Senior Policy Director Alexandra Bell talked to ThinkProgress about the forthcoming nuclear posture review.
“It’s concerning to me that the sections involving non-proliferation and nuclear security read as an afterthought,” Bell said. “It’s as if someone came along and said ‘You need to add this in.’”
Bell was also concerned with the passivity of the NPR, as if the advances made by “adversaries” like Iran, China and North Korea have happened in a vacuum, and the only way to counter them is to return to the Cold War-era arms race dynamics, instead of investing in non-proliferation efforts.
“There’s a very passive viewpoint in the NPR that these things are just happening to us,” she said.
The final, official draft of the updated Nuclear Posture Review is likely to be released in the coming weeks. Hopefully by that time, Bell said, officials will have taken into consideration the scale of their decisions.
“There’s no such thing as a limited nuclear war,” she said. “Once you start, you open the door for further nuclear [conflict and proliferation].”