Editorials

Is new strategy enough?

(China Daily)
Updated: 2010-04-08 07:50

Editor's note: Although the Obama administration's new nuclear strategy marks a major departure from his former administration, it still seems only significant in its symbolism and there is still a big gap between the new strategy and the expectation of arms control advocates.

The United States is attaining the moral high ground with its new nuclear arms strategy, announced on Tuesday. Many have called US President Barack Obama's new policy of reducing the role of nuclear arms in the national security strategy a bold shift from his predecessors.

While it does indicate that the Obama administration is pushing for a world free of nuclear arms, the new policy - known as the Nuclear Posture Review - is still, more or less, only significant in its symbolism. To the disappointment of many arms control advocates, the US stops short of promising that it would never be the first to use nuclear weapons.

The pledge that the US will not use or threaten to use nuclear arms against nations without the destructive weapons is also restrictive. Moreover, the new policy has done little to reduce the US' reliance on nuclear weapons as a deterrent.

Sure, the new policy marks a major departure from the Bush-era nuclear doctrine that lowered the threshold of nuclear weapons usage and weakened the international call for non-proliferation. Released two days before the slated signing of a nuclear disarmament treaty between the US and Russia in the Czech capital of Prague and a week before the Nuclear Security Summit to be held in Washington, the US' new nuclear strategy gives it more bargaining chips in future multilateral negotiations.

Given the overwhelming US superiority either in conventional weapons or in nuclear weapons, the international community is justified in urging the superpower to take an even more defined and concrete stance in nuclear security and disarmament. We hope that the Nuclear Posture Review is one of many steps toward that direction.

(China Daily 04/08/2010 page8)