The Pentagon is rewriting how the U.S. would use nuclear weapons in a crisis, aiming to give the president more choices short of an all-out nuclear war, a top defense official said.
Elbridge Colby, undersecretary of defense for policy, said he’s working with Adm. Richard Correll, head of U.S. Strategic Command, on a “relook” at nuclear employment guidance. Mr. Colby revealed the review this month at a Strategic Command conference in Omaha, Nebraska.
His biggest worry isn’t a surprise attack — it’s a regional war spinning out of control. “What I would fear more is a regional war,” Mr. Colby said, “a kind of local war, conventional war that might have local employment, God forbid, of nuclear weapons that could escalate from there as it, as it expanded outward.”
The review comes as China builds up its nuclear arsenal at a pace U.S. military leaders call “breathtaking,” including more than 300 new missile silos in western China. Russia and China also hold far bigger stockpiles of small, low-yield nuclear weapons than the U.S. does.
Mr. Colby stressed the goal is adding options, not changing America’s basic nuclear policy. Declared U.S. policy remains unchanged: Nuclear weapons deter attacks on the U.S. and its allies and would be used only in extreme circumstances.
Read more:
• Pentagon reviewing plans for low-level nuclear war
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