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April 21, 2009
Exclusive: U.S. Nuclear Deterrence Policy at Critical Crossroads – Will a Weaker Policy Make Us Safer?
U.S. nuclear deterrence policy is at a critical crossroads, perhaps not seen since the dawn of the nuclear age. This is a result of a number of factors that have simultaneously come to the fore. These include the proliferation of nuclear programs in North Korea and Iran; the reaction of the American people to the extended fight in Iraq and Afghanistan that has resulted in “war weariness”; the continued assertion by critics of U.S. foreign policy that the primary cause of the terrorist attacks against the United States has been the presence of U.S. forces overseas and an over aggressive defense policy including our nuclear weapons deployments; and the growing sense that a game changing strategy was necessary to eliminate the growing threat of nuclear terrorism.
A new strategic analysis has emerged in this environment that sees U.S. nuclear weapons not as the guarantor of extended deterrence to our allies and friends, nor as the most critical element of our security policy. Former Secretary of Defense Les Aspin has presaged this view when he wrote about the threat of nuclear armed rogue states such as Iraq, Iran and others who with but a handful of such weapons could prevent the United States from coming to the defense of its allies. He saw the U.S. nuclear deterrent as not being worth very much. States with lots of nuclear weapons could no longer control or deter those nations with but a handful of such weapons.
Though he left us too early, others expanded on Aspin’s viewpoint. Nuclear weapons began to be seen as the cause of proliferation itself – how could the United States maintain its status as a nuclear power while at the same time urging other nations to get rid of their nuclear weapons? With the end of the Soviet Union and the Cold War, it became less apparent what our nuclear deterrent forces were designed to do, absent the former Soviet threat to invade Western Europe with its massive Warsaw Pact conventional armed advantage. What were they now designed to deter?
Further adding to the changing view of nuclear weapons were the nuclear test explosions of India and Pakistan during the latter part of the 1990s. This was coupled with the U.S. Senate defeat of the ratification of the CTBT, or the Comprehensive test Ban Treaty. Added to that was the failure of the Russian Duma to ratify the START II treaty in the same form as had been approved by the US Senate, further stalling the reduction in US and Russian nuclear arsenals to the 3,500 warhead level, some 9000 warheads lower than the deployed weapons in the U.S. arsenal in 1980.
Although the Bush administration successfully reduced Russian and U.S. deployed nuclear arsenals to no more than 2,200 warheads, it received little credit. Unfortunately, the extended wars in Iraq and Afghanistan overcame any perceived benefit to the sharp reduction in nuclear weapons, even the elimination of the Libyan nuclear program and the initial deployment of missile defenses. All of these things made America safer, but the perception appeared to be otherwise.
And it was not that the U.S. had not “won” in either Afghanistan or Iraq. We had eliminated the Taliban and Saddam, two key objectives. But the length of the conflicts and their difficulty came to dominate the news. As Chris Mathews explained, if the wars had gone relatively well, we, the press, explained Mathews, wouldn’t have paid any attention.
Unwilling to defend a war whose unpopularity steadily climbed, previous supporters and now opponents of the war explained the conflict through resort to numerous conspiracy theories – that the war to eliminate Saddam Hussein was trumped up in order to steal Iraqi oil or to perpetuate a “war machine” to increase Pentagon spending, or to institute laws such as the Patriot Act to stifle political dissent. So dominant and acrimonious did Iraq become in the debates over defense spending and defense policy, other key elements were put on the back burner. But this also affected the debate – low level as it was – on nuclear weapons policy.
On nuclear issues, for example, the Bush administration was unwilling to make a continued strong case for its nuclear posture review, including the 2002 Moscow treaty agreement with Russia, the U.S. missile defense architecture and proposals to sustain the nuclear infrastructure. Opponents saw the review as little changed from previous administrations, and even charged the administration with blurring the line between nuclear and conventional forces, (untrue in fact). Further problems emerged because there was insufficient high-level administration interest in the subject, which in turn was exacerbated by a decades-long neglect of nuclear matters following the end of the Cold War. This neglect was heightened during the Clinton administration when two successive senior military commanders of U.S. nuclear forces questioned the utility of our nuclear deterrent.
This neglect had the unfortunate effect of largely leaving the nuclear playing field to critics – those who sought the diminution of the US nuclear arsenal and the elimination of any modernization of the force. For example, two U.S. academics wrote that the U.S. had secured an overwhelming nuclear advantage over the Russians, in part due to the relative low level of Russian investment in its aging nuclear forces following the elimination of the former Soviet Union. They claimed the U.S. had deliberately engineered the Moscow Treaty to give America a pre-emptive first strike capability against the Russian nuclear forces, sufficient in capability to eliminate all but a handful of Russian warheads. And these remaining weapons, they explained, would easily be disposed of by the planned US missile defense systems.
While the Russians in practice seemed oblivious to this supposedly lethal threat as they continually deployed their submarine forces not at sea but tied up at their dock-side berths, close military advisers to President Yeltsin and then President Putin claimed the U.S. was indeed seeking the capability to destroy all of Russia’s military capability with a nuclear weapons strike in a bid to turn the former Soviet Union into what they described as a vast “natural resource mine”, from which the U.S. would extract by fiat oil, gas, gold, molybdenum, and other important raw materials. [Although it was never explained who would work in such an environment saturated with nuclear fallout].
The implication, of course, of the charge the U.S. was seeking a first strike capability was that the U.S. nuclear arsenal was far greater in size or capability than was warranted by simple deterrence needs. While this entire argument completely ignored the nuclear modernization effort engineered by Vladimir Putin while chief of staff to President Yeltsin and later as President of Russia, it was at the top of the list of the concerns of the “weakness brings peace” crowd, otherwise known as “arms control” groups by the drive-by media.
In a major piece of scholarship, Mark Schneider of the National Institute of Public Policy published in Comparative Strategy a full analysis of Putin’s expanded Russian nuclear programs, including earth penetrating weapons as well as low-yield weapons capable of tactical or battlefield use. To make up for a rapidly declining conventional capability, Russian military doctrine emphasized the primacy of nuclear weapons and even viewed their use against nuclear or non-nuclear armed states as central to Russian military doctrine. It was even described as a “de-escalatory tactic.” By the late 1990s, some ten years after these initiatives, the Russians could credibly claim that over 80% of their nuclear arsenal by 2016 would be fully modernized.
But the absence of any serious debate over the extent of and implications of Russian strategic nuclear modernization left most American policy makers ignorant of this growing threat. The assumption had been that Russian investment in military matters in general had degraded seriously. It was in this context that it became perceived wisdom that Russia, because of its economic woes, could not maintain a nuclear force in excess of 1,000 deployed nuclear warheads. This was based in large part in an off-hand comment by a Russian official of the force level Russia could maintain without additional investment in its nuclear arsenal over the immediate future. This was adopted by serious observers of the strategic nuclear environment as well as by more casual editorial writers. Over one million citations can be found for “1,000 nuclear warheads” as the magic number to which the United States should rapidly repair. But as Sen. Jon Kyl, Arizona Republican and second ranking Republican member of the U.S. Senate observed April 21st in a speech sponsored by the National Defense University Foundation and the National Defense Industrial Association, what is the basis for assuming reducing to such a low number is consistent with US security and maintaining America’s deterrent? There is none, he explained.
To many, it may seem that 1,000 nuclear weapons, however deployed, are plenty to maintain deterrence. But the key is how would such numbers be deployed, and how you could maintain their security and safety. For example, each U.S. Trident submarine can carry roughly 200 warheads. Five submarines would be sufficient therefore to deploy 1,000 warheads, which probably 1-2 of these submarines being at sea at any one time. This means, however, that a scientific breakthrough allowing the oceans to become transparent puts our entire deterrent at risk. Those submarines in port can easily be destroyed. Those at sea could be attrited over time. On the other hand, one could deploy all 1,000 warheads of land-based missiles, each with one-warhead. To realistically take out such a force in a first strike would take somewhere in the neighborhood of 2,000 warheads, far in excess of the number allowed under an arms control regime which limited each side to 1,000.
However, depending upon one technology for your nuclear deterrent invites real trouble. What if there is a technological failure, where a key component of either your land or sea-based ballistic missile fleet becomes degraded or shows early failures? This would put the nation’s security at serious risk. And that is why throughout the nuclear age the U.S. has deployed a triad of nuclear forces, which now include 450- land based Minuteman missiles, 14 Trident submarines carrying some 336 D-5 missiles and an assortment of B-2 and B-52 strategic nuclear bombers.
Those who see U.S. military primacy as either immoral or dangerous want U.S. nuclear deployments on each of our missiles not to be able to “upload,” what they term as “excess warhead capacity.” Under the Moscow Treaty of 2002, there are not limits placed directly on the missiles and bombers we deployed but on the imputed total warhead deployments given the number of missiles and bombers in the U.S. inventory. So we could have 450 Minuteman missiles but most deployed with one warhead. In fact, on many of these missiles, the U.S. affixed a special bulk-head which requires extensive work, over many months to be able to change the warhead loadings from one back to the three the Minuteman usually deployed over its now 30 year lifetime.
Those who wish to limit U.S. power want a new treaty to require all missiles and bombers to count under arms control rules at their maximum loading capability. In the case of missiles, this is usually the number of “dummy” warheads carried during a flight test at any one time. The D-5 missiles can carry up to eight warheads, but is now deployed with a range of between 3-4 warheads. In this way, the U.S. has met the Moscow Treaty requirement to reach the 2,200 deployed warhead totals by 2012.
But using the rules being proposed, a force of some 1,000 warheads could allow the U.S. to deploy some 333 Minuteman missiles, but no submarines or bombers. Conversely, we could deploy five submarines but no ICBMs or bombers. If each of the Triad legs was reduced proportionately, and counted at the maximum load possible, we would end up with a force of 90 ICBMs, 68 SLBMs on three submarines, and less than a dozen bombers. In the parlance of the strategic nuclear strategist, the Russians would have 1000 warheads aimed at roughly 100 aim points – ICBM silos, submarines, and bomber bases combined. In a crisis, the temptation to go first would be significant and could lead to grave instability in a crisis, even the outbreak of war.
On the other hand, allowing the U.S. and Russia to deploy fewer nuclear weapons on each of their missiles than their maximum capability, the U.S. could deploy its existing force of 450 Minuteman, 14 submarines and some dozens of strategic bombers, limit strategic warhead deployments to even as low as 1,500 warheads, while at the same time allowing the ramp-up of our arsenals if the security situation changes. Prudence requires the latter capability be maintained, because with close to 500 nuclear inventory aim-points, no adversary under say a 1,500 warhead regime or even 1000 warheads, will have the realistic capacity, even theoretical, to take out the other countries’ nuclear arsenal in a surprise or sudden “bolt out of the blue” attack. Any attack designed to destroy as much of an adversary and his nuclear capability as possible would require one’s forces to be generated. This would be seen by U.S. satellites, warning us to put more of our submarines at sea and our bombers on alert. Reducing nuclear weapons to artificially low numbers also increases the risk of the rise of an additional peer competitor such as the PRC, further compounding an already unstable international environment.
Thus, forcing the U.S. to deploy all countable warheads at their maximum loading simply increases strategic instability. Allowing an upload capability is important as an insurance policy, but there is an additional consideration that bears examination. Critics of U.S. nuclear policy are calling for the U.S. to eliminate any “additional nuclear weapons” in our non-deployed stockpile so that even if we maintain a larger nuclear force of missiles and submarines in order to lessen the chance of a pre-emptive, decapitating strike, and load such a force at less than the maximum capability, no upload would be possible.
But there is one glaring weakness with this suggestion. Tactical or battlefield nuclear weapons are not included. They have been taken off the table by the United States. And Russia does not want to talk about such warheads which it has by the thousands while the U.S. has only hundreds. Thus in the context where such tactical nuclear weapons are not counted in the next arms control regime, the Russians will be able to add such tactical warheads to their strategic platforms and upload, while the U.S. would be frozen at our deployed weapons levels. These tactical nuclear weapons have the same physics package as strategic weapons. Thus, instead of 1,000-1,500 Russian weapons aimed at 100-500 U.S. nuclear targets, the Russians would have in excess of 3000 warheads, a 6-40 to 1 ratio. This compares to roughly 4 to 1 today under the Moscow Treaty of 2002 with each side having 2200 deployed warheads.
Finally, the 1000 notional warhead level suffers from not having been rigorously examined by the congressionally mandated Strategic Forces Commission, the Nuclear Posture Review or the Quadrennial Defense Review. It apparently is a number that has been plucked out of thin air, simply because it ends in “zero” and is less than the number now deployed by the United States. Even upon cursory examination, it has little attractiveness, and would most probably dramatically increase strategic instability, worsen crisis stability, and undermine U.S. security. Given the push within the so-called arms control community for a force level with no uploading capability and no non-deployed stockpile, including no limits on tactical nuclear warheads, such a force level would gravely harm US security and undermine the deterrent value of the U.S. nuclear forces and their value as an extended deterrent for our allies, thirty one of which now depend upon us for such protection.
In addition, if the most serious security problem facing the U.S. is the rogue state with a nuclear weapons capability, such as North Korea and Iran armed with ballistic missiles and allied with terror groups, concentrating on reducing US and Russia deployed nuclear arsenals is a policy that has things backward. Our nuclear deterrent is required to curtail the hegemonic ambitions of North Korea and Iran, to the extent they can be deterred. Leaving ourselves weakened under foolish and artificial counting rules would not help with either Iran or North Korea.
Arms control gimmicks should thus be left at the school house door, and not brought into the halls of government power, where the wrong decision could get us all killed. The attractiveness of announcing some “game-changing” position on nuclear weapons policy in order to entrance North Korea, Iran and their terrorist allies into giving up their nuclear weapons ambitions simply doesn’t pass the smell test.
In reality, there is little if any evidence to conclude that a weakened U.S. nuclear weapons policy, curtailed modernization, or unstable deployments would positively affect the gathering threats from nuclear terrorism on the part of the “wicked” in the world. We should not be tearing down our deterrent in the hope that a dramatically changing U.S. policy will magically transform our world. A strong, robust, flexible, and stable US nuclear deterrent remains a key pillar in upholding the peace and security of the free world.
Eight years ago, Donald and Fred Kagan introduced their new book, While America Sleeps, at a National Defense University event some eight months prior to 9/11. They said:
“Experience reveals that when the states most interested in preserving the peace are weaker than dissatisfied states willing to advance their cause through war, the result is war and that a foreign policy not backed by sufficient force is doomed to failure. But these are unwelcome lessons that impose unwelcome responsibilities. The absence of an immediate threat permits democracies to focus on domestic discontent. Maintaining a secure international climate through adequate military power seems an unnecessary luxury.”
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Peter Huessy is President of GeoStrategic Analysis, a defense consulting company in Potomac, Maryland.
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