MILITARY/NATIONAL SECURITY/NUCLEAR/TRUMP AS PRESIDENT: “The Pentagon put potential adversaries on notice that the U.S. might respond with nuclear weapons if it is the target of a major nonnuclear attack.
The warning, which is contained in a new plan called the Nuclear Posture Review, doesn’t specifically detail the circumstances that might lead the U.S. to retaliate with nuclear weapons.
But it is widely seen as a message that enemies that engage in cyberwarfare or attacks using germ weapons risk an American nuclear response.
The U.S., the review states, would consider using nuclear weapons only in ‘extreme circumstances’ to defend itself and its allies, including against ‘significant non-nuclear strategic attacks.’…
Pentagon officials asserted that the review doesn’t mean the U.S. is lowering the threshold for the use of nuclear weapons and insisted the policy was consistent with nuclear strategy during the Obama administration.
A similar nuclear review carried out by the Obama administration in 2010 also said the U.S. was prepared to retaliate with nuclear weapons under ‘extreme circumstances,’ though it offered no explanation as to what such circumstances might be.”
-Michael R. Gordon, “U.S. Outlines Plan on Nuclear-Weapons Use,” The Wall Street Journal online, Feb. 4, 2018 09:01am