The Pentagon sees Russia’s military doctrine as a challenge to Washington’s nuclear deterrence concept, US Under Secretary of Defense for Policy John Rood said during the Aspen Security Forum.

Axar.az reports citing TASS.

During the conference, the defense official said Russia was boosting its tactical nuclear capabilities while "we haven’t produced a new nuclear weapon in this country in decades."

"But what we are doing under the Nuclear Posture Review is modernizing our nuclear deterrent, because we have to maintain a vital and capable nuclear deterrent. We also have to look across that spectrum and say, where there is a destabilizing activity, where we can restore deterrence, where is deterrence challenged," Rood said.

"And that challenge we think is in the Russian doctrine that seems to believe that at a certain level they could use small nuclear weapons against the United States and our allies and not face a similar response," he continued.

The US under secretary of defense once again accused Moscow of violating the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) treaty.

"We have to also <…> be concerned about the future and we work with others to persuade the Chinese, the Russians that these sorts of approaches are not stabilizing, that they are not going to lead to the sort of security they want. And we work collaboratively where we can, for example, find a solution to the things like preserving the type of agreements we had, the New START treaty or other agreements. We have to do that together," he said.