nuclear-news

Obama recognising nuclear terrorism as the greatest risk

Shifting Nuclear Strategy To Focus On Nuclear Terrorism The Wonk Room, National Secvurity By Max Bergmann 13 Jan 2010 In a reported shift that has the nuclear bureaucracy in the Pentagon up in arms, the President wants the new Nuclear Posture Review – the document that lays out US nuclear strategy to actually focus on the gravest security threat to this country: nuclear terrorism.

This would be quite a coup, as the New York Times reported: The Obama administration’s classified review of nuclear weapons policy will for the first time make thwarting nuclear-armed terrorists a central aim of American strategic nuclear planning, according to senior Pentagon officials. When completed next year, the Nuclear Posture Review will order the entire government to focus on countering nuclear terrorists — whether armed with rudimentary bombs, stolen warheads or devices surreptitiously supplied by a hostile state — as a task equal to the traditional mission of deterring a strike by major powers or emerging nuclear adversaries.

This shift, along with attempting to reduce global nuclear stockpiles, is making many of the Pentagon’s nuclear bureaucrats squirm. See, reducing nuclear arsenals and shifting nuclear strategy away from the Cold War approaches of the past is bad for business. This is not just a strategic debate, it’s a resource debate. The New York Times explains that prioritizing nuclear terrorism in the posture review:

could mean, for example, devoting less money to modernizing bombers, missiles and submarines, and more to surveillance satellites, reconnaissance planes and undercover agents

Wonk Room » Shifting Nuclear Strategy To Focus On Nuclear Terrorism

January 13, 2010 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | safety, USA | antinuclear, nuclear, nuclear costs, nuclear secrecy, nuclear spin, nuclear weapons, radiation, radioactive