U.S. to release Nuclear Posture Review Tuesday: White House

The United States will on Tuesday release its Nuclear Posture Review, which establishes U.S. nuclear policy, strategy, capabilities and force posture for the next five to ten years, the White House announced on Monday.

White House spokesman Robert Gibbs said the new document will build momentum before the Global Nuclear Security Summit to be held on April 12-13 in Washington D.C.

It will be only the third NPR to date, the previous ones issued by the Clinton and George W. Bush administrations.

Analysts have been expecting a major change in Obama administration's nuclear strategy from the previous Bush administration, which adopted a mainly hawkish policy on nuclear issues and emphasized on both offensive and defensive nuclear capabilities.

Obama has sought to reduce the role of nuclear weapons in defense policy, with the ultimate goal of ridding the world of nuclear weapons, which he proposed in a Prague speech in April 2009.

One of the most controversial issue in this document is under which circumstances the U.S. reserves the rights to use nuclear weapons and whether the U.S. will make a no-first-use declaration, as some progressives had hoped.

Another issue is the vexed subject of extended deterrence, sometimes referred to as the nuclear umbrella. Through military alliances, the U.S. has agreed to extend its nuclear umbrella over its allies and friends. Under Obama's conception of a world without nuclear weapons, whether the U.S. should strengthen or reduce its extended deterrence has drawn a huge debate among experts and officials.

Source:Xinhua