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In March, President Joe Biden approved the classified US nuclear strategic plan, which for the first time reorients the American deterrence strategy to the rapid expansion of China’s nuclear arsenal.
The New York Times reported this.
The publication notes that such an offensive is taking place against the background of the fact that the Pentagon believes that over the next decade, Chinese reserves will compete in size and variety with American and Russian reserves.
The White House has yet to announce that Biden has approved a revised strategy called the Nuclear Weapons Management, which also aims to prepare the United States for possible coordinated nuclear challenges from China, Russia and North Korea. The document, which is updated about every four years, is so classified that it has no electronic copies, only a small number of hard copies distributed among a few national security officials and the Pentagon command.
But in recent speeches, two senior US administration officials were allowed to hint at the change – in very limited, single sentences – ahead of a more detailed, unclassified message to Congress expected before Biden leaves office.
An MIT nuclear strategist who worked at the Pentagon said: “The president recently issued an updated guidance on the use of nuclear weapons that takes into account the presence of multiple nuclear adversaries.”
According to him, “weapons guidelines explain” the significant increase in the size and diversity of China’s nuclear arsenal.
In June, the National Security Council’s senior director for arms control and nonproliferation, Pranay Waddy, also referred to the document, which for the first time analyzed in detail whether the United States is prepared to respond to nuclear crises that erupt simultaneously or sequentially with a combination of nuclear and non-nuclear weapons.
The new strategy, according to Mr. Waddy, emphasizes “the need to contain Russia, China and North Korea simultaneously.”
“In the past, the possibility that America’s adversaries could coordinate nuclear threats to outmatch America’s nuclear arsenal seemed unlikely. But the emerging partnership between Russia and China, and the conventional weapons that North Korea and Iran are providing to Russia for the war in Ukraine, fundamentally changed Washington’s thinking,” the publication writes.
Read also: Biden counts policy on Ukraine as one of his presidency achievements
