The headline in the Daily Telegraph blared out yesterday: “Joe Biden Ready To Use Nuclear Weapons First in ‘Extreme Circumstances.’” The subheadline reads: “U.S. President abandons plans to water down policy to ‘retaliation-only’ amid fears Vladimir Putin may deploy weapons of mass destruction.”
What this concerns, at least ostensibly, is the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) and Biden’s earlier statements suggesting that he would dial down U.S. policy on nuclear weapons, if not to a no-first use policy, at least to a statement that, as he said in 2017, “The sole purpose of our nuclear arsenal is to deter and, if necessary, retaliate, for a nuclear attack against the United States and its allies.” Candidate Biden repeated this statement in 2020, making it part of his election policy.
While there has long been opposition from U.S. allies and from the Republican Party in Washington against going to a no-first use policy, in the present circumstances, clearly additional pressure is now on Biden not to go “wobbly” on Russia. “In the current situation, it’s very challenging to make the case for ‘sole purpose.’ The optics are extremely bad when Russia is being as threatening as it is. You don’t want to look weak,” an arms control expert who consulted with Biden’s nuclear policy officials told the Telegraph. “It was on the President’s desk, awaiting his decision, then Ukraine happened. Pre-Ukraine, there was a chance the President would have gone ahead and made a ‘sole purpose’ declaration. He wanted to do that, but he didn’t have a lot of support in the Pentagon.”
