Trump’s Nuclear Posture Review: A Call to Nuclear Arms

Nuclear Disarmament Briefing Paper by John Burroughs
The U.S. Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) released February 2, 2018 views the world as a dangerous, lawless environment, marked by military competition among great powers.
As to nuclear disarmament, the most the Trump NPR offers is a grudging general acceptance of arms control measures for purposes of stability and predictability with perfunctory references to the “long-term goal of eliminating nuclear weapons and to pursuit of “political and security conditions that could enable further nuclear reductions.” It thus stands in marked contrast to the 2010 review conducted by the Obama administration, which committed the United States to seek the eventual achievement of a world free of nuclear weapons and addressed how to succeed in that endeavor in some detail. Instead, it resembles the 2001 review done under the George W. Bush administration.