‘Rearranging The Deck Chairs’: Aspin Policy Study Likely To Ignore Real Issues Jeopardizing US Nuclear Deterrent

It does not augur well for the Department of Defense’s major review of U.S. nuclear weapons policy that it was announced on a Friday afternoon. After all, Secretary of Defense Les Aspin is one of the foremost practitioners of the art of timing press conferences: He has well established that when you wish to publicize an announcement, you invite journalists to a Saturday morning briefing. This assures that news accounts of the briefing will dominate the Sunday morning papers and talk shows — and, accordingly, likely feature prominently in Monday morning reporting, as well. Indeed, in the course of a long career largely built on astute self-promotion, Congressman/Secretary Aspin has held scores of these "Saturday specials."

Conversely, when the object is to minimize public attention to an announcement, it is unveiled on a Friday, preferably late in the afternoon. If reported at all, such announcements will appear in Saturday editions and news broadcasts — which are typically much less universally and carefully monitored than either their weekday or Sunday counterparts. By Sunday, the story is "old news"; by Monday, ancient history.

Addressing the Wrong Questions

This transparent effort to "low-ball" the study reinforces suspicions that the new nuclear policy review is not intended to be a serious "bottom-up" analysis of all aspects of the U.S. nuclear deterrent posture. Instead, like the Aspin budget analysis conducted earlier this year — which was also supposed to be a "bottom-up" review but proved not to be — it is meant simply to ratify preordained decisions, an exercise in post hoc rationalization that bears no resemblance to a genuine fresh-look at vexing security policy issues.

A genuine bottom-up review would, for instance, take a hard look at three first-order problems afflicting the U.S. deterrent posture:

The United States is going out of the nuclear weapons business.

Interestingly, Assistant Secretary of Defense Ashton Carter noted at last Friday’s press conference the long-term nature of the issues under review:

"…We’re going to be looking at what might evolve in the next ten to twenty years because the force structure we determine today is the one we’ll be living with ten to twenty years from now."

While this statement is certainly true as far as it goes, the underlying assumption urgently needs to be examined — namely, that the United States will be able to continue to field effective nuclear weapons a decade or two hence. In fact, unless new sources for sufficient quantities of the radioactive gas tritium are found within the next ten years or so, there will be no viable U.S. nuclear weapons in the force structure "we’ll be living with ten to twenty years from now."

Indeed, the cumulative effect of decisions taken by the Bush and Clinton Administrations is tantamount to a unilateral nuclear freeze — a de facto arrangement that is making exceedingly problematic the long-term preservation of a safe, reliable and, therefore, credible nuclear deterrent. These include: the open-ended cessation of nuclear testing; the suspension of production of nuclear weapons; the closure of key facilities in the supporting industrial infrastructure; the hemorrhage of skilled personnel from the Department of Energy laboratories and weapons complex; and the failure to take the steps necessary to assure a steady domestic supply of tritium (which, because it decays rapidly, must be replaced in modern nuclear weapons on a regular basis).

There is, unfortunately, no evidence that these actions are going to be revisited as part of the Aspin nuclear strategy study. Instead — as with the earlier "bottom-up review," which was obliged to work within pre-established budget guidelines rather than develop an accurate depiction of what U.S. forces and spending are actually required — the present exercise will presumably be unable to recommend a resumption of nuclear testing or other steps already foreclosed by policy direction or programmatic decisions.

The future threat is not confined — as the Aspin study team seems to believe — to the many dangerous actors around the world that are "going nuclear" or acquiring other, less costly weapons of mass destruction. Russia also continues to pose a serious nuclear menace.
- continue to manufacture nuclear weapons and weapons-related material (notably, plutonium, highly enriched uranium and tritium);
- continue to develop new generations of offensive nuclear delivery systems, including mobile intercontinental ballistic missiles(1);
- continue to conduct exercises involving massive nuclear attacks against the United States;
- possess far larger stocks of nuclear weapons than has been assumed by Western intelligence according to the head of the Russian Ministry of Atomic Energy, Viktor Mikhailov. In the words of the New York Times, the former Soviet Union amassed at one point a total of roughly "45,000 nuclear weapons" or "12,000 more than generally believed and twice the number held by the United States at the time; and
- reportedly continue to operate a "Doomsday machine" capable of automatically launching such attacks if fallible sensors suggest that nuclear weapons have been used against Russia.

The new Aspin study seems fixedly to be ignoring the fact that the main elements of the former Soviet nuclear arsenal are still very much in business. While Secretary Aspin, in announcing this initiative, spoke rather wistfully of "the old Soviet threat [which] while very dangerous, had developed a certain comfort level," the truth of the matter is that the Russians:

In the face of enormously increased uncertainty about the exact status of former Soviet nuclear arms, the reliability of command and control arrangements that govern them and the future disposition of the Russian military and government more generally, there should be precious little "comfort" taken from these developments. It would be reckless indeed if the Pentagon’s nuclear strategy review were to focus virtually exclusively on emerging nuclear threats and other weapons of mass destruction coming into the hands of malevolent third parties — strategically important problems to be sure — but fail to address this critical set of issues simply because they may be politically inconvenient or "incorrect."

On the question of non-Russian nuclear threats, moreover, it is important to remember that some of those might evolve dramatically over a period as long as ten-to-twenty years. For example, the Washington Post published an op.ed. article yesterday by Selig Harrison detailing efforts being made by Japan that could give it the capability to field sophisticated intercontinental-range ballistic missiles and nuclear weapons in relatively short order. Such a development — which has actually been encouraged by U.S. policies toward plutonium and disengagement from Asia — could have profound strategic implications over the next two decades.

The United States is essentially eliminating the option of strategic defense as a means of mitigating the implications of the foregoing for deterrence.

It appears that the enormous contribution effective strategic defenses could make to U.S. security in such an environment is also excluded from the Aspin nuclear analysis. After all, the Clinton Administration for all intents and purposes decided to eliminate work on a territorial defense against missile attack even before the first bottom-up review was completed. In the wake of that study, moreover, resource limitations and a blind ideological attachment to the 1972 Anti-Ballistic Missile Treaty are assuring that the United States will not field advanced theater missile defenses — to say nothing of strategic ones — any time soon.

In short, technologies that might reduce somewhat the risks of U.S. unilateral nuclear disarmament as other nations aggressively pursue ominous nuclear options are being foreclosed by the Clinton Administration and its allies in Congress. The risks of serious miscalculations about what it will take to deter nuclear conflict are thereby increased exponentially.

Fixation on Secondary Issues

Instead of addressing such first-order questions about the future of U.S. deterrent strategy and capabilities, the Aspin study seems likely to be preoccupied with secondary issues. Most of these are the hobby-horses of Clinton political appointees that were rejected in the past by both Republican and Democratic administrations but which are going to be given a new lease on life now that their advocates are in senior government positions and the end of the Cold War has muddled most strategic thinking.

Such second-order — and second-rate — notions include: adoption of a "no-first-use" policy concerning nuclear weapons; a permanent, comprehensive test ban; a formalized nuclear freeze affecting not only testing but production and at least some related research and development activities; wholesale cuts in U.S. nuclear forces; keeping a large percentage of U.S. ballistic missile submarines in port rather than on deployment; confining those at sea to negotiated "sanctuaries"; and disassociating land-based warheads from their missiles. If adopted, these steps would unquestionably further reduce the readiness, reliability and credibility of the American nuclear deterrent. They may also serve as an incentive to proliferation as potential adversaries seek to exploit perceived U.S. weakness and lack of resolve.

The Bottom Line

The Center for Security Policy believes that there is an urgent need for a truly "bottom-up" review of the U.S. nuclear posture. Unlike that unveiled on Friday, this review should explicitly address whether the United States will continue to need a nuclear deterrent for the foreseeable future and, if so, whether all of the steps necessary to assure the future viability of that deterrent are being taken. The full costs and timelines associated with such steps should be detailed together with those involved in providing a complementary means of defending against missile attacks should deterrence fail.

In view of the unmistakable prejudices of at least some of those involved in the Aspin study, however, an independent examination of these issues seems in order. The Center strongly recommends that a blue-ribbon panel be commissioned and given access to the relevant intelligence, targeting and operational data to provide an informed "second opinion" on necessary changes to U.S. nuclear forces, strategy and policies before any dramatic redirection is ordered.

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1. See in this regard, an 18 October 1993 speech on the Senate floor by Sen. Ted Stevens (R-AK).