What Abolitionists Get Wrong About U.S. Nuclear Deterrence
Key supporters of a strong nuclear deterrent policy have concluded that the United States’ deterrence requirements have changed, necessitating careful analysis and even new investments in nuclear arms.
The good news is the Biden administration has reportedly rejected a No-First-Use policy due in large part to opposition from U.S. NATO allies. The reason is understandable: NATO’s conventional balance remains relatively weak, and twenty-seven of the thirty NATO members pledged under the 1969 Nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty not to build nuclear weapons of their own. But the bad news is that the conventional military imbalance can only be partially remedied through NATO members fulfilling their long-standing pledge to spend at least 2 percent of their GDP on defense.
Thus, an alternative had been proposed by the Saltzman Institute’s Kenneth Waltz: Other nations, including Iran and NATO members, could secure their own nuclear weapons, therefore keeping everyone on their toes. However, Henry Sokolski of the Nonproliferation Policy Education Center has offered a sobering analysis outlining the dangers of trying to consider—simultaneously—the possible decisions of a dozen or more nuclear powers during a crisis.
Thus, even though the United States has a nuclear umbrella, it consists of roughly 200 gravity bombs aboard theater-capable aircraft, while Russia can bring a minimum of 2,000 nuclear weapons to the fight, including on hypersonic missiles.
Consequently, further weakening U.S. strategic systems with unilateral cuts of upwards of 55 percent simply increases the United States’ vulnerabilities and compounds the very threat the Ukraine conflict has surfaced. Moreover, cutting out all of the United States’ ICBMs and at least half of its planned Columbia-class submarines would put the United States at least at a three-to-one disadvantage compared to Russian and Chinese strategic nuclear force levels.
Even worse, the United States could only build back up to the 1,500-warhead level, less than what the 2010 New START Treaty allows, potentially leaving the United States with a six-to-one force imbalance in twenty years.
As for taking all nuclear retaliatory options away from the United States, as some disarmament advocates have suggested, this vitiates nuclear deterrence entirely. What is the deterrent value of a retaliatory pledge when no such retaliation will occur?
Peter Huessy is President of Geostrategic Analysis & Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute. These views are his own.
Image: Reuters.