US to spark nuclear arms race: analyst

Leaked draft backs low-yield nukes

The US is provoking a global nuclear arms race if a leaked draft of a national security review is accurate, a Chinese analyst warned Sunday.

Washington plans to roll out more low-yield nuclear weapons, according to pre-decisional draft of the 2018 Nuclear Posture Review obtained by the HuffPost on Thursday.

The US will pursue development of the low-yield weapons as “supplements” that will “enhance deterrence” as “required in this much more challenging threat environment,” according to the draft.

Rather than being used for deterrence, low-yield nuclear weapons are promoted more like conventional weapons, Song Zhongping, a military expert and TV commentator, told the Global Times on Sunday.

“A US-led nuclear arms race is imminent,” he said.

Judging by the recently developed smaller B61-12 nuclear bombs that can be carried by US fighter jets, the US has clearly lowered its threshold on the use and deployment of nuclear forces, Song warned.

The lower threshold means that the US can respond to differing threats to its national security – even cyber-attacks and violent non-state actors such as terrorists – using these new low-yield warheads just like they were conventional weapons, he said.

The draft argues that Russia is threatening to use these smaller nuclear weapons and the US needs to match and deter the Russians in kind, the HuffPost reported.

The logic for low-yield weapon development is that the current US nuclear weapons are “too big and too deadly to ever use” and “to make sure other countries believe that we’d actually use nuclear force, the thinking goes, we need more low-yield nukes,” according to the article.

The US has continued to reduce the number and salience of nuclear weapons while others including China and Russia have moved in the opposite direction, the draft argues.

North Korea and Iran are also named in the report as elements of an evolving and uncertain international security environment.

A US Defense Department spokesperson declined to comment on the review.

The final version is scheduled to be released in February, the report said.

The US already has more than 1,000 low-yield nuclear warheads options, the HuffPost reported.

US President Donald Trump told a gathering of high-ranking national security leaders that “he wanted what amounted to a nearly tenfold increase in the US nuclear arsenal,” NBC reported in October 2017.