United States Nuclear Strategy: The Threat Perception

At a time when the United States Administration under President Obama is taking a relook at the country's nuclear strategy it would be interesting to evaluate some of the key aspects of its concerns emanating from around the world. Does the United States perceive of a threat that the country will be under a nuclear attack? No one can say without doubt that the chances are negligible. The risk of a nuclear attack on the United States continues to be possibility. However unlike the era of the cold war, the dynamics of global politics has changed, so has the risk assessment.

At the onset, before we proceed to evaluate the current threat perception of the United States, it is important to make an underlining statement - the threat perception changes from whichever position you are looking at the whole global dynamics. For instance, someone reading the same threat perception from China would different view from how an Indian will evaluate it.

Before I proceed further, I would like to mention a note for my readers, for any effort to draw a successful understanding of the threat perceptions of the US we have to evaluate the current international scenario from their perspective. A perspective from the other side can be gained and will be helpful only after we know how the United States looks that the whole scenario. In future articles, I will attempt to write the perspective from the other side of the fence taking each country into account. My effort will also be to ensure that the article is of a readable length so that it does not try to push too much into you as readers. I will therefore try to break-up this article accordingly to make reading a pleasure. All along your comments both in the form of bouquets and brickbats will be definitely welcome and I look forward to providing my response as much as I humanly can.

Back to the topic of our discussion!

Specifically speaking, the United States today faces a 'clear' threat of a nuclear attack; however the threat may not be of a 'present' nature. To put it succinctly, the threat emanates from two broad categories of actors and another third one lying somewhere in between the first two. It would be these three broad categories that President Obama and his aides will be closely evaluating as the review the nuclear policy and strategy of the United States. They concern will be to address each of these concerns and the threats emanating from them individually or in a combined form.

Which are these Three Categories of Threat?

For the convenience of our understanding we could broadly classify these three categories as being

(a) State Actors: Legitimate nations that have nuclear capabilities and are capable to attacking the United States.

(b) Non-State Actors: Broadly categorized as forces not possessing legitimate power in any country but having the capability of undertaking a nuclear attack on the United States. One of the greatest threats under this category comes from terrorist groups like the al Qaeda among others. It could also include other organized gangs and mafia seeking to hurt the United States.

(c) The third category threat lies somewhere in between the earlier two. These are the non-state actors working in connivance with the state actors. Internationally the existence of this category is hugely debated. It needs to be mentioned that the perception of threat emanating from this category wholly depends on the perception of a nation, in our case the United States.

I will undertake a detailed assessment of each of these three categories in my next article to be titled United States Nuclear Strategy: Threat Assessment. Meanwhile if you have any comments, feedbacks or opinion please feel free to express them.