Obama's Nuclear Posture Review Reduces Role of Nuclear Weapons

We are happy to serve you a daily summary of the day's top nuclear policy stories each morning, with excerpts from the stories in bullet form.

Stories we're following today:

Obama Limits When U.S. Would Use Nuclear Arms - New York Times [link]

• President Obama said Monday that he was revamping American nuclear strategy to substantially narrow the conditions under which the United States would use nuclear weapons.
• Mr. Obama’s strategy is a sharp shift from those of his predecessors and seeks to revamp the nation’s nuclear posture for a new age in which rogue states and terrorist organizations are greater threats than traditional powers like Russia and China.
• For the first time, the United States is explicitly committing not to use nuclear weapons against nonnuclear states that are in compliance with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, even if they attacked the United States with biological or chemical weapons or launched a crippling cyberattack.
• The release of the new strategy, known as the Nuclear Posture Review, opens an intensive nine days of nuclear diplomacy geared toward reducing weapons. Mr. Obama plans to fly to Prague to sign a new arms-control agreement with Russia on Thursday and then next week will host 47 world leaders in Washington for a summit meeting on nuclear security.

Obama to Take Middle Course in New Nuclear Policy - The Washington Post [link]

• A year after his groundbreaking pledge to move toward a "world without nuclear weapons," President Obama on Tuesday will unveil a policy that constrains the weapons' role but appears more cautious than what many supporters had hoped.
• The new policy will also describe the purpose of U.S. weapons as being fundamentally for deterrence. Some Democratic legislators had urged Obama to go further and declare that the United States would not use nuclear weapons first in a conflict.
• But officials in the Defense and State departments worried that such a change could unnerve allies protected by the U.S. nuclear "umbrella."
• The review will not call for any immediate changes in the package of nuclear warheads now going through the life-extension program.
• Stephen Young, a senior analyst for the Union of Concerned Scientists, said: "The administration will make the right choice not to develop a new nuclear warhead now, but they will leave the door open to that option... Our concern is some people will want to walk through that door very soon, when the science says it isn't required."

Obama Nuclear Weapons Manifesto Is Detailed - Los Angeles Times [link]

• The statement, to be released Tuesday, will announce that the arsenal will shrink by thousands of warheads, and it will further restrict when the weapons may be used.
• Monday night, the White House released an outline of the review, saying it "focuses on preventing nuclear terrorism and proliferation and reducing the role of nuclear weapons in our national security strategy."
• The review is widely expected to announce additional reductions from the estimated 2,000 nuclear weapons held in reserve.
• The document is expected to announce that the Pentagon will retire the Tomahawk Land Attack Missile, a ship- and submarine-launched cruise missile that has been in storage. But it is expected to leave unresolved the issue of whether to retire the estimated 200 tactical, or battlefield, nuclear weapons that are based in Europe.

U.S. to Announce New Nuclear Weapons Strategy - CNN [link]

• The Obama administration's Nuclear Posture Review will alter decades of U.S. policy to provide an incentive for countries to stay within the rules of the 1968 Non-Proliferation Treaty.
• Under the new strategy, preventing the spread of nuclear weapons and their use by terrorists becomes the top priority of the U.S. nuclear agenda.
• "It will also extend the life of warheads currently in the nuclear arsenal," a White House official said. "This is an alternative to developing new nuclear weapons, which we reject."
• Obama has made reducing the global nuclear threat a top priority of his presidency, and will host a summit on reducing the global nuclear threat later this month.