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Tonja Witcraft
Although this formulation is arguably ambiguous, the paper recommends specifying the circumstances in which the use of nuclear weapons would be justified. It also says a range of nuclear weapons types is required to enable a proportional response to a nuclear threat beyond targeting enemy population centers, which is no longer a credible threat from an American president. In short, deterrence will not be possible unless the U.S. retains weapons to cover many contingencies.
Strategic considerations over when and how to use nuclear weapons have evolved since the Cold War, which itself developed in the wake of the totality of conflict in World War II. U.S. generals could contemplate using the atomic bomb during the Korean War, when America essentially had a monopoly on deliverable weapons, but for many sound reasons this did not happen.
Strategic nuclear forces are much more front and center in the public imagination and thus in the briefs of elected lawmakers who cut the checks for them. Anyone growing up during the Cold War will recall periods when a large-scale exchange of nuclear weapons between NATO and the Warsaw Pact seemed possible, even likely. The sheer number of weapons deployed and the short timelines between launch and strike, particularly in Europe, meant every increase in East-West tensions carried fresh fears of nuclear war.
U.S. and Russian warhead stockpiles have shrunk dramatically since the crescendo of the Cold War, when every other 1980s pop song seemed to be about the impending nuclear holocaust. Under the provisions of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty, signed by the United States and Russia in 2010, both sides agreed to limit the numbers of deployed warheads to 1,550 apiece. The deal is active until February 2026 and could be extended further.
Many advocates of no-first-use and sole-purpose policies say the time has come to eliminate nuclear weapons as warfighting tools. Regardless of how Russia or China (or Iran) feels about the matter, that goal may be in sight from the U.S. side, which merely has to do nothing to see its nuclear arsenal slide into obsolescence.
Brad Roberts, director of the Center for Global Security Research at Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, recently told interviewer Lindsay Morgan of the Institute on Global Conflict and Cooperation at the University of California, San Diego that the United States was rapidly approaching a point where it would have to modernize its nuclear arsenal or effectively disarm unilaterally:
Russia has proven itself adept at using force and managing escalation right to the point where a Western military response seems possible. This has happened in Georgia, the Crimea, eastern Ukraine, and to some extent Syria. Russia counts on its existing arsenal of nuclear weapons and a slowly modernizing cadre of new ones, such as its hypersonic missile systems, to deter the West from objecting too strenuously to adventures in what it considers its sphere. The seeming willingness of Russia to use force, even suggestions of nuclear force, to achieve its objectives acts as a deterrent to Western intervention because the threats are believable.
China, while more deliberative in its development and deployment of nuclear weapons, clearly believes in the value of modern forces to deter aggression and perhaps overawe regional rivals. Moreover, its nuclear deterrent bolsters its area-denial strategy using conventional forces to keep the U.S. military out of the Western Pacific in the event of armed conflict.
With the Biden administration embarking on its Nuclear Posture Review, it\u2019s time to reexamine the role nuclear weapons play in U.S. national security. While such reviews have become standard when a new team arrives at the White House, President Biden\u2019s comes at a time when key aspects of America\u2019s nuclear forces, such as the Minuteman III intercontinental ballistic missile, are due or past due for replacement or modernization. Although President Trump was a vocal supporter of nuclear modernization programs and even saw a new weapon type deployed and others planned, the current administration and its Democratic allies in Congress are much less enthusiastic.
The expense of overhauling the U.S. triad\u2014the land, sea and air components of nuclear weapon systems\u2014would be considerable, estimated at $1.7 trillion over 30 years. But underlying this issue lurks the question of whether the concepts that brought nuclear weapon systems into being are still operative. Are nations still deterred in their actions by a rival\u2019s ability to unleash existential devastation on them? And if so, how should the U.S. handle its nuclear weapons capability going forward?
Military strategists, foreign policy academics and political leaders formed by the Cold War worldview have lived and worked with the assumption\u2014even assurance\u2014that deterrence is the cornerstone of the international order. Other problems pale in comparison to a nuclear conflagration. Similarly, no national objective would be worth attaining at the cost of the nation\u2019s destruction.
While nine nations are known to have some nuclear weapons capability (Israel has not declared its status, and North Korea\u2019s ability to actually field such weapons is unclear), there has not been a major war between these countries. There have been clashes\u2014such as between India and Pakistan\u2014that produce anxiety, but calmer heads hitherto have prevailed. Nuclear-armed nations have warred with nonnuclear ones in the post-World War II era without the former resorting to the use of atomic weapons, even when the war has gone badly. Such restraint is almost certainly due in part to the international pariah status awaiting a first user of nuclear weapons in the modern era.
A new wave of arms-control advocates is lobbying the Biden administration to use the opportunity of the Nuclear Posture Review, which establishes U.S. nuclear policy, strategy and capabilities for the next five to ten years, to declare a \u201Csole purpose\u201D policy for U.S. nuclear forces. In a nutshell, this is an extreme version of a \u201Cno first use\u201D policy, where in addition to pledging not to use nuclear weapons first in any conflict, we would be stating that the only reason our nuclear arsenal exists is to deter nuclear attack and, if necessary, to retaliate if so struck. China has declared a no-first-use policy. Russia abandoned this stance in 1994 and now reserves the option to strike first.
The United States currently has a more nuanced position: It pledges not to use nuclear weapons under any circumstances against nonnuclear countries that are party to the Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty, while reserving the option to use nuclear weapons against others under certain circumstances. The ambiguity of this \u201Cwill we or won\u2019t we?\u201D policy is designed to deter rogue states and nuclear-armed rivals (i.e., Russia and China).
In 2017, Vice President Biden stated that he thought the United States could safely adopt sole purpose at that time. There is no reason to believe Biden has changed his mind on the issue as president. The adoption of such a policy would be very tempting. Foremost, it would enable the administration to cancel or at least pause a number of nuclear modernization programs that are on many Democrats\u2019 hatchet lists, such as a replacement for the Minuteman III and nuclear-armed cruise missiles. Over time, sole purpose would enable the United States to eliminate all but the few hundred weapons\u2014probably submarine-based\u2014needed to retaliate against a nuclear attack, presumably by destroying the offender\u2019s cities. What other prospective retaliation would constitute deterrence with so few weapons on hand?
And there\u2019s the rub. Would a U.S. president be prepared to order a retaliatory strike on an enemy city in response to a nuclear strike on an aircraft carrier task force? Or against the territory of an ally? The domestic and international pressure to forgo such vengeance would be extreme\u2014so much so that an enemy might risk a nuclear strike for tactical advantage against the United States or an ally, assured that no retaliation would be forthcoming.
A January paper by the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace says that U.S. allies might perceive such arm-tying declarations as signaling a lack of American resolve to come to their aid in a crisis. It might also signal the same to potential aggressors. The paper\u2019s authors suggest the United States should instead declare an \u201Cexistential threat policy,\u201D where it would use nuclear weapons \u201Conly when no viable alternative exists to stop an existential attack against the United States, its allies, or partners.\u201D
Nevertheless, as technology advanced and East-West blocs solidified, nuclear weapons proliferated in form and function. At the one end of the scale were city-busting hydrogen bombs, and at the other were \u201Ctactical\u201D warheads of much less destructive power envisioned for routine warfighting. Strategists intended to use tactical nuclear weapons in battlefield situations against land, sea and air targets. Think of them as vastly more powerful versions of conventional weapons. There were nuclear-tipped missiles for shooting down bombers, depth-charging submarines, blasting tank formations and striking important sites such as radars, airfields and command centers.
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