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Obama’s Nuclear Posture Review will ‘chip away’ need for nuclear weapons

Administration to Signal Shift Away From a Nuclear Future « The Washington Independent, by Spencer Ackerman, 2 April 2010, Set for release early next week, the Obama administration’s long-awaited statement on the future of the U.S. nuclear weapons stockpile won’t provide a roadmap for their elimination, according to administration officials. But it will chip away at the strategic justification for the stockpile and shift the country’s defense away from nuclear weapons, beginning a gradual process pointing to their elimination over decades and setting the tone for months’ worth of diplomatic work to strengthen cooperation on nuclear security — a top priority for President Obama….

According to officials involved in crafting the NPR, the document will break from its predecessors in reorienting nuclear strategy away from deterring or winning a nuclear conflict with an adversary and embrace the concept that the principal nuclear threat to the U.S. is nuclear terrorism and nuclear proliferation itself…

“That by itself is transformational,” said Joe Cirincione, a longtime Washington nuclear expert and president of the anti-proliferation Ploughshares Fund. “No previous Nuclear Posture Review has looked at the problem that way. This could be night and day compared to the Bush posture.”
Accordingly, the NPR will emphasize a reduced U.S. reliance on nuclear weapons and a greater one on conventional forces, a position officials believe to be a more credible deterrent of conflict, particularly toward rogue states like North Korea and Iran and stateless adversaries like al-Qaeda and its affiliates.

Administration to Signal Shift Away From a Nuclear Future « The Washington Independent

April 3, 2010 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, weapons and war | antinuclear, nuclear, nuclear weapons