nuclear-news

Need to rewrite U.S. President’s guidance for use of nuclear weapons

Although the administration’s Nuclear Posture Review is widely said to reduce the role of nuclear weapons, it doesn’t actually reduce the role that nuclear weapons have today because all the adversaries in the current strategic nuclear war plan are exempt from the reduction. They are either nuclear weapon states, not members of the nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, or are in violation of their NPT obligations and have chemical or biological weapons. The new guidance would have to remove some of these adversaries from the war plan to reduce the role, or reduce the role that nuclear weapons are required to play against each of them. There are many ways this could be done:

•  Reduce the numer of target categories that are held at risk with nuclear weapons.
• Reduce the damage expectancy to be a achieved against individual targets.
• Reduce the number of adversaries in the plan.
• Reduce the number and types of strike options against each adversary.
• Remove the requirement to plan for prompt launch of nuclear forces.
• Remove any requirement to plan for damage limitation strikes.
• End counterforce nuclear planning.
• End the requirement to maintain standing fully operational strike plans…….

we have a new op-ed in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists that describes what a new presidential directive could look like: A Presidential Policy Directive for a new nuclear path.        http://www.fas.org/blog/ssp/2011/08/nuclearguidance.php

August 13, 2011 - Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, weapons and war