President Obama to Restrict United States Use of Nuclear Weapons

President Obama has announced a new nuclear weapons policy on the part of the United States.
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Barack Obama to restrict US use of nuclear weapons

The Obama administration is poised to adopt a new policy that would restrict America's use of nuclear weapons

London Daily Telegraph
Published: 6:00AM BST 06 Apr 2010

The policy review, expected to be released later today, is likely to include language reducing US reliance on nuclear weapons for its national defence.

The move away from nuclear arms reflects President Barack Obama's pledge to work towards a nuclear-free world, and could strengthen US arguments that other countries should either reduce stockpiles of nuclear weapons or forego developing them.

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The administration's new policy would stop short of renouncing the use of nuclear weapons except in retaliation to atomic attack, as some activists have advocated. But it would describe the weapons' purpose as "primarily" or "fundamentally" to deter or respond to a nuclear attack.

That wording would rule out the use of such weapons to respond to an attack by conventional, biological or chemical weapons. Previous US policy was more ambiguous.

In an interview with the New York Times, Mr Obama said his administration was explicitly committing not to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states that are in compliance with the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, even if they attacked the United States with biological or chemical weapons. Those threats, he told the newspaper, could be deterred with "a series of graded options" - a combination of old and newly designed conventional weapons.

Mr Obama said he would make exceptions for "outliers like Iran and North Korea," but that his new strategy was aimed at eliminating Cold War ambiguities about when such weapons could be used.