(Adnkronos) – The United States will have to be ready to increase its nuclear force as a deterrent to the growing threat from China, Russia, and North Korea. The Wall Street Journal writes this, citing senior officials from the Biden Administration, stressing that a decision in this regard will be up to the newly elected President Donald Trump, who has yet to define his defense plans. During his first term, the Wall Street Journal recalls, Trump approved all major nuclear weapons programs inherited from the Obama administration and added two new nuclear systems.
Currently in effect in the U.S. is the ‘Nuclear Weapons Employment Planning Guidance,’ a highly classified directive signed earlier this year by U.S. President Joe Biden directing the Pentagon to develop options for deterring aggression by China, Russia and North Korea. All this while China is carrying out a major buildup of nuclear weapons, Russia is refusing arms control talks and North Korea is increasing its nuclear arsenal. Three countries that, among other things, are collaborating in the military field and thus are creating the risk that the United States will find itself facing multiple conflicts simultaneously.
What Biden wanted to do during his presidency, officials in his administration explain to the Wall Street Journal, was to focus on developing advanced non-nuclear systems and deepening military cooperation with allies in Asia and Europe to address potential dangers. However, the Pentagon is at the same time preparing for the possibility of deploying more nuclear warheads should these efforts prove insufficient. “If current trends continue, with Russia saying ‘no’ to arms control, China and North Korea beefing them up, there may be a need in the future to deploy more U.S. nuclear weapons,” a senior Biden administration official said on condition of anonymity.
A declassified report on nuclear employment guidelines to be sent to Congress in the coming hours states that “it may be necessary to adjust current capabilities, posture, composition, or size of the U.S. nuclear force” to be able to address “multiple adversaries who are making nuclear weapons more central to their national security strategies.”
Trump will have various options to add to what is known as the U.S. nuclear triad, namely a land-based missile component, a naval component with nuclear submarines and an air component with strategic bombers. The new U.S. president could add more warheads to Minuteman III land-based missiles, increase nuclear weapons on ballistic missile submarines and move forward with the development of a submarine carrying cruise missiles with nuclear weapons. A program that the Biden administration initially canceled, but which Congress reinstated.
The Trump administration “will inherit some rigorous tasks and options” in line with the recommendations of the congressionally appointed group to analyze security threats in the 2027-2035 timeframe, said Vipin Narang, until August a senior official at the Defense Department on nuclear issues. “Investing in conventional capabilities appears to be a much more efficient way to influence adversaries than spending on more nuclear weapons,” said Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists, a nonprofit security organization. “You can use conventional weapons and we have a nuclear arsenal that has been structured to handle a wide range of different scenarios,” he added.
