OVER THE next ten to twenty years, the erosion of American nuclear superiority will have major ramifications for the global balance of power. It will place new constraints on our freedom of action and lead our friends and foes alike to doubt the credibility of all instruments of U.S. power. As a result, decades-old alliance structures may fracture amid a drift toward multipolarity. Leadership from Tokyo to Riyadh to Seoul may find new incentives to develop their own deterrents as the relative power of states like Russia and China increases. With our extended-deterrent power lost, the international system will change-and not in Washington's favor. But this scenario is preventable if policy makers cast away the illusion of safety and act quickly to correct a trend which has plagued Washington for nearly two decades.
The giant has feet of clay. Though today the United States is widely seen to be dominant in almost every aspect of military power, and the expectation is that it will remain so, an examination of its nuclear forces and infrastructure reveals that its position is far from assured. The critical question is not whether the United States enjoys a strategic advantage in the area of nuclear forces presently, but rather what the forces and nuclear infrastructures of the United States and its competitors will look like ten or twenty years from now. If Washington does not modernize, Russia could acquire a nuclear advantage within the next two decades.
