New Obama nuclear policy: major shift or status quo?

President Obama isn't wasting any time implementing more hope and change in the U.S.A.  Unfortunately, it involves hoping our enemies won't strike the U.S. with unconventional weapons, and a change in our long-standing, deliberately ambiguous nuclear policy toward nonnuclear states.  From The New York Times:

Mr. Obama’s strategy is a sharp shift from those of his predecessors and seeks to revamp the nation’s nuclear posture for a new age in which rogue states and terrorist organizations are greater threats than traditional powers like Russia and China.

It eliminates much of the ambiguity that has deliberately existed in American nuclear policy since the opening days of the cold war. For the first time, the United States is explicitly committing not to use nuclear weapons against nonnuclear states that are in compliance with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, even if they attacked the United States with biological or chemical weapons or launched a crippling cyberattack.

The Wall Street Journal minimizes the real impact of this change, and emphasizes the fact that Obama's strategy preserves (for now) the longstanding U.S. threat to use nuclear weapons first, even against nonnuclear nations  (I presume only the ones that are not in compliance with the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty).

I find it somewhat humorous that The New York Times is calling the changes a "sharp shift" in strategy and The Wall Street Journal is describing them as "modest."  Clearly the Grey Lady wants to reassure the left wing Peaceniks that Obama is systematically dismantling the nuclear policies of the evil George W. Bush.  The WSJ has sifted through the jargon, and found there's actually not much there there.