President Joe Biden approved an unprecedented nuclear strategy in March that would alter the country’s deterrent with aims to focus on China’s expanding nuclear arsenal, the New York Times said.
The document, named “Nuclear Employment Guidance,” is currently classified, though the Times said it might be unclassified before the end of the Biden administration. According to federal law, the president must submit a report to Congress no later than 60 days before the implementation date of the new strategy.
The revised document reportedly would aim, for the first time, to prepare the United States for potential nuclear challenges from China, Russia, and North Korea. Particularly, according to prior comments from Vipin Narang, former acting assistant secretary of defense for space policy, the new guidance would account for “the significant increase in the size and diversity” of China’s rapidly expanding nuclear arsenal.
“We have a nuclear enterprise that is sized for a post Cold War era,” Narang said at the 2024 U.S. Strategic Command Deterrence Symposium in Omaha, Neb. this month, a few days after he left the DOD on Aug. 9. He also said at this event that while “there is no substitute for nuclear weapons,” the U.S. “can’t break the NNSA” by requesting weapons numbers and modernization targets unreachable for it.
Meanwhile, Pranay Vaddi, special assistant to President Joe Biden and senior director for arms control, disarmament, and nonproliferation at the National Security Council, said at an Arms Control Association event in June that the new nuclear strategy would focus on “the need to deter Russia, the PRC and North Korea simultaneously.”
Vaddi also said that the U.S. should also be concerned about the collaboration and technology sharing between these nations, as China and Russia are conducting military exercises together.
“Absent a change in the trajectory of adversary arsenals, we may reach a point in the coming years where an increase from current deployed numbers is required,” Vaddi said. “If that day does come, it will result from a determination that more nuclear weapons are required to deter our adversaries and protect the American people and our allies and partners.”
According to a declassified document by the National Nuclear Security Administration (NNSA), the U.S. nuclear stockpile had 3,748 warheads as of September 2023, a few more than its October 2021 numbers of 3,713 warheads.
The White House and the Department of Defense did not reply to the Monitor’s request for comment. NNSA did not comment.
