The U.S. national security strategy released Wednesday did not contain the Joe Biden Administration’s unclassified nuclear posture review or call for extreme changes to the nation’s nuclear-weapons philosophy.
“Nuclear deterrence remains a top priority for the Nation,” reads the 48-page, 23,000-word national security strategy, which devotes roughly 400 words to nuclear weapons.
“The United States will not allow Russia, or any power, to achieve its objectives through using, or threatening to use, nuclear weapons,” the strategy, long delayed by Russia’s second invasion of Ukraine, reads.
However, “We remain equally committed to reducing the risks of nuclear war. This includes taking further steps to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in our strategy and pursuing realistic goals for mutual, verifiable arms control, which contribute to our deterrence strategy and strengthen the global non-proliferation regime.”
The strategy reiterated Biden’s support for some kind of verifiable arms control agreement to succeed the New START nuclear arms control treaty between the U.S. and Russia, which expires in 2026 and limits each country to no more than 1,550 warheads deployed across 700 intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and heavy bombers, while possessing no more than 800 deployed and non-deployed bombers, ICBM, and SLBM launchers.
The strategy also mentions:
- China’s growing nuclear arsenal, which will require the U.S. by the 2030s “ to deter two major nuclear powers, each of whom will field modern and diverse global and regional nuclear forces.”
- Diplomacy with North Korea, “to make tangible progress toward the complete denuclearization of the Korean Peninsula, while strengthening extended deterrence in the face of North Korean weapons of mass destruction and missile threats.”
- Continuing diplomacy with Iran to ensure that the Islamic republic “ can never acquire a nuclear weapon, while remaining postured and prepared to use other means should diplomacy fail.
Meanwhile, the White House’s full nuclear posture review remained at large as of Wednesday. Administration officials had said the unclassified posture review might arrive with the national security strategy. Congress received a classified nuclear posture review in March.
Also in March, the Pentagon released a one-page summary of the nuclear posture review, in which the administration said it wanted to cancel the nuclear-tipped, sea-launched cruise missile the Donald Trump administration ordered in its own nuclear posture review in 2018 and reverse the Trump administration’s decision to save the B83 megaton-capable gravity bomb from retirement.
Congress, for the most part, ignored those recommendations in a foursome of yet-to-be-reconciled defense authorization and appropriations bills that set spending limits, policy and budgets for fiscal year 2023.
