Pentagon Suggests Countering Devastating Cyberattacks With Nuclear Arms

A newly drafted United States nuclear strategy that has been sent to President Trump for approval would permit the use of nuclear weapons to respond to a wide range of devastating but non-nuclear attacks on American infrastructure, including what current and former government officials described as the most crippling kind of cyberattacks. For decades, American presidents have threatened “first use” of nuclear weapons against enemies in only very narrow and limited circumstances, such as in response to the use of biological weapons against the United States. But the new document is the first to expand that to include attempts to destroy wide-reaching infrastructure, like a country’s power grid or communications, that would be most vulnerable to cyberweapons.

Twenty nations agreed on Tuesday to consider tougher sanctions to press North Korea to give up its nuclear weapons and U.S. Secretary of State Rex Tillerson warned Pyongyang it could trigger a military response if it did not choose negotiations. A U.S.-hosted meeting of countries that backed South Korea during the 1950-53 Korea War also vowed to support renewed dialogue between the two Koreas “in hopes that it leads to sustained easing of tensions” and agreed that a diplomatic solution to the crisis was both essential and possible.

The nuclear pact between Japan and the United States that allows Japan to reprocess spent nuclear fuel and enrich uranium, automatically renewed Wednesday, after Tokyo made no move to end it by Tuesday, the deadline to do so. The bilateral nuclear agreement, which entered into force in July 1988, had authorized Japan to establish a nuclear fuel recycling system over 30 years to July 2018.

India has successfully test-fired a long-range intercontinental ballistic missile (ICBM), the country's Defense Ministry said Thursday. The nuclear-capable Agni-V is believe to be India's most advanced ICBM. It was fired Thursday morning India time from Abdul Kalam island off the coast of the eastern state of Odisha, the ministry said in a tweet. It called the test a "major boost" to the country's defense capabilities.

Upon entering office last January, President Donald Trump asked Secretary of Defense James Mattis to prepare a Nuclear Posture Review (NPR) that would lay out the Trump administration’s nuclear strategy. The document will soon be released, and while claiming to seek a world where nuclear weapons use is less likely, the review’s recommendations would actually expand the conditions under which the United States would use nuclear weapons. The draft NPR also seeks to add two new nuclear weapons to the American arsenal and would significantly lower the threshold for nuclear use. Sadly, the document gives short shrift to the need to revitalize the moribund arms control and reduction process, ignoring the best means the United States has to shape the strategic landscape and reduce the nuclear dangers that pose the greatest threats to us and our allies. For all if its complications, direct arms reduction engagement offers the best hope of heading off another disastrous cycle of nuclear one-upmanship between Washington and Moscow.

There seems to be a growing consensus among Serious Foreign Policy Intellectuals that the time is now ripe to mount a military operation against North Korea, much as in 2012 when the Obama took heed of the wise men counseling war and obliterated Iran’s nuclear program. Over at Foreign Policy, Edward Luttwak has captured the zeitgeist with a blunt piece under the modest title, “It’s Time to Bomb North Korea.”