Biden's Nuclear Posture Review

Tom Unterrainer

Key Points

● Biden’s NPR is a renouncement of most of the pledges made during his Presidential campaign in relation to nuclear weapons.

● Biden’s NPR demonstrates a significant degree of continuity with Trump’s NPR, which was met with widespread condemnation. Biden’s NPR has avoided similar condemnation to date.

● The continuity operates at two levels:

(1) declaratory policy and equipment;

(2) geopolitics.

● Specifically, Biden’s NPR:

(1) Maintains US declaratory policy with minor changes in language;

(2) Rubber-stamps a multi-billion-dollar modernisation of the US nuclear arsenal;

(3) Green-lights the development of Trump’s proposed W76-2 ‘low yield’ nuclear warhead, despite Biden previously describing it as a “Bad idea”;

(4) Cancels Trump’s plan for a nuclear-armed sea-launched cruise missile;

(5) Asserts the need for arms control but fails to outline a programme to advance the progress of such controls;

(6) Re-asserts that Russia and China are the main targets of any potential US nuclear use;

(7) Offers a dangerous picture of the role of US nuclear weapons at a time of acute nuclear risk.

● Biden’s NPR should be understood as dangerous and intimately connected to the sharp nuclear risks faced by humanity. We should pay particular attention to Biden’s NPR and US nuclear policy in general given the close nuclear alliance between the U.S. and UK and the membership of both in the nuclear-armed alliance, NATO, and with respect to the AUKUS agreement.

Context

A ‘Nuclear Posture Review’ is a process undertaken by the United States to determine the role of nuclear weapons in what the government and military term a ‘security strategy’. The process results in the release of a document, also referred to as the ‘Nuclear Posture Review’ [NPR], outlining the position. The first NPR was approved by President Bill Clinton and published in September 1994. A further four such processes have been undertaken and the outcomes published (not always in full, eg. 2002: Bush) since this date (2002: Bush, 2010: Obama, 2018: Trump, 2022: Biden).

NPR’s emerged in the ‘post-Cold War’ world when it might have been expected that the role of nuclear weapons would steadily diminish. This was not the case. Each and every NPR since 1994 has demonstrated the central role of nuclear weapons in U.S. strategy: from the alleged ‘deterrence’ function of such weapons to direct threats of use, including in response to non-nuclear attacks.

Background to Biden’s NPR

In 1990, then-U.S. Senator Biden claimed that the “military rationale for ‘first use’ [of nuclear weapons] has disappeared.” This was an early indication that he might be prepared to take a different approach to nuclear questions than the established norm. Thirty years later, candidate Biden wrote in Foreign Affairs “that the sole purpose of the U.S. nuclear arsenal should be deterring and, if necessary, retaliating against a nuclear attack. As president, I will work to put that belief into practice” [March 2020].

In the intervening three decades Biden served variously on the Senate Foreign Relations Committee and as Vice President of the United States under President Obama. During his time in the Senate, Biden voted for war in Iraq (1991), the former Yugoslavia (including the 1999 NATO bombing of Serbia), Afghanistan (2001) and Iraq (2002).

Obama

As Vice President, Biden supported President Obama’s early claim to be committed to a “world without nuclear weapons” [Prague Speech, April 2009] and subsequent declarations of alleged progress towards a “world without nuclear weapons” [Nuclear Security Summit, Washington, March/April 2016]. The 2010 NPR, released a year after Obama received the Nobel Peace Prize and two days before the US and Russia signed New START, promised significant reductions in nuclear weaponry and ruled out nuclear responses to non-nuclear attacks. At the same time, Russia warned of the risks associated with deploying ‘missile defence’ in Europe and the likely consequences of such systems [the US ‘Aegis Ashore’ system is now deployed in Poland and Romania]. Obama’s NPR recognised that China’s nuclear arsenal is much smaller than those of the US and Russia but criticised China for a “lack of transparency” that raised questions about overall “strategic intentions”. From 2009 onwards the Obama administration pursued a ‘pivot to East Asia’ [see 2012 policy] and away from the Middle East in the aftermath of the 2008 financial crisis where China’s intervention demonstrated its emergence as a world power and the failure of ‘nation building’ efforts in the aftermath of the illegal invasion of Iraq.

Obama’s welcome words about nuclear disarmament, the achievements represented by New START and the JCPOA and restraint on the development of new nuclear weaponry notwithstanding, the reality of Obama’s NPR was that it continued to assert a primary role for nuclear weapons in the US geostrategic outlook. It did nothing to fundamentally shift perspectives or introduce checks and restraints, as Trump’s 2018 NPR amply demonstrated.

Trump

Kate Hudson, CND General Secretary, wrote of Trump’s NPR at the time:

“the lid is being taken off the restraints on both new-build and nuclear weapons use. The most significant element of the review is commitment to a whole new generation of nuclear weapons, with the emphasis on low-yield, often described as ‘usable’. It should be pointed out here that the bombs used at Hiroshima and Nagasaki are technically low-yield in today’s parlance, so we are not talking about something small. The excuse underpinning this approach is supposedly that there are no real options between conventional weapons and all-out nuclear war, and that there should be more rungs on the ‘escalatory ladder’ … the increase in stated circumstances in which nuclear weapons could be used is a cause for significant concern. This includes against a group that ‘supports or enables terrorist efforts to obtain or employ nuclear devices’, as well as against ‘significant non-nuclear strategic attacks,’ including attacks on ‘civilian population or infrastructure’.”

If Obama’s NPR was a ‘disappointment’ for many sympathetic observers, then Trump’s NPR was acutely alarming for everyone concerned about the future of humanity. Trump’s overall nuclear posture was not confined to the terms set out in the 2018 Review but encompassed the steady and deliberate undermining and destruction of a whole series of treaties and agreements that fundamentally destabilised the ‘nuclear order’. Trump’s withdrawal from the INF Treaty, JCPOA (‘Iran Deal’) and Open Skies Treaty constituted a ‘Bonfire of Treaties’.

How to explain this disastrous approach? In the 2018 NPR the United States made the following ‘commitment’ to ‘Strengthening Deterrence in Europe’:

“The United States will make available its strategic nuclear forces, and commit nuclear weapons forward deployed to Europe, to the defense of NATO. These forces provide an essential political and military link between Europe and North America and are the supreme guarantee of Alliance security. Combined with the independent strategic nuclear forces of the United Kingdom and France, as well as Allied burden sharing arrangements, NATO’s overall nuclear deterrence forces are essential to the Alliance’s deterrence and defense posture now and in the future.”

The bulk of ‘analysis’ in Trump’s Nuclear Posture Review was given over to highlighting the ‘risks’ posed by Russia in particular and the growing ‘risks’ associated with China’s rise as a global power. The commitment to maintaining the ‘availability’ of US strategic nuclear forces as the “supreme guarantee of Alliance [NATO] security” – above and beyond the nuclear capabilities of Europe’s two declared nuclear powers – emphasised once more the degree to which the US continued to dominate the European defence and security agenda via its status as ‘superpower’.

The text of the Nuclear Posture Review, Trump’s highhanded conduct at the 2018 Brussels NATO summit and his unilateral withdrawal from the INF Treaty are rendered comprehendible by simple acknowledgement that the U.S. had enjoyed the status of an unrivalled hegemonic power – sole superpower status – since the collapse of the Soviet Union. Trump took reckless measures to shore up the U.S. position in response to the emergence of rival centres of global power. U.S. strategy aimed at destabilising global norms in an attempt to re-write the “rules” in their own favour. As the global situation develops from a unipolar to a multipolar order, as the risks of nuclear confrontation grow and in the absence of countervailing political will – governmental or otherwise – the U.S. has continued to assert itself in this manner. This means that NATO as an organisation and individual NATO member states continue to be subjects of U.S. dominance. In the context of a substantially expanded and expanding NATO, which pushed to the borders of Russia after the collapse of the Soviet Union against previously stated intentions of the organisation, the dominance of the U.S. within NATO structures pointed European states and their armed forces towards an increasingly confrontational posture.

If there was a clear ‘rupture’ between the Obama and Trump NPR in terms of the development of particular categories of weapon, the declared terms under which such weapons would be used and the overall language employed to talk about nuclear issues, there is some detectable ‘continuity’ in terms of ‘geopolitical’ approach. Such continuity is more obvious when Biden’s NPR is considered.

Biden’s posture pre-NPR

Biden as Presidential candidate and in the first few months of his Presidency put some effort into differentiating himself from Trump on nuclear questions. For example, during the 2020 campaign Biden sharply criticised Trump’s initiative for the W76-2 lower-yield nuclear warhead. He called it a “bad idea” and warned that it would make the US “more inclined” to use nuclear weapons.

Biden followed up on his March 2020 pledge on “sole purpose” use of nuclear weapons [ie. confirming that they would only ever be used in retaliation for a nuclear attack on the U.S. itself] by appointing a number of arms control specialists – people known to be sympathetic to such an approach – to the official body responsible for drafting a new NPR.

Even if any new NPR would, by default, continue to promote the centrality of nuclear weapons in the overall U.S. strategy, a commitment to scrapping the W76-2 and precise clarity on use threshold – “sole purpose” or “no first use” – would have been major events.

Outside the precise configuration of a new NPR, Biden had scope to undo some of the damage inflicted upon the ‘nuclear order’ by Trump’s “Bonfire of Treaties”. In the early months of his Presidency, he could have attempted to resurrect the INF and re-join the JCPOA process. There were reasons for optimism but none of this came to pass.

Not only did Biden make no efforts related to the INF and JCPOA – neither of which would have required Congressional approval ie. efforts could have been made by Presidential initiative alone – but Leonor Tomero, who Biden had appointed to oversee the NPR process, was sacked by the Department of Defense. According to a report in Politico (September 2021) Tomero was:

“a leading voice for nuclear restraint on Capitol Hill and in the think tank community, who was appointed to oversee the Nuclear Posture Review that will set the administration’s atomic weapons policy and strategy.

But officials with more traditional views on nuclear weapons, who promote a status quo agenda to include modernizing the land, sea and airborne legs of America’s nuclear arsenal, did not take kindly to Tomero’s progressive ideology, according to 11 current and former defense officials, as well as others with insight into the debate.

One current U.S. official who works on nuclear issues, when asked about Tomero, said he considers some of her positions dangerous in the face of Russian and Chinese nuclear advancements.”

In early 2021 the U.S. and Russia agreed to begin work on extending the life of the New START Treaty. Announcing the agreed extension, the US State Department commented that “President Biden pledged to keep the American people safe from nuclear threats by restoring US leadership on arms control and non-proliferation”. These words, from Secretary of State Anthony Blinken, make it sound like New START functions to only limit Russian nuclear weapons and that such US weapons are somehow a threat to no one. Around the time of the announcement, Elisabeth Eaves asked ‘Why is America getting a new $100 billion nuclear weapon?’ in the pages of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. She went on:

“America is building a new weapon of mass destruction, a nuclear missile the length of a bowling lane. It will be able to travel some 6,000 miles, carrying a warhead more than 20 times more powerful than the atomic bomb dropped on Hiroshima. It will be able to kill hundreds of thousands of people in a single shot. The US Air Force plans to order more than 600 of them.” (8 February, 2021)

Why, indeed? What or who was to be the target of such new missiles? Where were they to be stationed? …

The immediate consequences of the shift demonstrated by Tomero’s removal and similar developments can be detected in the U.S. refusal to engage with requests from Russia and more widely towards the end of 2021 for negotiations and diplomacy aimed at reducing nuclear tensions. The consequences can also be detected in the repeated insistence of Biden officials that previously bipartite treaties such as the INF should be modified to encompass China.

Examined from a distance and in light of subsequent developments, 2021 can be seen as a year in which nuclear and related tensions were slowly but surely ratcheted up: a year where opportunities for diplomacy were rejected, a year where brinkmanship determined all.

Biden’s NPR

After much delay – the result of internal strife within the US establishment and more significantly, perhaps, the awful events in Ukraine – Biden’s NPR was finally published on 27 October 2022. It was released to the US Congress in March 2022 and received lengthy deliberation. The publication of the NPR followed the release of the U.S. National Security Strategy [NSS] on 12 October 2022. These two publications are significantly interrelated. President Biden writes in the NSS that:

“We have … reinvigorated America’s unmatched network of alliances and partnerships to uphold and strengthen the principles and institutions that have enabled so much stability, prosperity, and growth for the last 75 years …

The United States will continue to prioritize leading the international response to … transnational challenges, together with our partners, even as we face down concerted efforts to remake the ways in which nations relate to one another.

In the contest for the future of our world, my Administration is clear-eyed about the scope and seriousness of this challenge. The People’s Republic of China harbors the intention and, increasingly, the capacity to reshape the international order in favor of one that tilts the global playing field to its benefit …

This is a 360-degree strategy grounded in the world as it is today, laying out the future we seek, and providing a roadmap for how we will achieve it …”

This statement alone registers the degree of geopolitical continuity between the outlook of the Trump and Biden administrations. Of course, this continuity stretches back to the Obama administration and before. Why? For the obvious reason that U.S. strategy maintains the necessity of overwhelming global influence and dictates that all measures must be taken to maintain such influence.

In the light of Iraq and subsequent U.S. policy – never mind the horrors of U.S. policy from the detonation of Atomic bombs over Hiroshima and Nagasaki, the murderous persecution of war against Korea, the war crimes inflicted on the people of Vietnam, to countless instances of military intervention across the world – it can be hard to stomach all these lies about the US as ‘defender of democracy’. Yet this is what you have to stomach if you read such documentation!

The NPR documents the basics of how the U.S. seeks to ‘defend democracy’ and the ‘rules based global order’ by threatening and preparing for nuclear megadeath. In this respect, Biden’s NPR maintains continuity with all previous such documents. According to its authors, Biden’s NPR:

“reaffirms a continuing commitment to a safe, secure, and effective nuclear deterrent [sic] and strong and flexible extended deterrence [sic]. Strategic deterrence [sic] remains a top priority mission for the … [DoD] and the Nation. For the foreseeable future, nuclear weapons will continue to provide unique deterrence [sic] effects that no other element of U.S. military power can replace. To deter [sic] aggression and preserve our security in the current security environment, we will maintain nuclear forces that are responsive to the threats we face.”

Shortly before this statement – which opens the 2022 NPR – was released, Biden told the world that:

“I don’t think there’s any such thing as an ability to easily use a tactical nuclear weapon and not end up with Armageddon.”

As Daryl G. Kimball points out in Arms Control Today (December 2022):

“Nevertheless, [Biden’s] NPR, released two weeks after his ‘Armageddon’ remark, leaves open exactly that possibility.”

Biden’s NPR can be judged under three main headings: (1) declaratory policy, (2) equipment and upgrades and (3) geopolitical posture.

(1) declaratory policy:

Biden’s NPR is a sharp repudiation of every message and signal sent out during the Presidential election campaign and subsequently. There has been no shift to a “sole purpose” or “no first use” stance, rather there has been a return to Obama-era language. Hans Kristensen and Matt Korda from the Federation of American Scientists (27 October 2022) write:

“The NPR reiterates the language from the 2010 NPR that the ‘fundamental role’ of U.S. nuclear weapons is to ‘deter nuclear attacks’ and only in ‘extreme circumstances.’ The strategy seeks to ‘maintain a very high bar for nuclear employment’ and, if employment of nuclear weapons is necessary, ‘seek to end conflict at the lowest level of damage possible on the best achievable terms for the United States and its Allies and partners.

Deterring ‘strategic’ attacks is a different formulation than the ‘deterrence of nuclear and non-nuclear attack’ language in the 2018 NPR [Trump], but the new NPR makes it clear that ‘strategic’ also accounts for existing and emerging non-nuclear attacks.”

So rather than clarify the terms on which the U.S. would consider using nuclear weapons, Biden’s NPR plays around with language. His NPR claims that a:

“thorough review of options [was conducted] for nuclear declaratory policy, including both no-first-use and sole purpose policies, and concluded those approaches would result in an unacceptable level of risk.”

Do the authors of Biden’s NPR – or Biden himself – think the world would be a more or less safe place if China, which maintains a ‘no-first-use’ posture, switched to an opaque posture? Biden’s NPR does not seek to explain why it would be risky to adopt a clear policy and it does not seek to explain why others should abandon such a policy. In fact, the type of policy embodied in Biden’s NPR – and replicated by the British, for example – carry enormous risk because they amount to a ‘first use’ policy.

(2) equipment and upgrades:

In reaffirming commitment to modernising the NC3 system – ‘Nuclear Command, Control and Communications’ – Biden’s NPR is effectively continuing with the same nuclear modernisation programme as the Obama and Trump administrations. Obama, Trump and now Biden committed the U.S. to vast expenditure in an effort to ensure U.S. nuclear dominance: the technical capability to launch a nuclear attack at any time and against any target, enhanced by a highly flexible and integrated monitoring, targeting and communications system alongside extensive nuclear arsenals. Registering this continuity illuminates decisions within Biden’s NPR.

Biden’s decision to discontinue manufacturing the proposed ‘sea-launched cruise nuclear missile’ [SLCM-N] despite sharp opposition in Congress and elsewhere and the decision to retire the B83-1 nuclear bombs appear as positive developments. However, the new missile and B83-1 have only been cancelled due to the overwhelmingly negative decision to go ahead with Trump’s “bad idea” [Biden’s words], the W76-2 “low-yield” warhead and other measures. Here’s how Kristensen and Korda describe things:

“In justifying the cancelation of the SLCM-N, the NPR spells out the existing and future capabilities that adequately enable regional deterrence of Russia and China. This includes the W76-2 …, the globally-deployed strategic bombers, air-launched cruise missiles, and dual-capable fighter aircraft such as the F-35A equipped with the new B61-12 nuclear bomb.”

Kristensen and Korba further describe the expanding nuclear boot-print in Europe:

“The [NPR] also notes that ‘[t]he United States will work with Allies concerned to ensure that the transition to modern DCA [dual-capable aircraft] and the B61-12 bomb is executed efficiently and with minimal disruption to readiness.’ The release of the NPR coincides with the surprise revelation that the United States has sped up the deployment of the B61-12 in Europe. Previously scheduled for spring 2023, the first B61-12 gravity bombs will now be delivered in December 2022, likely due to Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Putin’s nuclear belligerency. Given that the Biden administration has previously taken care to emphasize that its modernization program and nuclear exercises are scheduled years in advance and are not responses to Russia’s actions, it is odd that the administration would choose to rush the new bombs into Europe at this time.” [emphasis added]

‘Odd’? The ‘oddness’ can be rendered comprehendible if the geopolitical dimensions of current events – and the central role of nuclear weapons and nuclear threats in geopolitics – are taken into account.

(3) geopolitical posture:

If Biden’s NPR ‘falls short’ of the promises he made during the presidential campaign, this should come as no surprise. From a refusal to resurrect the INF Treaty and JCPOA, the development of AUKUS, refusal to engage with comprehensive nuclear talks with Russia beyond extending New START [now undermined by Russia’s suspension of cooperation], pressure on Japan to ditch pacifist aspects of its Constitution, the deployment of nuclear-capable aircraft to Europe, news of the return of U.S. nuclear weapons to Britain, winning European states to massive expenditure (‘Trumpian’) on the nuclear-armed alliance [NATO], ongoing opposition to the TPNW etc etc … it is clear that he is as committed to nuclear weapons as all other U.S. Presidents have been. Not only that, but it is clear from the NPR that nuclear weapons and U.S. nuclear weapon policy are at the heart of Biden’s posture – continuous from previous administrations – with regards to Europe and Asia.

Conclusions

Biden’s NPR is best viewed as a continuation of previous nuclear postures and even where some degree of ‘rupture’ is in evidence, such ‘rupture’ simply reinforces existing overall postures.

Of particular note is Biden’s decision to repudiate his previous stance and to advance the development of ‘low-yield’ nuclear warheads. With this decision, Biden has signalled that the U.S. considers nuclear weapons to be ‘practical’, war fighting devices.

At a time of heightened nuclear risk, Biden has decided to contribute to a vast increase in nuclear tensions. Refusing to clarify use policy and deploying/developing ‘useable’ nuclear weapons systems demonstrates a posture just as reckless and potentially deadly as that assumed by Trump.

Biden’s NPR makes explicit the fact that Russia and China are the intended targets of any nuclear use. Such plain facts coincide with and illustrate the potentially deadly implications of U.S. policy in Europe and South-East Asia.