Obama’s Nuclear Modesty
By PETER D. FEAVER
NYT
Durham, N.C.
PRESIDENT OBAMA’S new policy on the use of atomic weapons, called the Nuclear Posture Review, has brought to the public eye a longstanding debate over what’s known as “declaratory doctrine”: what the United States government is willing to say publicly and in advance about the conditions under which it will use its nuclear arsenal. A calm reading of the document shows that the changes in terms of doctrine aren’t nearly as epochal as the White House would have us believe or its critics would have us fear.
The administration claims this new declaration will create strong incentives for states to eschew nuclear weapons. Critics, many of them my fellow Republicans, claim it substantially weakens America’s deterrence against attacks with non-nuclear weapons of mass destruction. My view is that the new policy buys a trivial new incentive at the cost of a modest loss in deterrence. Reasonable people can disagree as to whether the bargain is worth it, but it is a bargain on the margins.
This is the key sentence from the posture review: “The United States will not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapons states that are party to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and in compliance with their nuclear nonproliferation obligations.”
This apparently walks back from a Bush-era declaration that underscored the possibility that the United States might use nuclear weapons if it suffered a chemical or biological attack. Instead, the Obama administration is saying it will respond to chemical or biological assaults only with “a devastating conventional military response.”
(Original here.)
NYT
Durham, N.C.
PRESIDENT OBAMA’S new policy on the use of atomic weapons, called the Nuclear Posture Review, has brought to the public eye a longstanding debate over what’s known as “declaratory doctrine”: what the United States government is willing to say publicly and in advance about the conditions under which it will use its nuclear arsenal. A calm reading of the document shows that the changes in terms of doctrine aren’t nearly as epochal as the White House would have us believe or its critics would have us fear.
The administration claims this new declaration will create strong incentives for states to eschew nuclear weapons. Critics, many of them my fellow Republicans, claim it substantially weakens America’s deterrence against attacks with non-nuclear weapons of mass destruction. My view is that the new policy buys a trivial new incentive at the cost of a modest loss in deterrence. Reasonable people can disagree as to whether the bargain is worth it, but it is a bargain on the margins.
This is the key sentence from the posture review: “The United States will not use or threaten to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear weapons states that are party to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty and in compliance with their nuclear nonproliferation obligations.”
This apparently walks back from a Bush-era declaration that underscored the possibility that the United States might use nuclear weapons if it suffered a chemical or biological attack. Instead, the Obama administration is saying it will respond to chemical or biological assaults only with “a devastating conventional military response.”
(Original here.)
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