Russia: We'll Nuke Preemptively

From the "world without nuclear weapons" file, Nathon Hodge reports that Russia is updating its nuclear doctrine to include an option to launch a first strike against a range of potential states - including non-nuclear ones:

In an interview published today in Izvestia, Nikolai Patrushev, the secretary of the Kremlin’s security council, said the new doctrine offers “different options to allow the use of nuclear weapons, depending on a certain situation and intentions of a would-be enemy. In critical national security situations, one should also not exclude a preventive nuclear strike against the aggressor.”

What’s more, Patrushev said, Russia is revising the rules for the employment of nukes to repel conventionally armed attackers, “not only in large-scale, but also in a regional and even a local war.”

Nothing has been officially approved by the Russian President. And before the predictable hysteria sets in, the United States contemplated the preemptive use of nuclear weapons against non-nuclear targets as well in 2005. Nevertheless, unsettling.

(AP Photos)