World Naval Developments

Making Deterrence Work

In May the Obama administration announced a new national nuclear policy. Its most striking feature is the pledge that, if a country that has signed the nuclear non-proliferation treaty should attack the United States with other weapons of mass destruction (chemical or biological), the U.S. response will be non-nuclear. President Barack Obama has said that one of his goals is to help bring about the abolition of nuclear weapons, and the new policy is clearly a carrot intended to help achieve that end: sign the treaty and you are safe from U.S. nuclear attack (though not from a "devastating conventional response").