In an interview with the New York Times before the White House reveals the revamped strategy, Mr Obama said an exception would be made for "outliers like Iran and North Korea" that have violated the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty.

But in a striking departure from the position taken by his predecessors, he said the US would explicitly commit for the first time to not using nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states that adher to the nuclear treaty even if they attack with biological or chemical weapons.

After a review of the nation’s nuclear weapons arsenal that has involved, among others, the Pentagon, the Department of Energy and the intelligence services, as well as the White House, Mr Obama's much anticipated policy revamp comes as he prepares to fly to Prague on Thursday to sign the landmark Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (Start) with President Medvedev of Russia.

Bush's threat to use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states was simply shocking. And, I would argue, gave a huge incentive for non-nuclear nations to quickly think about getting the bomb if at all possible. And certainly his threat to possibly use nukes against non-nuclear states gave no incentives at all for other countries to adhere to the NNPT.

Obama is set to reverse all that and to renounce the development of new nuclear weapons.

In other words, under Obama, the United States is once again going to embrace the NNPT and the commitments it made under international law.

And, by entering into meaningful disarmament talks with Russia, the US is showing a serious commitment to fulfilling it's international obligations under NNPT.

After the rogue years of George W. Bush, when the United States routinely ripped up previous international commitments, Obama's position is like a breath of fresh air. This is how the United States used to lead the world. As Clinton said at the DNC:

People the world over have always been more impressed by the power of our example than by the example of our power.

Obama is leading by the power of the United States example. He is proposing a policy which is both moral and right. Slowly, the cobwebs of the dreadful Bush years are being blown away. America is once again deciding that force is not the only - or even the best - weapon in her arsenal.

UPDATE:

Why am I not surprised that Fox News have decided that Obama is, yet again, making America less safe? Indeed, they go as far here as to state that he is "inviting attack".

In 1986 at the Reykjavik summit, Ronald Reagan and Mikhail Gorbachev, both passionate about nuclear disarmament, shocked deterrence experts with an unimaginable proposal – total nuclear disarmament. “It would be fine with me if we eliminated all nuclear weapons,” said Reagan. “We can do that,” replied Gorbachev, “Let’s eliminate them. We can eliminate them.”

However, U.S. Secretary of State George P. Shultz explained that the proposal was “too much for people to absorb, precisely because it was outside the bounds of conventional wisdom,” and “the world was not ready for Ronald Reagan’s boldness.”

Search Osterley Times or the Web

Tortured.

Must Read

Must Watch

Obama '08

That is why the greatest danger of all is to allow new walls to divide us from one another.

The walls between old allies on either side of the Atlantic cannot stand. The walls between the countries with the most and those with the least cannot stand. The walls between races and tribes; natives and immigrants; Christian and Muslim and Jew cannot stand. These now are the walls we must tear down.