2022 US Nuclear Posture Review: No Urgency on Nuclear Arms Control

The Biden Administration, at the end of last month, released its unclassified version of the National Defense Strategy (NDS) and Nuclear Posture Review (NPR). Several significant flaws in the Administration’s NDS and NPR have already been the subject of extensive commentary. The most glaring contradiction in the NPR is the stated desire for “a world free of nuclear weapons,” while it describes no concrete or measurable steps to achieve this goal, justifying this by stating a requirement of “enduring improvement in the security environment” before pursuing abolition. Another serious gap, however, has generally received much less attention: the failure to recognize the impact of the rapid development of disruptive military technology on a shrinking window of time to negotiate effective nuclear arms control agreements.

Although the NPR does reaffirm a United States commitment to arms control, and Administration officials have said that discussions with Russian representatives will begin “in the near future,” nothing in the NDS or the NPR indicates any requisite urgency.

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