ACDN - Action of Citizens for Nuclear Disarmament
logo ACDN banniere ACDNVisiter ACDN
Accueil-Home ACDN Contact ACDN Consulter le plan du site - SiteMap Other Version
vous etes ici Homepage > News > External sources > Obama set to reject ‘nuclear posture’ on eve of Start deal with Russia
ACDN, What is it ?

News
Communiqués
External sources
Letters from ACDN
News Articles

Actions
2nd RID-NBC
3rd RID-NBC
Campaign "The Very Last Atom!"
Gathering for a Livable World

Petitions

Correspondance
International

Medias

Background papers

EUROPE

French Elections
News of the Presidential Campaign

Obama set to reject ‘nuclear posture’ on eve of Start deal with Russia
By Mikael EVANS


Published 2 April 2010

President Obama will rewrite America’s policy on nuclear weapons next week, heralding further reductions in the US stockpile and giving a pledge not to develop new systems.

Pentagon Correspondent, The Times,
April 2, 2010

After a review of the nation’s nuclear weapons arsenal that has involved, among others, the Pentagon, the Department of Energy and the intelligence services, as well as the White House, Mr Obama is expected to reject the doctrine on nuclear weapons - the “nuclear posture” - adopted by George W. Bush, which included the possibility of the United States launching an attack on a non-nuclear state.

The Obama Administration has come under pressure from arms control analysts to redefine the circumstances in which the US might consider using nuclear weapons, and to state beyond doubt that the justification for keeping them is purely as a deterrent.

After the President’s speech in Prague last April, when he laid out his personal vision of a world without nuclear weapons, the US has been carrying out a review of its nuclear posture and the conclusions are due to be published in a declassified version early next week - before Mr Obama flies back to Prague to sign the new Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (Start) with President Medvedev of Russia on April 8.
Related Links

President Bush tried but failed to persuade Congress to finance a new programme to develop more advanced “bunker-busting” nuclear bombs, as well as to design new atomic warheads. Now Mr Obama is expected to rule out the development of new weapons systems - despite reservations from the military, which is mindful that Russia and China are modernising and expanding their nuclear forces respectively. He will also drop the notion, espoused by his predecessor, that nuclear warheads can be deployed in certain circumstances; for example, if another country resorts to attacking US forces with chemical or biological weapons.

Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association in Washington, said that if Mr Obama redefined nuclear arms as purely weapons of deterrence, it would “eliminate the number of potential targets the US military think they need to hit”. It would also reduce the number of nuclear weapons the US believes it needs, he said, which could bring the total well below the 1,550 strategic warheads agreed under the new Start treaty announced last week.

One of the key issues is whether Mr Obama should agree to make a new declaration that the US will never be the first to use nuclear weapons - no first-use, as it is called. Under Mr Bush the policy was deliberately ambiguous.

The Obama Administration could declare a “negative security assurance”, under which the US would pledge never to attack a non-nuclear state with nuclear weapons, provided that they were loyal upholders of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT). “That would exclude North Korea and Iran,” Mr Kimball said.

In reviewing its nuclear arsenal, the US is considering withdrawing from Europe its last tactical nuclear weapons - 200 B61 gravity bombs - which are based in Belgium, Turkey, Italy, Germany and the Netherlands; all members of Nato. Under a longstanding agreement, the air forces of these countries would be expected to fly their own bombers carrying the American B61 bombs in the event of a conflict in which the US had approved the use of nuclear weapons.

A decision on this is not expected to be included in the revised nuclear posture, as it is a matter for discussion within Nato, which is developing an updated strategic concept. However, several countries say they want the nuclear gravity bombs to be withdrawn because there is no longer any justification for keeping them in Europe.

Mr Kimball said: “It’s not like the Red Army is going to be coming across Poland and Germany. Conflict between Russia and the US is unfathomable, but the nuclear weapons in Europe give the Russians the cynical excuse not to talk about their own strategy on tactical weapons.”


L'argent est le nerf de la paix ! ACDN vous remercie de lui faire un DON

Other versions
print Printable version
pdfPDF Version


Share through social networks

Also in this section

Gaza War Crimes: Israeli Government Contradicts its Own "Self-Defense" Argument
Worldwide nuclear disarmament is the only response to anarchic proliferation
Justice in Gaza - By Richard Goldstone
Is the world in for a new cold age?
Six Nobel Price Laureates: End the Nuclear Insanity
The Challenge of Disarmament: Still Nonviolence or Nonexistence
Revealed: how Israel offered to sell South Africa nuclear weapons
Five Nuclear Weapons State Commitment, 5 May 2010
The military’s problem with the President’s Iran policy.
World Summit of Nobel Peace Laureates: Final Declaration

navigation motscles

Barack Obama
Letter to President Obama
Democratic Nominee Barack Obama on Arms Control
Remarks by the President at the Acceptance of the Nobel Peace Prize
A Blow to Nuclear Power in Chicago
For a Middle East without Weapons of Mass Destruction
President Obama: "The United States will take concrete steps toward a world without nuclear weapons"
Nuclear Posture Review: Rhetoric vs. Reality
The "Peace President" Wants To Keep America’s Nukes
Nuclear disarmament
The four-handed game of French nuclear policy
Africa for Peace and Nuclear Disarmament
Joseph Rotblat - A scientist and a pacifist -
IRAN : No proliferation! No war!
The Farce of France’s Nuclear Strike Force
Ban Ki-moon address at NPT Review Conference
Cardinal Lustiger, the Church in France, and the Atom Bomb
A World Free of Nuclear Weapons
OPEN LETTER to the candidates for the Presidency of the French Republic and the Command of "PC Jupiter".
Robert Gates: Nuclear Weapons and Deterrence in the 21st Century
RUSSIA
Russian President Dmitry Medvedev speaks freely
The Paradox of Missile Defense
Good News from Russia: nuclear disarmament progressing... unintentionally!
Ballistic Missile Defense: the new Cold War
The second nuclear age
Tehran triangle: Russia, U.S. and nuclear power
War With Russia Is On The Agenda
START Treaty
USA
Barack Obama undertakes to work for the abolition of nuclear weapons
Israel asked US for green light to bomb nuclear sites in Iran
US Economy: Rudderless and Reeling From Direct Hits

visites :  1222088

Home | Contact | Site Map | Admin |

Site powered by SPIP
design et fonction Easter-Eggs