SIGN UP - IT'S FREE!
SEARCH FSM
| National Debt Clock |
A million seconds pass in 12 days.
A billion seconds pass in 31 years.
A trillion seconds pass in 31,688 years!
February 23, 2010
Exclusive: Arms Control Illusions?
Will a modest reduction of 700 warheads in the Russia and United States’ strategic nuclear arsenals make a difference in the threats we face, especially from terrorism and the terror master states such as Syria, Iran and North Korea? Three years ago, an op-ed in the Wall Street Journal written by Henry Kissinger, George Schultz, William Perry and Sam Nunn, called on the U.S. to seriously pursue the goal of zero nuclear weapons. The idea behind this radical proposal was both simple and alluring. If the U.S., by example, could reduce our nuclear arsenal, could we so transform the geo-strategic environment as to make other nations join us in a serious effort to contain nuclear weapons and material worldwide and end the most serious nuclear threats such as those in Iran and North Korea?
The new administration’s campaign rhetoric decidedly adopted many of these premises. We did not need any new nuclear weapons. We did not need to shore up our nuclear enterprise. Nuclear deterrence was “old think.” Our nuclear arsenals were too large. Moreover, our weapons were too easily launched. On top of which, we really did not need missile defenses – they did not work and were too expensive.
After a year in office, the hangover rhetoric from the campaign remains but some of the policies have actually been surprisingly good. The missile defense budget took some serious hits most notably on our deployments in Alaska and California, and the site planned for Poland and the Czech Republic was abandoned. However, significant additional purchases of Navy SM 3 or standard missiles and Army THAADS, terminal high altitude air defenses, are now planned, as are deployments of missile defenses to the Middle East, and there apparently is a better appreciation of the missile threats we face.
On nuclear matters, the record remains mixed in part because some elements within the administration remain in thrall to the abolitionists. The reduction to 1,500 warheads, from the 2,200 we maintain today, is a 700 warhead or 30 percent reduction, which is less than one-fifth of the 3,800 warhead and 63 percent reduction achieved by the Moscow Treaty of 2002 under the supposed anti-arms control administration of George Bush.
The prospects for such a reduction are being heralded by the “arms control” community as groundbreaking, which it is not, or a major step toward disarmament, which it is not. According to some, the Moscow Treaty was not “real arms control” because it did not have an accompanying mind-boggling complex text for verification. Instead, it relied on the then in-place verification measures adopted for the original START treaty, which brought US and Russian warheads down to the 6,000 level from over 12,000.
The administration also added nearly $700 million in funding for the National Nuclear Security Administration for the continued sustainment of our nuclear warheads, maintaining their reliability and credibility. The additional funding made the disarmament community unhappy, but the administration believes that with these funds we can, without testing warheads, ensure that our deterrent works and we can then ratify the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, which failed to secure adequate votes for Senate passage in 1999. (The Treaty does not go into effect unless Iran and North Korea sign it as well!)
However, here is where things get murky. While rhetorically committed to securing a strong deterrent as long as we have nuclear weapons, the administration is causing real concern within the nuclear deterrent community on a number of critical issues. First is the extent to which the United States will keep a strong and robust nuclear force posture. This is not necessarily just about the number of warheads but how the warheads will be deployed. For over half-a-century, the U.S. has maintained a Triad of bombers, land based and sea-based missiles on which our nuclear warheads are based. This makes for a redundancy that guards against a technology failure and more importantly, an attempt by an adversary to strike the U.S. either suddenly and without warning or during a crisis in an attempt to eliminate our ability to strike back with sufficient nuclear power which would make any such pre-emptive attack ludicrous in the first place.
For example, in a crisis we would worry that whoever went first might gain the upper hand, especially if U.S. nuclear forces were concentrated on only a few platforms. In short, we would be putting too many of our nuclear eggs in too few nuclear baskets. While the Cold War standoff over Western Europe is now history, the necessity to maintain deterrence has not disappeared. Today’s force of 450 Minuteman silos spread over five states, our two submarine bases that deploy some 4-6 submarines at sea at any one time and our nearly 100 bombers capable of air delivery of nuclear weapons, gives us a surety that deterrence of any kind can be maintained in so far as the use of nuclear weapons.
But the Russians are insisting that the number of platforms allowed for the U.S. be reduced quite dramatically, to near 700 strategic nuclear delivery vehicles. The Russians want this because their dire financial circumstances make it difficult for them to maintain much more than 500 such vehicles. In addition, while our systems are aging, by comparison Moscow’s systems are relatively new. And fitting 450 Minuteman and 336 Trident D-5 missiles along with nearly 100 bombers under a 700 SNDV ceiling obviously will require slashing missiles or bombers or both, although the number of deployed warheads stays the same under any number of platforms.
Second, the administration says the reduction to 1,500 is just the first of a number of steps to get to 500 or fewer nuclear weapons and then to zero. If so, the number of platforms may be reduced to so few numbers that a pre-emptive strike – the great fear of the Cold War – becomes a new reality. In addition, the Russians are having serious technological problems with its new submarine launched ballistic missile, with numerous recent test flight failures. Given that the new missile is the only available missile for their new fleet of submarines, the formers failure will result in the later being unavailable for duty. So Russia will be reduced to only land based missiles and bombers, and thus to numbers of platforms in the low hundreds. Should this also drive the U.S. to such numbers, international instability will be driven up just as warheads will be driven down.
Not only that, as the U.S. may be required to eliminate one or more of our Triad legs, we run the risk that a future technological failure could make the U.S. strategic deterrent unavailable for duty – which is now helping maintain the peace 24/7/365. For example, a sea-based deterrent only would put a premium on an adversary seeking to find our submarines at sea, as those in port would not be hard to eliminate. How would we then know the identity of the attacker if one of our “boomers” did not come home?
As a result, the international geo-strategic environment will be less safe. On top of which, it is highly problematical that US reductions to 1,500 warheads will matter one whit to the mullahs and revolutionary guard corps in Tehran or the tyrants in Pyongyang or Damascus. Even as the U.S. has bent over backward to reach an agreement with Iran over its nuclear program, Iran has slapped our open hand away. It has enhanced its uranium enrichment capability; it has repeatedly tested and developed new ballistic missiles now with ranges approaching 3000 kilometers, with its latest move toward an ICBM capability. It has reportedly purchased nuclear weapons triggers. The IAEA in Vienna, which in October said the gravest threat to the Middle East was the Israelis, now admits that Iran is developing nuclear warheads.
Iran is building up the arsenals of Hamas and Hezbollah. It continues to send its para-military and unconventional forces into Iraq and Afghanistan to kill Americans. It has sought through intimidation and blackmail to coerce its neighbors and America’s allies. It has resisted all proposals on enriched uranium, even as it murders and tortures its domestic political opposition. When in fact, Iran should be moving toward reconciliation because of the reach-out policies of the new administration, or should have been reacting positively to our allies’ persuasive efforts to get Iran aboard a new security environment, right? So much for the idea that our good will and restrained behavior will engender similar action by our enemies!
Third, in that ballistic missiles can reach their destinations in 30 minutes, an attack on our missile silos, bomber bases or submarine pens could happen quickly. A President needs to be able to respond in the event of such an attack. To resolve this problem, the disarmament community also seeks to commit the administration to the foolish policy of de-alerting. The idea would be either to remove our nuclear warheads from all of our missiles, or make it so difficult for the President to launch our missiles that we would forestall their use by hours, even days and perhaps weeks.
Unfortunately, like so many ideas from the disarmament folks, this one is real wacky. Putting all of our warheads in a few storage areas makes for the mother of all targets. Why not paint a big bull’s eye on it? To delay the capability of the American President to launch a retaliatory strike against a U.S. adversary begs the question: how do you verify the Russians have done the same – de-alert – and what happens when you suspect they have begun to go in the opposite direction, i.e., re-alerted? And what of China, North Korea and perhaps eventually a nuclear-armed Iran?
The push toward zero nuclear weapons rests on the mistaken belief that if the U.S. pursues a strong nuclear deterrent, others such as North Korea and Iran, will follow. One top nuclear analyst put it this way: "How do you do this credibly [maintain deterrence] at the same time you say that you are going to reduce your reliance on nuclear weapons and, in fact, you want to get rid of them all?" An article in the December issue of Air and Space Power echoed this concern, complaining, "Current U.S. nuclear policy insinuates the legitimacy of nuclear weapons" and is in fact considered "the strongest imaginable rationale for other countries to acquire nuclear weapons."
However, we are not going to zero in our lifetimes admit most of the nuclear abolitionists. In addition, it is acknowledged that some degree of nuclear deterrence will remain. As this essay warns, assuming that whatever remains must be without the redundancies of the Cold War, as many do, simply makes the strategic balance more unstable. One critic admitted as much noting, "The less dependent the United States becomes on nuclear weapons, the more attractive their acquisition becomes."
Abolitionists assume also that all countries are equal in their "rights to nuclear weapons." The former head of the UN International Atomic Energy Administration said toward the end of his tenure that his agency did not make distinctions between countries: "There are no good or bad" nations, he said. His predecessor, Hans Blix, said the very same thing to me when he complained that whether Britain, France, the United States or North Korea, for that matter, modernized their nuclear arsenal or added weapons to their military forces, it was all a violation of the NPT and "international norms."
This failure to distinguish the role of nuclear weapons in the U.S. deterrent compared to such weapons in the hands of Pyongyang or Tehran, for example, is at the heart of our self-made dilemma. Without the moral courage to make such distinctions, we are left with a standard where every nuclear weapon in every country is no different from any other. The abolitionists thus oppose spending money to maintain deterrence, sustain deterrence, extend deterrence or improve deterrence. Fewer nuclear weapons and less nuclear-related expenditures are simply considered good.
American nuclear weapons have actually been a major force for the very curtailment of their spread. The U.S. extended nuclear umbrella over NATO and our Pacific allies has allowed nations such as the Republic of Korea, Japan and Germany, for example, to forgo the deployment of nuclear weapons despite facing near-by nuclear armed adversaries. In addition, U.S. nuclear forces also deter the first use of chemical and biological weapons against our allies, such as on the Korean peninsula that might be used as part of a massive conventional assault on the Republic of Korea from Pyongyang. Why signal an adversary that the U.S. response to anything short of the use of nuclear weapons will include only the use of conventional forces, which in significant numbers can only reach Korea after an extended period? In warfare, time means everything.
The development of prompt conventional global strike capabilities is a welcome initiative most prominently supported by the U.S. Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff, Gen. Cartwright. This had led some to argue that such conventional capabilities could replace entirely the current role of U.S. nuclear weapons. Or that current conventional forces can do the deterrent job of nuclear weapons, (argued recently in a letter to the President from the disarmament lobby). Such assertions trivialize the enormous and frightening power of nuclear weapons, a point made eloquently by former USAF Chief of Staff Larry Welch last year at an NDUF-NDIA seminar speech, and as such undermine deterrence itself.
For many of the abolitionists, the fight over the proper role for nuclear weapons in U.S. national security strategy comes down to the improper pursuit by the United States of a hegemonic role in the world. From the left, Garry Wills in "Bomb Power" argues that nuclear weapons led to the ".U.S Empire," what the editor of Harper's calls "globe-gobbling" America. On the right, we hear from Andrew J. Bacevich, who writes in "Washington Rules: America’s Path to Permanent War" that the U.S. security establishment gets us into unnecessary wars that we end up not winning, such as Korea. That our Office of the President is so imbued with the power of “the bomb”, (i.e., nuclear weapons) that it has become imperial in its outlook and behavior. That we are the “hyper-power”, arrogant, a bully, without friends.
As such, they see a diminution of American military power as a “good thing.” Some go so far as to argue that our conventional capability can take over the role of nuclear weapons, even as these same critics work overtime to eliminate key strengths of the very conventional capability of which they are so in awe. And missed entirely is the well-known fact that our adversaries are seeking nuclear weapons not because of the size of OUR nuclear arsenal but because of the capability of OUR conventional forces!
Contrary to these counsels of despair, the people of the Republic of Korea, with whom I lived as a college student at Yonsei University, know they are free and prosperous because we – the ROK and the U.S. together and our allies – did win that war. The Cold War ended not because America was weak, but because she was strong, both militarily and economically.
When much of the world dials “911”, the phone rings on the desk of the President of the United States. Diminishing our power will not come without a price. Reducing our nuclear deterrent just so the Russians can feel they have “parity” could very well increase instability and with it future chances of international cooperation. Reducing nuclear weapons to too low levels will only give China and others an incentive to build-up their own arsenals and establish peer competitors where there were none.
America does not seek out bullies or rogues. But when our freedom is at risk, we stand up, just as we did at Concord, at Gettysburg, along the Chosin Reservoir, at Iowa Jima, at the Battle of the Bulge, at Normandy, at Mazar-i-Sharif and Baghdad. American military force has been the power that has freed more people from tyranny than any other armed force in the history of humankind. That is not something for which we should apologize. It is something we should celebrate.
FamilySecurityMatters.org Contributing Editor Peter Huessy is President of GeoStrategic Analysis, a defense consulting company in Potomac, Maryland.
Reader Comments: Submit Your Comment (0) | Sign Up for FSM Updates!
