WASHINGTON – The Pentagon on Friday unveiled President Donald Trump’s nuclear strategy that stressed the importance of more “flexible” nuclear strategies and capabilities.
The new policy would introduce so-called “low-yield” nuclear weapons on submarine-launched ballistic missiles. The document also calls for the reintroduction of a nuclear submarine-launched cruise missile known as SLCM, which the Obama administration removed from the U.S. nuclear stockpile.
Officials of the Pentagon, the Department of Energy and the Department of State participated in the rollout of the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review.
One major theme in the NPR is how the world has become a much more dangerous place since the last NPR was conducted in 2010 and that a dramatically new approach is needed for the emergence of new threats.
The 2018 NPR mirrors a similar focus as the National Security Strategy and the National Defense Strategy by identifying and stressing the rising threats from Russia, China, North Korea, and Iran. This change in focus from counterterrorism to coping with these four countries has been consistent in all three documents.
The report has different “tailored” strategies for dealing with each of the U.S.’s four main antagonists – a term that was used throughout the press briefing and throughout the NPR.
Abandoning a “one size fits all” approach and developing more “flexible” nuclear capabilities will allow the U.S. to create specific and tailored strategies based on a singular threat and not a strategy built off of the consideration of a combination of threats, the NPR states.
The Undersecretary of Defense for Policy, John Rood, continued to make the point of needed flexibility and tailored deterrence throughout the briefing.
Anita Friedt, a representative from the State Department, said that while Russia and China are main focuses of the NPR – as they are in both the NSS and NDS – she did not want them to be considered as adversaries to the U.S. According to Friedt, both Russia and China were consulted about the NPR. Friedt even said she spoke with China on Friday before the report was released.
An unofficial draft of the document was obtained by Huffington Post and released earlier this month.