Joe Biden’s arrival in the White House nearly a year ago seemed to herald a historic shift toward less U.S. reliance on nuclear weapons.
sent an estimated 100,000 troops to positions near Ukraine's border and demanded U.S. security guarantees. Biden and Putin discussed Ukraine by phone on Thursday, and senior American and Russian officials are scheduled to follow up with more detailed talks in Geneva on Jan. 9-10.
In March, in what the White House called interim national security guidance, Biden said China and Russia had changed “the distribution of power across the world." Since then, worries about China and Russia have only increased. Private satellite imagery revealed last summer that China was building large numbers of new underground silos for nuclear missiles, and in November a Pentagon report said China may quadruple the size of its nuclear stockpile by 2030.
In June, even before the latest Russian troop buildup near Ukraine, the Pentagon's policy chief, Colin Kahl, said the outlook for U.S. nuclear policy was colored not only by China's nuclear ambitions but also by “real anxiety” among U.S. allies in Europe over Russian defense and nuclear policy. The Pentagon has not publicly discussed details of the nuclear review, but the administration seems likely to keep the existing contours of the nuclear force — the traditional “triad” of sea-, air- and land-based weapons, which critics call overkill. It also may embrace a $1 trillion-plus modernization of that force, which was launched by the Obama administration and continued by Trump.
Eight years later, the Trump administration restated the Obama policy but got more specific. “Extreme circumstances could include significant non-nuclear strategic attacks. Significant non-nuclear strategic attacks include, but are not limited to, attacks on the U.S., allied, or partner civilian population or infrastructure, and attacks on U.S. or allied nuclear forces, their command and control, or warning and attack assessment capabilities.
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