New York: President Barack Obama is rethinking US nuclear policy and is considering reducing the nation's arsenal by thousands of weapons, says a report in the New York Times.
The newspaper says that Obama would set out his new policy in a document the Nuclear Posture Review. The new strategy entails that the US develop no further nuclear weapons. White House officials reportedly told the daily that Obama would be resolving these questions in the coming week.
"It will be clear in the document that there will be very dramatic reductions in the thousands as relates to the stockpile," according to one senior administration official.
Sceptics aren’t too thrilled with a change in nuclear policy at a time when there is a danger of North Korea and Iran acquiring nuclear weapons.
Under the new policy, Obama will have to review how to reduce the situations in which the US can use nuclear weapons, and to assess its position about using nukes against chemical and biological weapons, the Times noted.
Obama, however, has already announced strengthening a much smaller arsenal, and the new strategy will also look at securing non-nuclear defences such as missiles.
"But under Obama's strategy, the missiles would be based at new sites around the US that might even be open to inspection, so that Russia and China would know that a missile launched from those sites was not nuclear, to avoid having them place their own nuclear forces on high alert," the newspaper said.
Comments
0 comment