that are party to the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty and in compliance--even in the event they attack us with chemical or biological weapons. This, of course, carves out an exemption for countries like Iran and North Korea -- and that is why it falls short of the goal.
From the Times:
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.
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.
Those threats, Mr. Obama argued, could be deterred with “a series of graded options,” a combination of old and new conventional weapons. “I’m going to preserve all the tools that are necessary in order to make sure that the American people are safe and secure,” he said in the interview in the Oval Office.
White House officials said the new strategy would include the option of reconsidering the use of nuclear retaliation against a biological attack, if the development of such weapons reached a level that made the United States vulnerable to a devastating strike.
http://www.nytimes.com/2010/04/06/world/06arms.html?ref=usFrom another source:
Compared with Bush-era threat of nuclear retaliation in the event of a biological or chemical attack, Obama administration's declaration of conditional no-use of nuclear forces could be regarded as significant progress in maintaining the non- proliferation regime.
But this new strategy still disappointed some progressives who argued that the U.S. should renounce the longstanding threat to use nuclear weapons first and declare unconditional no-use of nuclear arsenals against non-nuclear states, as some other major nuclear states have done.
http://english.cri.cn/6966/2010/04/07/1721s561571.htm