Trump Yönetiminin Nükleer Strateji İncelemesi: İyi, Kötü ve Çirkin Beklentiler

Anticipating the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly in the Trump Administration’s Forthcoming Nuclear Strategy Review

Anticipating the Good, the Bad, and the Ugly in the Trump Administration’s Forthcoming Nuclear Strategy Review Arms Control Now Blog Libby Flatoff Thu, 08/06/2026 - 15:02 August 7, 2026 The U.S. Defense Department decided earlier this year to conduct a “nuclear strategy review“ rather than a more formal Nuclear Posture Review. The last formal Nuclear Posture Review was completed in late-2022 by the Biden administration, which informed the Pentagon’s 2024 update of the Pentagon’s “Nuclear Weapons Employment” guidance plan. According to an Aug. 5 NBC News report, Undersecretary for Defense Policy Elbridge Colby, who is leading the review, says he wants to de-emphasize – but not necessarily eliminate – the long-standing requirement for “damage limitation” capabilities, which calls for a massive strategic nuclear attack against a U.S. nuclear adversary to try to destroy as many of their nuclear forces as possible. At the same time, Colby reportedly says the Pentagon wants to create more “credible” options for the president to threaten to or to wage a nuclear war at the regional level with tactical nuclear weapons. We believe the proposed shift in strategy could, if it phases-out the “damage limitation” requirement, reduce certain risks, but adding more tactical nuclear strike options would complicate the tenuous nuclear deterrence relationships the United States maintains with other nuclear-armed states and increase the risk of nuclear war. Here’s why: The so-called “damage limitation” requirement that has been used to justify the size and structure of U.S. strategic forces has driven up the numbers of U.S. and Russian nuclear forces for decades. It is past time to discard this approach. The “damage limitation” requirement calls for deploying enough nuclear forces to destroy most, if not all, adversary nuclear forces before they can launch. It also makes nuclear war more, not less, likely because it incentivizes states like Russia or China to launch their nuclear weapons sooner in a crisis if they believe they are under nuclear attack, and before any long-range U.S. weapons can arrive and destroy them. U.S. “damage limitation” requirements thus lead to much larger nuclear warhead force requirements and a relatively larger and more costly U.S. nuclear arsenal, which currently stands at about 1,800 promptly deliverable warheads, including warheads carried by land-, sea-, and air based strategic launchers, and tactical aircraft. Certain voices in the Pentagon and Congress, as well as outside of Congress, have called for an expansion of U.S. strategic forces to account for the growth in China’s nuclear arsenal. They claim this would allow the United States to “limit the damage” in an all-out nuclear war. In reality, it would likely accelerate nuclear competition and lead to increases in the U.S., Russian, and Chinese arsenals. If the U.S. Defense Department were to drop the “damage limitation” concept, there would be no plausible rationale for United States to increase the size it is arsenal in response to changes in the Chinese or Russian force size. It would facilitate progress if the Trump administration were to actually try to renew talks on nuclear arsenal reductions with Russia and/or nuclear arms restraint talks with China. Trump and his team have talked about doing so, but they have not taken any meaningful steps to get sustained serious negotiations underway. But it would not be smart if, as Colby is reportedly suggesting, the Pentagon were to put an even stronger emphasis on threatening to use or preparing for the use of “tactical” nuclear weapons in a regional war with China or others. As Reagan and Gorbachev declared in 1985, “a nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought.” ACA strongly opposes the administration’s decision to build more tactical nuclear weapons to supplement the options that exist. The United States already has at least two types of tactical nuclear weapons in the stockpile: the B61-12 gravity bomb and the W76-2 low-yield warhead for the Trident II submarine-launched ballistic missile. The new long-range standoff weapon, an air-launched cruise missile with an adjustable yield, will enter service soon. The Navy is also acquiring a new nuclear-capable sea-launched cruise missile (SLCM-N) that may be available at the end of the decade for possible use in conflict with China. Without a firm rejection of the option to use nuclear weapons first in a conflict, by building and fielding more tactical nuclear weapons the administration is signaling its intention to use them against enemy forces and industrial infrastructure in a conflict. Regardless of how many nuclear weapons the United States has or the strategy the United States employs, the risks to the United States and our allies, particularly front-line states, of the possible U.S. first use of nuclear weapons in conflict would be grave. Once nuclear weapons are used in a conflict involving another nuclear-armed state, there is no guarantee that any use of nuclear weapons, even on the smallest scale, could reliably be expected to remain limited. The bottom line is that it remains in the U.S. interest — and that of every other country — for the nuclear-armed states to severely minimize the role and the number of their nuclear arsenals and negotiate verifiable agreements that move us in the direction of a world without nuclear weapons. — DARYL G. KIMBALL, Executive Director, and XIAODON LIANG, Senior Policy Analyst