U.S. Nuclear Deterrence in the 21st Century: Getting it Right

V. WHAT AN EFFECTIVE DETERRENT ENTAILS

In order to maintain a reliable, credible and effective American nuclear deterrent, the United States must commit itself to channeling the requisite technical talent, competent managers, and serious financial resources to the strategic triad of bombers, submarines and land based missiles – and, of equal importance, to the infrastructure upon which the nuclear enterprise rests.

The Strategic Posture Commission’s interim and final reports capture this necessity in a number of passages.  Highlights of the commissioners’ unanimous findings and recommendations include:

•     “As long as the U.S. depends on nuclear deterrence, national policies must ensure that this deterrence is reliable, safe and secure.”⁶³

•     “The United States requires a stockpile of nuclear weapons that is safe, secure, and reliable, and whose threatened use in military conflict would be credible.”⁶⁴

•     “…The U.S. must also continue to maintain a nuclear deterrent  appropriate to existing threats  until such time as verifiable international agreements are in place that could set the conditions for the final abolition of nuclear and other weapons of mass destruction.”⁶⁵ (Emphasis in the original.)

•     “…Long-term U.S. superiority in the conventional military domain cannot be taken for granted and requires continuing attention and investment. Moreover, it is not adequate for deterring nuclear attack. The U.S. deterrent must be both visible and credible, not only to our possible adversaries, but to our allies as well.”⁶⁶

Other prominent figures from the U.S. military, Department of Defense, National Nuclear Security Administration and Los Alamos National Laboratory – along with the nuclear policy experts who make up the New Deterrent Working Group – have arrived at similar conclusions with respect to the need to: (1) counter the effects of aging on the viability of the nuclear arsenal (also known as “stockpile stewardship”); (2) remedy the declining numbers of experts in the nuclear weapons complex with experience in designing, manufacturing, testing and maintaining nuclear weapons; (3) rectify the deteriorating state of the nuclear complex; and (4) address the accompanying need to “hedge”, or increase the number of nuclear weapons in the arsenal, to mitigate against the decline in quality and reliability of each individual warhead.

Accordingly, the following principles should govern the U.S. approach to nuclear deterrence for the foreseeable future:

A. The United States cannot  rely indefinitely

on its  existing arsenal 

A sober assessment of the state of the U.S. nuclear arsenal raises serious questions about its adequacy in meeting today’s deterrent requirements – let alone tomorrow’s.  As has been discussed above (see pp. 23-27), the obsolescence of much of the weaponry that make up the existing stockpile demands that serious policy choices be addressed.

As Secretary of Defense Robert Gates put it October, 2008: “To be blunt, there is absolutely no way we can maintain a credible deterrent and reduce the number of weapons in our stockpile without either resorting to testing our stockpile or pursuing a modernization program.”⁶⁷

The  Strategic Posture Commission unanimously recommended in its Final Report:

“As the United States proceeds with stockpile refurbishment and modernization, it must ensure that the design, assessment, and engineering processes remain sufficiently intellectually competitive to result in a stockpile of weapons that meet the highest standards of safety, security, and reliability.”⁶⁸

B. The U.S. arsenal must  be sized and

tailored to  hedge against uncertainty

Given the parlous state of the United States nuclear deterrent at the moment, calls for further reductions in the number of deployed warheads – or worse yet, permanently freezing weapons production altogether – are ill-advised and potentially reckless.  That is especially true in light of the uncertainties associated with the volatility of the present and prospective strategic environment. (see pp. 27-30)

Defense Secretary Gates captured the problem succinctly in his remarks to the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace last October: “Our nuclear arsenal is vital [because]: we simply cannot predict the future.”69 This uncertainty has several very practical repercussions:

The Stockpile’s Declining Reliability Argues Against Future Force Reductions

Ironically, the failure for most of the past two decades to modernize the U.S. arsenal has made it extremely risky to undertake still more of the sort  of deep reductions in our nuclear stockpile demanded by the de-nuclearizers.  For example, concerns about the future reliability of the weapons in our stockpile necessitates “hedging” – the practice of increasing the number of deployed weapons and retaining additional weapons in a non-deployed status in order to guard against the risk of weapons failure arising from inadequate efforts to assure warhead integrity.  This hedging strategy was explicitly endorsed by every Democratic and Republican member of the Strategic Posture Commission, both in their final and interim reports:

•     “As the reductions have proceeded over the period since the end of the Cold War, the potential to deal with technical surprise has been reduced, as the diversity of types of weapons in the stockpile has shrunk.  Future decisions about the size of the stockpile of non-deployed weapons and about warhead retention are going to have a direct impact on this approach to hedging and may require new approaches.”⁷⁰

•     “Both the U.S. and Russia believe…that their security will depend on maintaining a deterrence force of some size for the foreseeable future. As long as that is true, it will be necessary for the U.S. to maintain the reliability, security and safety of the residual nuclear force; the smaller the size of the stockpile, the more important it will be to have confidence in its reliability.”⁷¹

Other authorities have made the same basic point:

•     Secretary of Defense Gates (October 2008): “It…makes it harder to reduce existing stockpiles, because eventually we won’t have as much confidence in the efficacy of the weapons we do have.”⁷²

•     STRATCOM Commander General Chilton (January 2008): “Why do we have such a large number in the stockpile today – or the numbers that we have, I should say.  Some would call it ‘large,’ and some not large enough.  Well, it’s because we are worried about a family-wide failure of one of our weapons.  We have certain failure in the weapon system and you determine that system is probably or highly likely endemic throughout that particular weapon in the inventory, you better have enough of something else to put in its place if you want to maintain your deployed status.”⁷³

“Also I would say because of the lack of a production capacity there’s a fear that you might need to increase your deployed numbers because of the changing and uncertain strategic environment in the future.  So to hedge against that you have a few extra, non-deployed weapons.  More than a few extra because you need it, because you have no other way to respond should the world change and someone else starts to arm up dramatically and we make the decision that that is also necessary for us to do.  Which is not beyond the realm of the possible.”⁷⁴

•     NNSA Administrator D’Agostino (February 2008): “As the stockpile continues to be reduced, we must anticipate that an adverse change in the geopolitical threat environment, or a technical problem or development, could require manufacture of additional warheads on a relatively rapid schedule.  Currently, if we found a major system-wide problem in the stockpile requiring pit replacement, we have insufficient capacity for a timely response.”⁷⁵