US only respects those that acquire nukes, threaten to use them: Analyst

The United States is telling the world that it only respects the countries which develop nuclear weapons and then threatening to use them against America, according to E. Michael Jones, an American scholar and political analyst in Indiana.

Jones, a writer, former professor, media commentator and the current editor of the Culture Wars magazine, made the remarks in a phone interview with Press TV on Saturday.

On Friday, the Pentagon released a new nuclear arms policy that aims to revamp US nuclear arsenal and develop new low-yield atomic weapons.

The latest policy was revealed in a Pentagon policy statement known as the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR).

The new policy, which came largely to counter Russia, effectively ends Barack Obama-era efforts to reduce the size and scope of the US arsenal and minimize the role of nuclear weapons in defense planning.

It also cast China as a potential nuclear adversary, saying the US arsenal is tailored to “prevent Beijing from mistakenly concluding” that it could gain advantage by using its nuclear weapons in Asia, or that “any use of nuclear weapons, however limited, is acceptable.”

Jones told Press TV that the new US nuclear weapons policy “comes at the same time that the United States is threatening to renege on the nuclear agreement that it made with Iran, and also at the same time that Donald Trump is threatening fire and fury on North Korea because North Korea wants to develop nuclear weapons.”

“In other words it is typical of the regime’s hypocrisy and double standards here. In other words the United States has the right to do whatever it wants to when it comes to the nuclear weapons, and no one else has the right to offer any type of challenge to that hegemony and supremacy,” he stated.

“The message of North Korea is clear: The only way you can get respect from the United States is by having nuclear weapons of your weapons of your own and then threatening to launch them at the United States. At that point the United States backs of and takes you seriously. This is certainly the case with other countries throughout the world as well,” he added.

“So by doing this they are foreclosing any type of possibility of persuading the world to back down from this nuclear showdown that they are driving,” the analyst noted.

“This is also happening at the same time that the United States is showing colossal incompetence in terms of conventional warfare, in terms of just the rudimentary elements of strategy that you need to know in order to be successful in projecting your influence,” he observed.

During his 2016 presidential campaign, Donald Trump promised to expand and strengthen US nuclear capabilities, unlike Obama who, during a famous speech in Prague in 2009, called for the elimination of nuclear weapons.

Barry Blechman, co-founder of the Stimson Center, a nonpartisan anti-nuclear proliferation think tank in Washington, has warned that the US is “on the cusp of a new era of nuclear proliferation.”

“This is the great nuclear danger raised by the new” nuclear policy, Blechman added.

The US is also considering upgrading its fleet of long-range strategic bombers such as B-2 and B-52 to deploy its arsenal of more than 7,000 nuclear warheads to any target around the world.