The document called “Nuclear Employment Guidance” was adopted in March, marking the first time when the US nuclear doctrine has been focused on Beijing’s rapidly developing nuclear capabilities, the New York Times reported on Tuesday, citing unnamed officials at the Pentagon and the National Security Council.
The document is updated roughly every four years and is so secretive that there are no digitized copies, according to RT.
Acting Assistant Secretary of Defense for Space Policy Vipin Narang told reporters earlier this month that Biden “recently issued updated nuclear weapons employment guidance to account for multiple nuclear-armed adversaries.” China’s growing nuclear arsenal was something the US “neither anticipated nor accounted for” during nuclear planning decades ago, he added.
Asked about the NYT report, White House spokesman Sean Savett said that “the guidance issued earlier this year is not a response to any single entity, country, nor threat.”
In 2023, the Pentagon estimated that China will double its stockpile of operational nuclear warheads to over 1,000 by 2030, “much of which will be deployed at higher readiness levels.” The US currently has 5,550 warheads and Russia has 6,255, according to estimates by the Stockholm International Peace Research Institute.
The revision of the nuclear strategy occurs amid the heightened tensions between the US and its NATO allies on one side, and China and Russia on the other, with both sides accusing each other of escalation over Ukraine and Taiwan.
Both Moscow and Beijing say that the US of inciting conflicts around the world and seeking to impose its will on other countries. Earlier this month, Chinese Defense Ministry spokesman Senior Colonel Zhang Xiaogang urged the US and their allies “to abandon their Cold-War mentality.”
During his trip to China in May, Russian President Vladimir Putin stressed that the “strategic partnership” between Moscow and Beijing “is not directed against anyone.”
SD/