Obama’s nuclear posture review

APR 07, 2010

Paul Guinnessy

Earlier this week the Obama administration released the new version of the nuclear posture review (NPR), just days before US president Obama is to fly to Europe to sign the new START treaty with Russia.

The NPR lays out US strategy under what conditions the US would deploy nuclear weapons against other states, was generally received positively by the arms control community and members of the press despite a number of policy differences compared to what Obama campaigned on.

In fact it is the new START treaty which has influenced the creation of this years NPR. The Obama administration is well aware that they require 67 votes to get new START through the US senate, and if too radical a NPR was announced, those 8 remaining republican votes would be lost.

What’s in the NPR

The document does once again confirm that nuclear terrorism is a more likely threat to the US than a first strike from Russia, and that no country should use nuclear weapons except under dire circumstances. This time however, dealing with the terrorism aspect is more strongly worded.

The “fundamental role” of nuclear weapons is to deter a nuclear attack says the NPR, leading open the possibility that they have other roles.

Like the former Bush administration’s NPR the US may still use nuclear weapons in response against a conventional attack although under Obama’s NPR the circumstances in which this would happen are vaguer than in the previous review which spelled out a number of scenarios—including chemical and biological weapon attacks, or providing nuclear material to a third party that release a nuclear device on US soil—that would result in nuclear retaliation.

However, one of the simplest moves to reduce the risk of an accidental nuclear war starting, by taking the nuclear arsenal off alert status, was not among the NPR’s recommendations, nor was it in last week’s new START treaty.

Instead the NPR talks about “evaluating additional options to increase warning and decision time.”

Taking US nuclear weapons off alert status was on the pledges Obama made during the campaign. On an April 2007 speech , he said

"[I]f we want the world to de-emphasize the role of nuclear weapons, the United States and Russia must lead by example. President Bush once said , ‘The United States should remove as many weapons as possible from high-alert, hair-trigger status—another unnecessary vestige of Cold War confrontation.’ Six years later, President Bush has not acted on this promise. I will. We cannot and should not accept the threat of accidental or unauthorized nuclear launch.”

Hans M. Kristensen, from the Federation of American Scientists, tells the Washington Post that the new policy highlights the eventual goal of a world without nuclear weapons. But “the document is surprisingly cautious in terms of the measures that will move us there, because it essentially retains current US nuclear policy.”

At a press conference US Defense secretary Robert Gates said “We recognize we need to make progress moving in the direction the president has set. But we also recognize the real world we continue to live in.”

Paul Guinnessy

More about the authors

Paul Guinnessy, pguinnes@aip.org