Yesterday, the Pentagon released what is called the 491 Report, an unclassified description of Presidential nuclear employment guidance issued by President Joe Biden earlier this year, according to a Pentagon press release. “The updated Guidance accounts for the new deterrence challenges posed by the growth, modernization, and increasing diversity of potential adversaries’ nuclear arsenals,” the release says. “It builds on the findings of the 2022 National Defense Strategy and Nuclear Posture Review, and directly informs development of nuclear employment options for consideration by the President in extreme circumstances to defend the vital interests of the United States and its allies and partners.
“The Guidance also directs that the United States plan to deter multiple nuclear-armed adversaries simultaneously; requires the integration of non-nuclear capabilities where feasible to support the nuclear deterrence mission; stresses the importance of escalation management in U.S. planning for responding to limited nuclear attack or high-consequence non-nuclear strategic attack; and enables deeper consultation, coordination, and combined planning with allies and partners in order to strengthen U.S. extended deterrence commitments.”
The six-page document itself is quite detailed but completely in line with the Global NATO narrative of Russia, China and North Korea—and non-nuclear Iran in league with the others—as global nuclear threats. “Any one of these nuclear challenges would be formidable itself, but the evidence of growing collaboration and collusion between Russia, the P.R.C., the D.P.R.K., and Iran makes the situation even more challenging,” it says. “There is a possibility of coordinated or opportunistic aggression by a combination of adversaries in a crisis or conflict, which requires U.S. strategists to think carefully about complex escalation dynamics and deterring multiple adversaries simultaneously, including in extended crises or conflicts.”
