Draft U.S. paper allows commanders to seek preemptive nuke strikes

by soccerdad

The U.S. military plans to allow regional combatant commanders to request the president for approval to carry out preemptive nuclear strikes against possible attacks on the United States or its allies with weapons of mass destruction, according to a draft new nuclear operations paper. [snip]

The paper also underlined that the United States retains a contingency scenario of limited nuclear wars in East Asia and the Middle East.

"Geographic combatant commanders may request presidential approval for use of nuclear weapons for a variety of conditions," the paper says.

The paper lists eight conditions such as "an adversary using or intending to use WMD against U.S. multinational or alliance forces or civilian populations" and "imminent attack from adversary biological weapons that only effects from nuclear weapons can safely destroy."

The conditions also include "attacks on adversary installations including WMD, deep, hardened bunkers containing chemical or biological weapons" and countering "potentially overwhelming adversary conventional forces."

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Well isn't this just dandy. Lowering the threshold for using nuclear weapons doesn't seem like a good idea to me. Continually threatening people also doesn't seem like a good long term strategy. Of course given the ability of this regime to manufacture intellegence, given the increased role of the military in gathering intelligence, and given the MSM's willingness to carry the water for this admin I am getting a real sick feeling in my stomach. Off to rent Dr. Stranglove and On the Beach.