Obama put new limits on US use of nuclear weapons

The Pentagon's 'Nuclear Posture Review' narrows the list of potential targets, reflecting new threats like global terrorism. But Obama reserves the US right to strike first with nuclear weapons. Washington

The Obama administration began its journey toward a world free of nuclear weapons by declaring that it would rely on such weapons less and conventional weapons more.

But in making what amounted to minor changes to its nuclear deterrence policy, it settled on the political middle ground, angering the left for what the administration didn’t do, and the right for what it did.

The Pentagon Tuesday released the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), a nearly 70-page, unclassified position paper that narrows the number of targets against which the US could use a nuclear weapon while maintaining the long-held right to launch first.