I’ll explain Biden’s nuclear strategy
The Chinese nuclear upgrade and the modernization of the Russian nuclear arsenal will induce the US to maintain nuclear first use. They will not adopt a no first use strategy. Here because. Carlo Jean's analysis
As vice president, Joe Biden had proposed in 2009 an alternative strategy to that of nuclear first use, which remained in force in NATO even after the end of the Cold War. It consisted in the commitment that the US president would have resorted to tactical nuclear weapons (now called sub-strategic), unable to hit Russian territory, if the advanced defenses were not able to repel even a conventional aggression. of the Warsaw Pact. If they too failed to stop the conflict, the US would have unleashed a devastating retaliation on Soviet territory.
Biden's idea was to diminish the role of nuclear weapons in NATO with what he called "sole purpose" and which would specify the circumstances in which the US President would authorize the use of nuclear weapons, on which he has always maintained a complete discretion. The "sole purpose" would have not only eliminated the existing ambiguity about the use of nuclear power, but certainly also provided a reduced spectrum of circumstances in which to resort to nuclear weapons. For some, such as gen. Arpino, the "sole purpose" would have no practical consequence. The authority on nuclear power would still remain in the hands of the US President, whatever the "declaratory strategy" might be, it would not change what matters, that is, the real strategy. For others, such as the former British defense minister, Robertson, it would be one of the pillars on which NATO stands. The Alliance would fall apart. Some states would seek agreements with Russia. Others would create national nuclear forces. Nuclear proliferation would risk being countered with preemptive attacks by Russia in Europe and China in Asia.
Nuclear weapons are an essential element of transatlantic coupling, that is, of the collective defense of the Alliance. During the Cold War they compensated for the conventional inferiority of NATO, deterring any aggression. The credibility of the coupling was guaranteed by the presence in Europe of substantial air-land forces and American nuclear weapons. Both were not only contributing to advanced defense. They were "hostages" to ensure the solidity of Washington's full commitment to the defense of Europe.
According to Biden, after the collapse of the USSR, NATO had a conventional superiority such as to exclude the use of nuclear weapons. Their role in the strategy of the Alliance could have been diminished, also to reduce the risk of their use by mistake and, to be able to block the escalation of an always possible conflict. Although not very comfortable, the ambiguity about the circumstances in which nuclear power would have been used, was and still is a necessary element to preserve the risk of its use. It is the foundation of the deterrence and the positive response to the dilemma of whether, to defend Hamburg, the US were willing to risk the destruction of New York.
Ultimately, the sole purpose, currently considered in the Nuclear Posture Review being drafted at the Pentagon, could consist of no first use, which would mean the end of the deterrence extended to Europe, hitherto protected by the “American nuclear umbrella”. It could also consist in deterring a nuclear attack on US territories and their allies. This would increase the risk of a purely conventional aggression against the most exposed allies. The meaning and concrete implications of the new strategy are unclear. They have never been illustrated in detail. Perhaps they will not even be in the new Nuclear Posture Review, which should be published in February 2022, nor in NATO's new Strategic Concept. According to others, it would be just gossip and propaganda, aimed on the one hand at the American public opinion, increasingly reluctant to take the risks of first use, and on the other hand, to the allies, to induce them to strengthen their conventional defenses.
Perhaps nothing will be done and the alternative to the current nuclear strategy will be postponed until better times. This is likely to be the case. Biden's claims of wanting to promote multilateralism would fall into ridicule just when, in comparison with China , the strength of the US lies in the strength of its alliances. Biden has no intention at all either to reduce the veil of American forces deployed in Eastern Europe and the Baltic (reinforced by Trump with the troops sent to the area under the European Reassurance Initiative), or to withdraw the few hundred B warheads from Europe -61 – undergoing modernization – still deployed in the territories of European NATO members. He knows well that the security of Eastern Europe and the Baltic and that of the US Asian allies cannot be achieved with direct defense, but only with deterrence, for which nuclear weapons and the threat of massive reprisals are an essential component.
The Chinese nuclear upgrade and the almost completed modernization of the Russian nuclear arsenal will induce the US to maintain nuclear first use. Their strategic weapons will maintain the current conditions of high operational readiness (launch on warning and launch under attack). They will not adopt a no first use strategy, which presupposes reducing their readiness, for example by storing warheads in places other than their launch vectors.
The President of the USA cannot accept constraints on his discretion. For this reason, he had opposed the "European bomb", foreseen in 1957 by the Franco-Italian-German agreements, before the gen. De Gaulle was to bury it definitively. The Force de Frappe or the 200 British newspapers (which will be increased to 260) do not guarantee credible deterrence. Only the US can do it. Only with "extended deterrence" can they maintain leadership in both Europe and East Asia.
This is a machine translation from Italian language of a post published on Start Magazine at the URL https://www.startmag.it/mondo/vi-spiego-la-strategia-nucleare-di-biden/ on Mon, 15 Nov 2021 16:54:07 +0000.