Wednesday Briefing: The U.S.’s Secret Nuclear Strategy

President Biden approved in March a highly classified nuclear plan that reorients America’s deterrent strategy to focus on the rapid expansion of China’s nuclear arsenal. The Pentagon believes China’s stockpiles will rival those of the U.S. and Russia over the next decade.

The revised strategy, called the Nuclear Employment Guidance, also seeks, for the first time, to prepare for possible coordinated nuclear challenges from China, Russia and North Korea.

The document, updated every four years or so, is so highly classified that there are no electronic copies, only a small number of hard copies distributed to a select few officials. Two Biden administration officials were allowed to allude to the change in recent speeches, ahead of a more detailed, unclassified notification to Congress expected before Biden leaves office.

The new document is a stark reminder that whoever wins in November will confront a changed and far more volatile nuclear landscape than the one that existed just three years ago.

Context: In the past, the likelihood that adversaries of the U.S. could coordinate to outmaneuver the country’s nuclear arsenal seemed remote. But the emerging partnership between Russia and China and the conventional arms that North Korea and Iran are providing to Russia for the war in Ukraine have fundamentally changed Washington’s thinking.