For a president who is willing to go toe-to-toe with domestic opponents who have different ideas (“If you get hit, we will punch back twice as hard.” ), why is the president easing up on enemies who attack us? Our nuclear weapons will no longer be considered a response to enemy use of chemical or biological weapons:
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.
Those threats, Mr. Obama argued, could be deterred with “a series of graded options,” a combination of old and new conventional weapons. “I’m going to preserve all the tools that are necessary in order to make sure that the American people are safe and secure,” he said in the interview in the Oval Office.
White House officials said the new strategy would include the option of reconsidering the use of nuclear retaliation against a biological attack, if the development of such weapons reached a level that made the United States vulnerable to a devastating strike.
If we recognize that an enemy might use biologicals, reconsidering use of our nukes in retaliation after we are hit with a biological weapon is kind of too late and misses the point of deterrence. Will we really get any satisfaction from the look of surprise on our enemies' faces when we do reply with nukes? And at what point before use would we revise our options?
Nukes are our only option of responding to chemical or biological attacks. Why renounce that? We will have shown we'll take a hit with a psychologically damaging weapon and respond with a tickle fight. And yes, that's what it would be even if it was a devastating conventional response. Yes, we could do real damage with conventional weapons like fuel-air explosives and really big bombs, but the psychological effect of responding with nukes will be lost. WMD have a different fear level even if chemical and some biological weapons are objectively less dangerous than high explosives. I worry when we declare that we are willing to be terrorized.
Look, I haven't joined in any ritual condemnation of the president's proposed nuclear treaty with Russia. I want to see details about any potential linkage of defenses and verification issues. As numbers go down, verification becomes much more critical. And I don't want any limits on our missile defenses. In theory, I'm fine with a world without nukes--as long as it isn't a world only without American nukes, and who knows what rogue states have them (or have components ready to assemble).
Our conventional dominance makes it an advantage to have a world without nukes--which is why we won't get a world without nukes. Potential enemies will know they need nukes to deter our conventional power
Unless the second stage is to propose US conventional disarmament, too. You know, so potential enemies won't fear us at all and be "provoked" into building nukes. You never can tell with this crowd.
