In an interview with Sputnik, published this morning, military analyst Scott Ritter charged that U.S. nuclear policy, as described in the new Nuclear Posture Review, is nothing more than a U.S. effort to blackmail the world. He noted that Biden ran on a platform that said that he would be seeking what’s called the single-use policy for nuclear deterrence, but the new NPR breaks that promise. “The strategy that he has propagated recently is a strategy that continues the past practice of having deliberate ambiguity about the conditions and circumstances under which America could use nuclear weapons, up to and including a pre-emptive nuclear attack by the United States in response to a non-nuclear incident.” (https://media.defense.gov/2022/Oct/27/2003103845/-1/-1/1/2022-NATIONAL-DEFENSE-STRATEGY-NPR-MDR.PDF)
“Basically, the United States is holding the world hostage to its nuclear arsenal, saying that we reserve the right to use nuclear weapons, any time we determine, under any circumstances, so that we have a broader definition of deterrence, meaning that we are deterring,” Ritter continued. “But what are we deterring? You see, with a sole purpose declaration, we’re deterring a nuclear attack against us. But the current nuclear strategy is to deter something that is ambiguous in nature, meaning we haven’t precisely spelled it out. We’re leaving the world guessing. And what we’re saying is, ‘Don’t mess with us, or else we’ll nuke you.’”
Ritter argued that this has nothing to do with Russia and China and their nuclear arsenals. Rather, “this is about blackmailing the world. But we can’t tell the world that we’re blackmailing it. We have to blame it on China and Russia. But there’s no linkage whatsoever between the nuclear posture, as published by the Biden administration, and the nuclear arsenals of China and Russia.”
