by Scott Ritter, Consortium News:
Nuclear weapons offer an illusion of security. By allowing the U.S. nuclear posture to shift from deterrence to employment, there will be a scenario where the U.S. will use nuclear weapons. And then it’s lights out.
Successive U.S. administrations have eschewed arms control in favor of maintaining American strategic advantage over real and/or imagined adversaries.
This is accomplished by embracing nuclear weapons employment strategies that deviate from simple deterrence into war-fighting at every level of conflict, including scenarios that don’t involve a nuclear threat.
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At a time when the U.S. advocates policies exacerbating already high levels of tension with nuclear-armed adversaries Russia and China, the Biden administration has signed off on a new nuclear employment plan that increases, rather that decreases, the probability of nuclear conflict.
Left unchecked, this policy can have only one possible outcome — total nuclear annihilation of humanity and the world we live in.
By Scott Ritter
Special to Consortium News
An interesting thing happened on the road to Armageddon.
In January 2017, then-Vice President Joe Biden, speaking at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, warned about the dangers inherent in expanding funding for, and by extension increasing the importance of, nuclear weapons.
“If future budgets reverse the choices we’ve made, and pour additional money into a nuclear buildup,” said Biden — referring to Obama administration policies that included secured the New START Treaty limiting the size of the U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals — “it hearkens back to the Cold War and will do nothing to increase the day-to-day security of the United States or our allies.”
Later, in 2019, Biden, now a candidate for president, commented on the decision made by President Donald Trump to deploy two missile systems — a cruise missile still under development, and the Trident submarine-launched ballistic missile deployed onboard the U.S. Navy’s Ohio-class submarines —armed with a new low-yield nuclear warhead.
“The United States does not need new nuclear weapons,” Biden declared in a written answer to questions posed by the Council for a Livable World. “Our current arsenal of weapons…is sufficient to meet our deterrence and alliance requirements.”
In an article published in the March/April 2020 issue of Foreign Affairs, candidate Biden vowed to “renew our commitment to arms control for a new era,” including a pledge to “pursue an extension of the New START treaty, an anchor of strategic stability between the United States and Russia, and use that as a foundation for new arms control arrangements.”
Biden went on to declare that “that the sole purpose of the U.S. nuclear arsenal should be deterring—and, if necessary, retaliating against—a nuclear attack. As president, I will work to put that belief into practice, in consultation with the U.S. military and U.S. allies.”
Biden prevailed over Trump in the 2020 Presidential election, and on Jan. 21, 2021, was sworn in as the 46th President of the United States.
And then…nothing.
Copying Trump’s Pre-Emptive Strike
Aerial view of Pentagon at night. (Joe Lauria)
In March 2022, after much speculation about whether or not Biden would follow through with his pledge to implement a “sole purpose” nuclear policy, the Biden administration published the 2022 edition of the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), a Congressionally-mandated document which describes United States nuclear strategy, policy, posture, and forces in support of the National Security Strategy (NSS) and National Defense Strategy (NDS).
It was a near carbon-copy of the February 2018 NPR published by the Trump administration, including language which enshrined as doctrine the U.S. ability to use nuclear weapons pre-emptively, even in scenarios that did not involve a nuclear threat.
In December 2022, during a reunion of personnel involved in the negotiation and implementation of the landmark 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Forces treaty, a senior Biden administration arms control official was asked by a veteran arms controller why Biden had backed away from his pledge regarding the “sole purpose” doctrine.
“The inter-agency wasn’t ready for it,” this official replied.
The “inter-agency” the official was referring to is the amalgam of departments and agencies, staffed by unelected career civil servants and military professionals who serve as the executioners of policy regarding America’s nuclear enterprise.
It was a surprising, and extremely disappointing, admission on the part of an official whose oath of office bound him or her to the bedrock constitutional principle of executive authority and civilian control of the military.
Biden had, even before being sworn in, received push-back regarding any alterations in the nuclear doctrine of the United States.
In September 2020, Admiral Charle Richard, commander of U.S. Strategic Command, responsible for America’s nuclear arsenal, warned that, “We are on a trajectory, for the first time in our nation’s history, to face two peer nuclear-capable competitors.” Richard was referring to the nuclear arsenals of Russia and China.
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