It all started with the Clinton Administration in their second term in 1997...

Clinton Issues New Guidelines on U.S. Nuclear Weapons Doctrine

From November/December 1997

THE CLINTON administration quietly made a significant change in U.S. strategic nuclear doctrine in November by formally abandoning guidelines issued by the Reagan administration in 1981 that the United States must be prepared to fight and win a protracted nuclear war. The new presidential decision directive (PDD), details of which were first reported in The Washington Post on December 7, operates from the premise that the primary role of nuclear weapons in the post-Cold War era is deterrence. In a December 23 interview, Robert Bell, senior director for defense policy and arms control at the National Security Council, provided additional information about the PDD and clarified some misperceptions in the press with respect to the Clinton administration's policy on "launch on warning" and the use of nuclear weapons against a chemical or biological weapons attack.

New Guidelines

Due to its highly classified nature, many specific details about the PDD have not been made public. Nevertheless, Bell confirmed that "We have made an important change in terms of strategic nuclear doctrine in reorienting our presidential guidance away from any sense that you could fight and win a protracted nuclear war to a strategic posture that focuses on deterrence."

The administration made the decision to rewrite the old nuclear guidelines early in 1997. At that time, General John Shalikashvili, then-chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, explained to President Clinton that the United States could not reduce its nuclear arsenal to the level that was being discussed for START III (2,000 to 2,500 deployed strategic warheads) and carry out the objectives of the 1981 nuclear guidelines. Bell pointed out that this assumed that the goals of the old guidelines could ever have been realized—a skepticism that has been voiced by former Reagan administration officials. Hence, one key factor influencing the administration's decision to rewrite the old guidelines was that they were not compatible with the U.S. objective of achieving further strategic force reductions with the Russians.

Moreover, the administration viewed the 1981 guidelines as an anachronism of the Cold War. The notion that the United States still had to be prepared to fight and win a protracted nuclear war today seemed out of touch with reality given the fact that it has been six years since the collapse of the Soviet Union. In this connection, Bell said the 1981 directive "reads like a document you would expect to have been written at the height of the Cold War, not something that you would want operative today...."

Launch on Warning

Bell said the press had incorrectly indicated that the PDD "still allows" the United States to launch nuclear weapons upon receiving warning of an attack. Bell emphasized that "there is no change in this PDD with respect to U.S. policy on launch on warning and that policy is that we do not, not rely on it." In fact, Bell said "in this PDD we direct our military forces to continue to posture themselves in such a way as to not rely on launch on warning—to be able to absorb a nuclear strike and still have enough force surviving to constitute credible deterrence."

Bell pointed out that while the United States has always had the "technical capability" to implement a policy of launch on warning, it has chosen not to do so. "Our policy is to confirm that we are under nuclear attack with actual detonations before retaliating," he said.


Now the Obama Administration had eagerly taken up the scepter and is hard at work to getting this done and more.

Which brings me to the question...

If the United States has been directed to absorb the first strike...how many hits could it take and still have a surviving credible deterrence?