The Trump Administration’s Nuclear Posture Review (NPR): In Historical Perspective

Abstract

ABSTRACTExcept for the Eisenhower administration’s threat of nuclear retaliation to even local non-nuclear and limited aggression, the Trump administration’s Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) is the most open description of US capabilities and strategies for employing nuclear weapons in a wide range of contingencies. Blurring the distinction between non-nuclear and nuclear war, the 2018 NPR reverses the commitment in the Obama administration’s 2010 NPR to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in US grand strategy. It champions this wider role as warranted by three developments: the deterioration of the Post-Cold War relationships with Russia and China; new technologies which allow for precisely tailored nuclear attacks well short of mutual assured destruction (MAD) levels, and evidence that Moscow and Beijing are adopting such limited nuclear war capabilities and strategies; and the evident desire of other states and non-state actors hostile to the United States to acquire their own weapons of mass destruction and/or intimidation. But the 2018 NPR fails to show why modernized nuclear capabilities are better able to deter and defend against potential enemy aggression than technologicallyadvanced nonnuclear capabilities. Its presumption of controllable nuclear exchanges will reduce the calculations of risk and increase the likelihood of conflicts escalating to nuclear war.