A “Declaration” Jack Bauer Wouldn’t Make
Ted Bromund /
The President’s recently-released Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) has come under intense criticism for its revision of the U.S.’s declaratory policy, the statement that sets out when the U.S. would consider employing nuclear weapons. Declaratory policy has two purposes. Publicly, it’s a warning. Privately, it provides the military guidance for building and modernizing the U.S. force, and so ensures the U.S.’s weapons are actually useable in a crisis. In other words, it makes deterrence creditable, politically and militarily.
The new NPR goes into considerable, lawyer-like detail about what the U.S. might do in particular circumstances after it was attacked. But it forgets that the basic duty of the U.S. Government – and the basic purpose of the U.S. nuclear arsenal – is not to respond to attacks. It is to prevent them from happening in the first place. The NPR, by focusing only on retaliation, neglects this fundamental duty. It return the U.S. – for all the President’s claims to be making a bold new stride towards a world without nuclear weapons – to the Eisenhower-era emphasis on ‘massive retaliation,’ though in the context of a far smaller U.S. arsenal. (more…)