THE FIELD MARSHAL SPEAKS – AT 8:41 A.M. ET:  President Obama, fresh from his great victories in international affairs – in the immortal words of Dwight Eisenhower, if you give me a week, I might be able to think of something – is now changing America's nuclear-weapons doctrine.  Better start building those shelters.  Pre-fabs available from Home Depot.   From David E. Sanger and Peter Baker of The New York Times:

WASHINGTON — President Obama said Monday that he was revamping American nuclear strategy to substantially narrow the conditions under which the United States would use nuclear weapons.

That's like John Edwards rewriting the rules for women's dormitories. 

But the president said in an interview that he was carving out an exception for “outliers like Iran and North Korea” that have violated or renounced the main treaty to halt nuclear proliferation.

Discussing his approach to nuclear security the day before formally releasing his new strategy, Mr. Obama described his policy as part of a broader effort to edge the world toward making nuclear weapons obsolete, and to create incentives for countries to give up any nuclear ambitions. To set an example, the new strategy renounces the development of any new nuclear weapons, overruling the initial position of his own defense secretary.

Sure.  Why would we develop new weapons just because the Iranians are?  I don't know how long Bob Gates, a good defense secretary, will put up with this leftist stuff.

Mr. Obama’s strategy is a sharp shift from those of his predecessors and seeks to revamp the nation’s nuclear posture for a new age in which rogue states and terrorist organizations are greater threats than traditional powers like Russia and China.

Hey, guys, who fed you that line?  When it comes to nukes, traditional powers will be heavy hitters for decades to come. 

As far as the "sharp shift" from his precessors, I have a question:  Who would you trust on national defense?  Ronald Reagan or Barack Hussein Obama Jr.  Who would you trust?  George W. Bush or Obama?  Who would you trust?  Richard Nixon or Obama?  Who would you trust?  Harry Truman or Obama?

Don't you like easy pop quizzes?

This story worries me.  Get this:

It eliminates much of the ambiguity that has deliberately existed in American nuclear policy since the opening days of the cold war. For the first time, the United States is explicitly committing not to use nuclear weapons against nonnuclear states that are in compliance with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, even if they attacked the United States with biological or chemical weapons or launched a crippling cyberattack.

Yikes.

April 6, 2010