by Jim Morris, Warrior Vice President, News
The Pentagon is warning that evidence of cooperation between China, Russia, North Korea and Iran makes the US nuclear weapons strategy even more challenging.
That comes in an unclassified submitted to Congress, describing the country’s nuclear employment guidance issued by President Biden. Defense Secretary Lloyd Austin will issue a classified version later to the Department of Defense of the joint force.
The report spells out the threat posed by America’s largest adversaries, and what the US policy is regarding the use of nuclear weapons.
It says that Russia “poses an acute threat with its large, modern and diversified arsenal of strategic and theater-range weapons as well as its pursuit of novel nuclear systems.” China, the report says, “has embarked on an ambitious expansion, modernization and diversification of its nuclear forces and established a nascent nuclear triad.”
As for North Korea, the Pentagon says, it “also continues to expand, diversify and improve its nuclear ballistic missile and non-nuclear capabilities.”
Iran doesn’t have nuclear weapons, but the report says the US “remains resolved to prevent Iran from developing a nuclear weapon and is prepared to use all elements of national power to ensure that outcome.”
Then comes the warning: “Any one of these nuclear challenges would be formidable itself, but the evidence of growing collusion between Russia, the PRC (China), the DPRK (North Korea) and Iran makes the situation even more challenging. “
The report says the upgraded guidance directs that the US “be able to deter Russia, the PRC and the DPRK simultaneously in peacetime, crisis and conflict.”
It also urges closer coordination and planning with NATO and Indo-Pacific allies.
Perhaps in a nod to the fact that President Biden will be leaving office in two months, the report says “the President’s Guidance reflects more continuity than change with the approach of previous Administrations.”
Much of the report restates the US’s long-term policy involving nuclear weapons. It says the fundamental role of the weapons is to deter nuclear attack on the US or its allies and partners; that the US is committed to retaining a nuclear triad of strategic systems (air, sea and land); and that intercontinental ballistic missiles and some ballistic missile submarines at sea will remain on day-to-day alert (other nuclear capable forces, such as bombers, are said to “remain in various stages of readiness).
As for arms control, the report says the US will abide by the central limits of the New START Treaty as long it believes that Russia continues to do so.
The two countries have agreed to extend the treaty through Feb. 4, 2026. But in Feb. 2023, Vladimir Putin announced that Russia would “suspend its participation” in New START. Putin made it clear Russia wasn’t abandoning the treaty entirely and later Russia said it would build up its nuclear arsenal.
Under the terms of the treaty, each country may inspect the other’s nuclear arsenal several times a year.
