A new report claims that President Joe Biden approved changes to the United States’ nuclear strategy earlier this year, ordering U.S. forces to prepare for potential nuclear confrontations with China, Russia, and North Korea.
On Tuesday, The New York Times reported that the plan approved by Biden was not made in response to an individual country or threat.
Sean Savett, a National Security Council spokesperson, said, “This administration, like the four administrations before it, issued a Nuclear Posture Review and Nuclear Weapons Employment Planning Guidance.”
Savett added, “While the specific text of the Guidance is classified, its existence is in no way secret. The Guidance issued earlier this year is not a response to any single entity, country, nor threat.”
According to The New York Times, the nuclear policy change comes as Russian President Vladimir Putin has threatened to use nuclear weapons against Ukraine and as officials have estimated that China’s nuclear arsenal will rival the size of the U.S. and Russian nuclear stockpiles over the next 10 years.
Arms Control Association Executive Director Daryl Kimball explained that while the United States intelligence agencies estimate that China could increase the number of its nuclear warheads from 500 to 1,000 by 2030, Russia already has 4,000 nuclear warheads “and it remains the major driver behind US nuclear strategy.”
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According to The New York Times, while Biden approved the Nuclear Employment Guidance policy revisions in March, Congress has not yet been provided with an unclassified notification of the White House’s policy changes.
The New York Times also reported that two senior Biden administration officials had previously been given permission to discuss the nuclear strategy changes without acknowledging the Nuclear Employment Guidance. The outlet reported that Pranay Vaddi, a senior National Security Council director, warned in June that “absent a change” in current Chinese and Russian nuclear strategies, the United States was preparing to potentially expand its nuclear arsenal.
According to The New York Times, Vaddi said the U.S. nuclear policy changes emphasized “the need to deter Russia, the PRC [People’s Republic of China] and North Korea simultaneously.”
The New York Times reported that former Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy Vipin Narang recently acknowledged that the president had “issued updated nuclear weapons employment guidance to account for multiple nuclear-armed adversaries,” as well as “the significant increase in the size and diversity” of the Chinese nuclear arsenal.
“It is our responsibility to see the world as it is, not as we hoped or wished it would be,” Narang stated. “It is possible that we will one day look back and see the quarter-century after the cold war as nuclear intermission.”
