Sen. Ed Markey said Wednesday that a reported Pentagon effort to expand the president’s nuclear options is dangerously misguided given who currently holds that authority. “Giving Trump more ‘usable’ nuclear weapons would be like giving matches to an arsonist,” Markey wrote on X, reacting to an NBC News report published the same morning. “We must make it harder for Trump to go nuclear, not easier. The Pentagon’s new plan is insane.”
What the Pentagon Is Actually Drafting
According to NBC News’ report, citing five people familiar with the plans, the Defense Department’s policy chief is drafting a new, classified nuclear strategy that emphasizes the potential use of shorter-range tactical weapons in the event of a regional war with China or Russia. The effort is led by Elbridge Colby, the deputy secretary of defense for policy, and would update the nuclear options presented to the president during a crisis. A senior Defense Department official told NBC: “Our view is that we need credible nuclear options,” describing the plan as intended to “expand the president’s option space by providing him with realistic and credible options and therefore strengthen deterrence.”
Why This Represents a Real Shift
The strategy departs from the approach the U.S. has generally relied on for decades. Rather than depending primarily on long-range strategic systems — intercontinental ballistic missiles, submarine-launched missiles, and strategic bombers — to deter adversaries by threatening massive retaliation, Colby’s draft would give greater weight to shorter-range, lower-yield tactical weapons intended for more limited, theater-level use. Colby has reportedly argued that adversaries already understand the U.S. is prepared to use such weapons, and that expanding those options makes deterrence more credible for regional scenarios involving attacks on U.S. allies, rather than relying exclusively on a threat of large-scale nuclear war that critics say can appear too extreme to be believable in a limited conflict.
Even Some Republicans Are Uneasy
The plan has drawn skepticism beyond Democratic critics like Markey. A senior congressional aide told NBC it was “hard to imagine a study that is more out of line with President Trump’s stated position of making our nuclear deterrent great again,” adding: “He clearly wants more options and capabilities, not less. This study is big-time low-T” — a characterization suggesting even some allies of the administration’s broader defense buildup see tension between Colby’s tactical-weapons emphasis and Trump’s own stated preference for expanding, not narrowing, U.S. nuclear capability.
Markey’s Long History on This Exact Argument
Wednesday’s post continues an argument Markey has made consistently across both Trump terms. After the first Trump administration finalized its 2018 Nuclear Posture Review, which similarly emphasized new low-yield weapons, Markey said in a statement posted to his Senate website that “Trump’s policies needlessly expand America’s nuclear warfighting capabilities by developing new ‘low yield’ nuclear weapons,” and that “this isn’t deterrence — it’s an invitation for America’s adversaries to expand and diversify their nuclear arsenals too.”
His Legislative Response So Far
Markey has translated that concern into repeated legislation. In December, he and Sen. Jeff Merkley reintroduced the HALT Act, formally titled the Hastening Arms Limitation Talks Act, which according to its official text on Congress.gov calls for “a comprehensive and verifiable freeze on the testing, deployment, and production of nuclear weapons and delivery vehicles for such weapons.” Announcing the bill, according to a press release on his Senate website, Markey said, “The United States must lead the world in halting and reversing a nuclear arms race — not spur it on. The HALT Act is a commitment to responsible American leadership on nuclear policy.”
Why New START’s Expiration Matters Here
The Pentagon’s reassessment comes at a specific inflection point. New START, according to the State Department’s own treaty page, placed verifiable limits on U.S. and Russian deployed strategic nuclear weapons and could only be extended once, meaning its February 4, 2026, expiration date was fixed well in advance. A Congressional Research Service report on the treaty’s expiration noted that U.S. and Russian officials had not negotiated a follow-on agreement since Russia’s 2022 invasion of Ukraine, and that Trump himself had responded to Russia’s proposal to informally continue observing the treaty’s limits by saying, “If it expires, it expires.” That expiration, combined with China’s continued nuclear expansion, is the backdrop administration officials have cited for why the U.S. needs updated options for deterring two nuclear-armed rivals simultaneously — the same context Markey’s HALT Act was written to address from the opposite direction, by seeking a multilateral freeze rather than expanded U.S. capability.
A Warning From the UN
The treaty’s lapse drew international alarm beyond the U.S.-Russia relationship itself. United Nations Secretary-General António Guterres called the expiration a “grave moment for international peace and security,” noting it marked the first time in more than half a century that the two countries holding the majority of the world’s nuclear weapons had no binding limits on their strategic arsenals, and urged both nations to return to the negotiating table to restore verifiable constraints.
The Core Disagreement, Explained
At the heart of the dispute is a genuine and long-running debate in nuclear strategy circles. Supporters of expanding tactical options argue that a president who has no realistic response short of massive strategic retaliation may simply choose not to respond to a limited regional nuclear provocation, undermining deterrence; critics, including Markey, argue that making smaller nuclear weapons feel more usable lowers the psychological and strategic threshold for using any nuclear weapon at all, and that this risk is compounded by whichever individual currently holds sole authority to order their use.
Markey’s Broader Case About That Authority Specifically
Markey’s post also reflects a separate, longer-running concern he has raised specifically about concentrated presidential authority over nuclear weapons, distinct from the tactical-versus-strategic debate. He has previously introduced the Restricting First Use of Nuclear Weapons Act, and after Trump’s 2018 tweet about the size of his “nuclear button,” Markey said the episode showed that “the launching of insults could lead to the launching of nuclear bombs” — the same underlying worry, that expanding presidential nuclear options is inherently more dangerous under an unpredictable commander-in-chief, that animates Wednesday’s “arsonist” comparison.
What Happens Next
Colby was expected to discuss elements of the strategy on August 5-6 during a private visit to U.S. Strategic Command’s Deterrence Symposium in Nebraska, though the document itself remains an internal draft rather than adopted policy. The administration has previously indicated it does not plan to conduct a full, formal Nuclear Posture Review in the style of prior administrations, meaning the strategy Colby is developing may take effect through internal Pentagon channels rather than the kind of public review process that would give Congress a formal opportunity to respond before it is finalized.
Where This Leaves the Debate
As of Wednesday, the strategy remained classified and in draft form, with no public release or formal congressional review scheduled. That leaves Markey’s characterization of the plan as “insane” and the Pentagon’s characterization of it as strengthening “credible” deterrence as competing interpretations of a document neither the public nor, in full, Congress has yet seen.