To insure the ability to deliver just such strikes, "The NPR concluded that the current alert posture of U.S. strategic forces with heavy bombers off full-time alert, nearly all ICBMs on alert, and a significant number of SSBNs at sea at any given time should be maintained for the present."
Speaking of the U.S. global missile shield project in early February, Under Secretary of Defense for Policy Michele Flournoy said "We believe this approach will provide reassurance to our allies that the United States will stand by our security commitments to them and will help to negate the coercive potential of regional actors attempting to limit U.S. influence and actions in key regions." [10]
No nation on earth will be permitted to respond to American political and military intrusions in its neighborhood or off its coast. And potential first strike-related interceptor missile deployments will be installed under the guise of protecting the U.S.'s "allies and partners."
The allies and partners in question are first of all the other 27 members of NATO, which are covered under the bloc's Article 5 mutual military assistance provision and, for the most part secondarily, other military client states throughout the world. The partners that Clinton emphasized the Nuclear Posture Review included as covered by the U.S. nuclear umbrella and conceivably even to launch nuclear attacks on behalf of.
Possible scenarios for the implementation of this policy include, with the U.S. intervening on behalf of the first belligerent, conflicts or confrontations between:
-Israel and Iran, Lebanon and Syria or any combination of the three.
-The Persian Gulf monarchies - Bahrain, Kuwait, Oman, Qatar, Saudi Arabia and the United Arab Emirates - and Iran.
-South Korea and North Korea.
-Japan and North Korea.
-Colombia and Venezuela and Ecuador.
-Georgia and Russia over South Ossetia and Abkhazia.
-Canada and Russia in the Arctic Circle.
-Taiwan and China.
-Azerbaijan and Armenia over Nagorno Karabakh. Armenia hosts a small contingent of Russian peacekeepers and is a member of the Russian-led Collective Security Treaty Organization. In a major conflict between the two South Caucasus countries Turkey, a NATO member, would be pressured to intervene on behalf of Azerbaijan.
-Moldova and Transdniester. The second also has Russian troops on its territory and NATO member Romania would almost certainly enter the fray on Moldova's side should a major armed conflict erupt.
-A resumption of fighting between Djibouti, where the U.S. bases its Combined Joint Task Force-Horn of Africa and approximately 2,000 troops, and Eritrea in the Horn of Africa, with pressure on American client Ethiopia to intervene as it did in Somalia in 2006.
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