s still bad.”
One of the key changes to the US policy would be an expansion of circumstances in which a nuclear attack would be considered. Under the new NPR, a conventional attack that causes mass casualties or targets critical infrastructure may trigger a nuclear retaliation from the US.
The stated goal for developing new types of weapons is that, if Russia engages in a conflict with NATO members in Eastern Europe, it would presumably use its tactical nuclear weapons early-on and hope that the US would hesitate to use its more powerful strategic nukes in response, out of fear of escalation.
This gamble theory contradicts Russia’s public military doctrine, which states that Russia would only use its nuclear arsenal in response to an attack with weapons of mass destruction, nuclear or otherwise, or a conventional attack threatening Russia’s existence as a sovereign state.
The new doctrine is being unveiled amid growing concerns that the and North Korea are closer than ever to a nuclear war over Pyongyang’s missile and nuclear weapons program.
At the peak of the conflict earlier this year, US President Donald Trump stated that he would use “fire and fury” to “totally destroy North Korea.”
On Aug. 6, 1945, the United States dropped an atomic bomb on Hiroshima. The U.S. remains the only country to have ever used nuclear weapons.
