The Atlantic

Letting It Be an Arms Race

A leaked draft of the Trump administration’s nuclear-weapons plan imagines a more dangerous world.
Source: Kacper Pempel / Reuters

As Americans question whether President Donald Trump has the judgment necessary to command the most capable nuclear arsenal on earth, the Pentagon is moving to order new, more usable nuclear options. Trump’s Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), a Pentagon document that sets the nation’s nuclear policy, demonstrates an aggressive shift that will add to the spiraling cost of the nuclear arsenal, raise the risk of a nuclear exchange, and plunge the country into a new arms race, according to a draft published by HuffPost three weeks ahead of its planned release. Though the document is marked “pre-decisional,” insiders have told me it reflects the final text.

Trump’s NPR marks an abrupt shift from the last eight years, when the nation’s nuclear-weapons policy enjoyed a

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