Keith Payne with SFR on the Nuclear Deterrent

FRANK GAFFNEY: We’re back, we’re joined, I’m very pleased to say, by one of the preeminent scholars, as well as practitioner of nuclear deterrent strategy, he is Dr. Keith Payne, he has served in a number of capacities in government and on various commissions, notably in the Department of Defense, and the Congressional Commission on Strategic Posture of the United States. He is the author and co-author and editor of hundreds of articles and books and monographs and most prolific, and really highly, highly, regarded, authority on the issues we’re going to be talking about with him today. Keith Payne, you are of course the President and Cofounder of the National Institute for Public Policy, at the moment, we’re very glad to have you with us, welcome back.

KEITH PAYNE: Thank you, Frank. It’s a pleasure to be with you.

FRANK GAFFNEY: Let me talk to you about a subject that most of us thought went away with the end of the Cold War, which is, the possibility that the United States could face a serious, to say nothing of mortal threat, from Russia. You’ve written recently with your colleague, and my old friend and colleague, Mark Schneider, about the new Russian strategy, national security strategy specifically. Give us a flavor of what it says and what it portends.

KEITH PAYNE: Right, let me start out, just to draw the distinction between the way we in the West and particularly in the United States, think about nuclear weapons and how Moscow appears to be thinking about nuclear weapons now. I won’t bore you with a long quote, I have a very short quote, but it’s open, unclassified quote, from the National Intelligence Council, and this dates back to December 2012.

FRANK GAFFNEY: This is the US National Intelligence Council?

KEITH PAYNE: This is the US National Intelligence Council, exactly. ‘Nuclear ambitions in the United States and Russian have devolved in opposite directions, reducing the role of nuclear weapons, a US security strategy, is an objective. While Russia is pursuing new concepts and capabilities for expanding the role of nuclear weapons in its security strategy.’ Close quote. That sentence captures very well what we saw in this most recent Russian national security strategy, and indeed what the Russian Federation and Moscow has been developing with regard to its thought about nuclear weapons, for, lets say approximately, fifteen, sixteen years. And I can describe that very briefly. It’s a first use of nuclear doctrine. And by that I mean, when they talk about the concept of escalating to deescalate and that might sound a little academic and odd, but the notion behind it is that Moscow will feel free to use nuclear weapons first, in a conventional conflict on their periphery, we’re talking largely regional here, to use nuclear weapons first, in a conventional conflict on their periphery, with the anticipation that the first use of nuclear weapons will be enough to force the West to stand down, and the context for threat is really what is most frightening, and that is the notion that as Russia seeks to expand its dominance, to reestablish, I guess I should say, its dominance into what they call the post-Soviet space, and by that they mean the old territories of the Soviet Union and possibly beyond. As Moscow seeks to expand, reestablish its dominance by expanding its influence and its power and indeed even its territory, into that post-Soviet space, the notion is if the West responds forcefully, militarily, then Russia says ‘We reserve the right to use nuclear weapons to make sure that the West backs down.’ This notion that says ‘ We will use nuclear weapons coercively as a threat, and operationally if necessary, as part of this grand strategy to reestablish Russian dominance it the post-Soviet space.’ That’s kind of a mouthful.

FRANK GAFFNEY: Well, it’s a critical insight, and Keith Payne, let me just, if I can, paraphrase what you just said. We have, for a long time, considered nuclear weapons as essentially a last resort, really, effectively, unusable except in the most extreme circumstances. What you’ve just described, and what, even before this strategy was articulated as you say, is Vladimir Putin has repeatedly made nuclear threats, first use nuclear threats against our allies, against our interests, even I think, against us. And, what you have implied, Keith Payne, and I want to ask you to explore this with us, is that this isn’t just rhetoric. This isn’t just doctrine. This is something that is being made potentially actionable by the kinds of developments that the Russians have been doing in this nuclear enterprise of theirs. Give us a flavor of what we think is going on there.

KEITH PAYNE: Well, what we tend to see is, let me back up just a second, what is visible to us is what they do in their exercises. And we can talk about what they do in their exercises to the extent that it has been discussed publicly, right. And so, in a recent discussion, recent public discussion by NATO, it was said that in an exercise, Russia carried out a mock nuclear attack on Sweden, a neutral country. And Russia has made explicit nuclear threats to US allies, particularly with regard to the US Missile defense program. If you get involved in the US missile defense capability, you will be a nuclear target. In fact, the Russian ambassador to Denmark made that threat to Denmark. So, what you see not only in this devolution of doctrine, we also see in the declaratory policy of Russian leaders, issuing nuclear first use threats against US allies, so that’s what we see—

FRANK GAFFNEY: And, exercising that first use as well in practice, yeah.

KEITH PAYNE: Correct, so we see it in exercises, we see it in public threats by Russian officials, we see it in, I believe, Russia’s violation of arms control agreements, so when you, again if you look at the public statements, the Intermediate Nuclear Forces treaty, the so-called crown jewel of arms control, its clear according to our own government findings that Russia is in violation of that agreement, and you ask, why would they violate that agreement? Well, violating that agreement may give them the license, whether they do something about it we’ll see, but gives them the license to deploy nuclear weapons in that theatre, in the European theatre, that helps back up this escalate to deescalate doctrine that I’ve just described.

FRANK GAFFNEY: And Keith Payne again, is our guest, Dr. Keith Payne, of the National Institute for Public Policy, and the head of a marvelous institution, the graduate of the Department of Defense and Strategic Studies at Missouri University. Talk about what’s on the front end of those missiles, to the extent that we know, and again, this is all open source stuff. What do we make of the seeming adaptation of the Russian’s nuclear posture, to enable them to use nuclear weapons first and perhaps decisively?

KEITH PAYNE: Right, and again, what the Russians talk about in terms of their nuclear capabilities for this purpose matches the purpose that we just described, right? And so, you see statements, for example, from Nikolai Mikhailov, who, formerly was the Director of the Russian Nuclear Weapon Institute, and also, First Deputy of Defense Ministry, First Deputy of Defense Minister, excuse me. Statements from, for example, Mikhailov, have been to the effect of, oh here, you know, I have a short one here, I’ll read it to you. ‘The philosophy of thermonuclear weapons has changed today and on the agenda is the development of high precision, deep penetration nuclear bombs. The low yield warhead will be surrounded by super hardened casing that will make it possible to penetrate thirty to forty meters into rock and destroy a buried target.’ The notion here, is, that these weapons will be high precision, very low yield, as described in other cases, so called ‘clean’ nuclear weapons, and that the use of them will not cause so much destruction, the destruction will be limited to the extent that it doesn’t break the West’s threshold for considering nuclear retaliation.

FRANK GAFFNEY: Especially, given the very considerable constraints we now have in terms of our own nuclear posture, very large yield weapons that would be inappropriate as a response. Keith Payne, we’re going to talk about that and more in a very important follow on to our first segment with you, thank you for sticking around. We’ll have more with the author of The Great American Gamble: Deterrence Policy and Theory from the Cold War to the Twenty-First Century, right after this.

FRANK GAFFNEY: We’re back with Keith Payne, the President and co-founder of the National Institute for Public Policy, one of the true repositories of corporate memory about an increasingly distant memory for most, namely, our nuclear deterrent policy and posture. Dr. Payne you have been talking about the Russian strategy. Some have argued, I guess, that this is kind of like what NATO used to invasion as part of its flexible response doctrine. What’s your response to that?

KEITH PAYNE: That’s a great point, Frank, and a basic point of difference between NATO’s flexible response doctrine, and the Russian escalate to deescalate doctrine, is really profound, but it’s missed by folks who say ‘Well, NATO had a first use threat in the Cold War, so the Russian Federation is just doing what NATO did throughout the entire Cold War, so don’t get excited.’ I hear that fairly frequently. Let me describe what the difference is, because the difference is, as I said, fairly profound.

FRANK GAFFNEY: As Mark Twain used to say, it’s the difference between lightening and lightening bugs.

KEITH PAYNE: Very good. Very good. So, what Russia says is, ‘We reserve the right to expand our dominance, even our territory.’ They’ve expanded their territory into Georgia, for example, by annexing part of Georgia, an operation in Eastern Ukraine, looks like maybe something similar there, and obviously they took parts of, they took Crimea, and actually absorbed that into the Russian Federation. So the point is, what the Russians appear to be doing with this doctrine is saying, ‘We will expand our dominance, we will expand our territory, and if you respond to this taking of territory, this changing of borders, we will use nuclear weapons first.’ Now think about that. What NATO said was, if you attack us, if you attack us in a horrific way, we will reserve to use nuclear weapons in the way of defending ourselves, defending NATO territory, that’s what NATO says. What Russia says—

FRANK GAFFNEY: Rather fundamental difference.

KEITH PAYNE: What Russia says is, we reserve the right to use nuclear weapons against you first as we take your territory, and so saying those are the same is about like saying that the man who pushes the little old lady out of the way of the train is the same as the man who pushes the little old lady in front of the train because they both pushed little old lady.

FRANK GAFFNEY: Well said. Keith, let’s turn to our own deterrent posture, and whether it has remotely kept up with the kinds of evolutions that we’ve seen in the Russian nuclear posture, to say nothing of the Chinese, that’s a whole other conversation, but just staying with the Russians. When you look at our, both delivery systems, and as importantly, our nuclear war heads in our arsenal, how would they compare in your judgment?

KEITH PAYNE: Well, the United States has been pursuing the traditional notion of a balance of terror and maintaining capabilities to deter through balance of terror with what’s been called mutually assured destruction, that was the [inaudible] traditional US approach, while the Russian Federation has been moving in the direction that we’ve been discussing here. And so what you see is, essentially a different evolution in the two sides capabilities, so the United States has a standing policy, this is actual US policy, to not develop any new nuclear capabilities while, as we discussed earlier, the Russian federation has been, at least discusses it’s own direction, all about developing new nuclear capabilities, so there’s a profound difference.

FRANK GAFFNEY: Well, it goes beyond that, doesn’t it Keith? I’ve been told that the Russians, I think, Mark Schneider, as a matter fact, your co-author and colleague, has said that they will have essentially replaced their entire nuclear deterrent force, by something like 2020 or maybe 2030. Is that correct? That the new missiles, new submarines, new bombers as well as new warheads?

KEITH PAYNE: Right, if you look at the Russian nuclear modernization program, nuclear deployment program, it’s an extremely robust as they say, nuclear modernization program. It’s something such as we haven’t seen since the days of the Soviet Union. I mean, I can give you a few examples, the main modernization programs, again, this is all based on open, unclassified information, they’re moving towards what’s called a heavy ICBM [inaudible] with ten metric tons of throw weight that can carry reportedly ten to fifteen nuclear warheads per missile. They say that they’ve delivered contracts to go back to rail mobilize ICBM, putting ICBMs railroad cars so that they could be hidden throughout the Russian Federation. The new stealth bomber, improving the older black jack TU160 bomber. I could go on and on, I won’t bore you with all this.

FRANK GAFFNEY: Submarines as well.

KEITH PAYNE: Well, as mentioned, most recently there was a supposed leak, although it’s my personal view it was an intentional leak, of a plan to deploy a nuclear drone submarine with a –up to—sixty to one hundred megaton, possibly cobalt weapon that would make parts of any place where it was detonated uninhabitable because of the ecological destruction in addition to all the physical damage. And they actually talk about this and showed this in their open press. So these are the kinds of developments that we’ve seen on the weapons side of the Russian Federation. On our side, we have an overarching theme to reduce the number of nuclear weapons and to reduce the role of nuclear weapons. That’s been an overarching policy that actually was codified in the nuclear posture, it was an official document, an unclassified document. The nuclear posture document in 2010 said the primary goal of US nuclear policy is to promote nuclear non-proliferation and then how do you do that? You do that by reducing the number of nuclear weapons, and you do it by reducing the role of nuclear weapons in US policy. So, the US side has actually said the priority is not nuclear deterrence, it is protection against [inaudible] the priority is to move towards nuclear non-proliferation and the way we do that is by reducing our arsenal and reducing the role of nuclear weapons in our policies.

FRANK GAFFNEY: Yeah, you know, I’m fond of saying, Keith Payne, the President talks about riding the world of nuclear weapons his codicil is starting with ours, and that surely as you say, it’s translated into a lack of investment in our, well, the nuclear enterprise across the board, in a way that translates into not just trying to maintain what we have but to make sure that it is effective and as safe and as reliable as we can, but also, a credible deterrent to the sorts of threats you’ve just been talking about. And let me just ask you, if you could in sort of summary minute or so, Keith Payne, describe the enterprise in the United States, the scientists who have the deep knowledge of this, the infrastructure to support it from an industrial point of view as well these critically important deterrent systems themselves.

KEITH PAYNE: Well, this is one of the, I think, profound areas for improvement in the United States, and by that I mean reinvesting in the infrastructure. In 2008, the Secretary of Defense and Secretary of Energy put out a joint report that said the United States is the only nuclear power that cannot produce nuclear weapons. Now think about that. The only nuclear power that cannot produce nuclear weapons. That captures the state of the US nuclear infrastructure, and if the United States is to remain a nuclear power, and maintain a deterrent against nuclear attacks, which is what got us through the Cold War, we are going to have to get back and reinvest in the infrastructure to be able to do that.

FRANK GAFFNEY: Infrastructure, human as well as capital and of course, to modernize these weapons, I believe to, insure that they can work by testing them, underground as well, something that is a subject for another conversation with you as the President’s Secretary of State has indicated, he tries to get the comprehensive test ban treaty dusted off and pass this here. We’ll see. In all of these areas, Keith Payne, you are the leader. We’re very grateful to you for your time today and for the terrific work you do at the graduate Department of Defense and Strategic Studies at Missouri State University, bringing along a new generation of extraordinary national security practitioners as well as the great work you do at the National Institute for Public Policy. Come back us to again very soon, if you would.