(no subject)

[stevenehrbar]

First use of nuclear weapons has never been renounced by the United States of America, ever, despite sixty years of the Soviet Union, Russia, China, and others asking for such a no-first-use declaration.  It's always been U.S. policy, since we built the first one, that we will use nuclear weapons when and if we find it necessary.  Pre-emptive counterforce has been a contingency the Pentagon has planned for since the Soviet Union tested its first nuclear wepon.  The escalation equivalence of chemical and biological weapons to nuclear weapons – "a WMD is a WMD"–- is also longstanding U.S. policy.

You don't have to like it, you can think it's wrong and bad.  But it's not an innovative new policy, it's the one we've had for decades.