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Defense Secretary Hagel Needs to Consult Senator Hagel More Often

In a press conference last Friday, U.S. Defense Secretary Chuck Hagel announced his commitment to revamping America’s nuclear weapons program after findings from two separate reviews revealed institutional failures such as weak leadership, antiquated and sparse equipment and exceptionally low morale.

“The internal and external reviews I ordered show that consistent lack of investment and support for nuclear forces of far too many years has left us with too little margin to cope with mounting stresses,” said Hagel. He also pointed to the existence of systematic problems such as a culture of over and inadequate inspection, poor communication and disconnect between DoD and service leadership.

An example of the derelict state of the nuclear program is a lack of what the Department of Defense Report calls “mission ownership.” There appears to be a disparity in passion and dedication to the nuclear deterrent mission among the service men and women performing the day-to-day mission and the higher-ups in the Department of Defense. According to the report, “[they] are well aware of the public declarations by former (and, occasionally, current) senior national security leaders and others who question or deny the continuing relevance of the nuclear forces or segments of the nuclear forces.”

Even the men and women running the show are unenthused about the triad.

Hagel’s vision for an improved U.S. nuclear program includes a 10 percent increase in Pentagon nuclear spending over the next five years. According to Deputy Defense Secretary Robert Work, the Pentagon spends between $15 billion and $16 billion dollars on nuclear programs each year; 10% over five years is at least an increase of $7.5 billion dollars.

Hagel also highlighted the Defense Department’s commitment to the President’s policy to “reduce the role of nuclear weapons on our nation’s security strategy.”

Hagel, however, went beyond his brief in saying that America’s nuclear weapons program is the “DoD’s highest priority mission.” In actuality, nuclear weapons serve one purpose only: to deter a nuclear attack on the U.S. and our allies.

Nuclear weapons are irrelevant to top U.S. security issues. Are nuclear weapons relevant to the ISIL threat in Iraq and Syria? Nope. How about in winding down our military involvement in Afghanistan? Nuclear weapons play no role in that either. The Russians absorbed Crimea and are intervening in Ukraine. Again, U.S. nuclear weapons did not stop the aggression.

Our nuclear weapons are irrelevant even in security dilemmas with nuclear-armed countries! For instance, in the increasing competition between U.S. and China for dominance in Asia, nuclear weapons play no role.

There are other reasons to be skeptical of Hagel’s proposed reforms; the dichotomy of increasing funding for a program whose purpose the DoD hopes to diminish is a bit contradictory.  Hans Kristensen of the Federation of American Scientists, for example, feels that “Throwing money after problems may fix some technical issues but it is unlikely to resolve the dissolution that must come from sitting in a silo home in the Midwest with missiles on high alert to respond to a nuclear attack that is unlikely to ever come.”

Clearly there are administrative and organizational steps needed to be taken to deal with declining morale among the service men and women dealing with our nuclear force, especially considering the recent missileer cheating scandal and reported neglect among senior leadership of the decaying forces.

But neither Hagel nor the two reviews address the top unspoken question: why should the United States spend up to a trillion dollars over the next 30 years to build new nuclear submarines, land-based ICBM missiles, long-range bombers and modernized nuclear weapons?

The United States requires a well-maintained nuclear force. But it can do so with a much smaller number of nuclear weapons and even without the land-based leg of the triad.

Who says? Why, that same Secretary of Defense Chuck Hagel who, as co-author of a 2012 nuclear policy commission report, wrote:

“No sensible argument has been put forward for using nuclear weapons to solve any of the major 21st century problems we face – threats posed by rogue states, failed states, proliferation, regional conflicts, terrorism, cyber warfare, organized crime, drug trafficking, conflict- driven mass migration of refugees, epidemics or climate change… In fact, nuclear weapons have on balance arguably become more a part of the problem than any solution.”

Too bad the new Hagel did not consult the old Hagel.

Nuclear Security: How the U.S. and Russia Can Save the World

The recent tension between Russia and the United States could increase the risk of a nuclear attack, but not in the way you are thinking.

For the last 20 years, the United States and Russia have cooperated over nuclear security in efforts to secure the former Soviet Union’s nuclear weapons and materials from terrorist groups and rogue states. Programs like the Nunn-Lugar Cooperative Threat Reduction Program and Megatons to Megawatts were designed to bolster security procedures, down blend highly enriched uranium for peaceful use and storage, and dismantle nuclear warheads that might otherwise have fallen into the hands of terrorists or rogue states. But now, the partnership between Russia and the United States on nuclear security is in trouble.

Reestablishing this relationship is critical to preserving global nuclear security, as Russia and the United States have the world’s largest nuclear stockpiles. Matthew Bunn, a Harvard professor at the Kennedy School who supervised a classified government study on protecting nuclear materials in Russia, explains in the New York Times that this is a critical moment in nuclear security. “There is a real danger that 20 years of U.S.-Russian cooperation to secure nuclear material will simply stop at the end of this year, and some of the gains we have made could slip away,” he said.

Angela Canterbury, the Executive Director for the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation, expressed similar urgency on the issue: “Failing to reduce and secure nuclear weapons and materials puts all of us at risk. This is not a time for the U.S. and Russia to abandon their responsibilities to their citizens and the world.”  

While tensions over Russian expansion in Ukraine have certainly fueled the discontinuation of nuclear security cooperation, it has not been the only factor. Russia has long been frustrated by the “teacher-student” nature of the cooperation, and hope to project more independence by managing their nuclear security unilaterally.  This has led some experts to believe a new American approach is required, one that reaches out to the Russian nuclear community as true partners.  Dr. Matt Bunn again told NYT readers, “The United States needs to be actively proposing more fully equal approaches to put Russia in a position of a co-leader on nuclear security, not a state that needs help.”

The Obama administration has made strides towards salvaging the relationship. In September, Rose Gottemoeller, the senior arms control official at the State Department, led an American delegation to Moscow to address concerns of potential arms control violations. These efforts, however, so far have done little to alleviate the impasse.

Lt. Gen. Robert Gard (U.S., ret.), Chair of the Center for Arms Control and Non-Proliferation’s board, and Nick Roth, a research associate at the Project on Managing the Atom at the Harvard Kennedy School’s Belfer Center for Science and International Affairs, describe what is needed for progress on the issue in an article earlier this year, “It will require leaders from both countries to transcend geopolitical posturing and prioritize the threat of nuclear terrorism. Moreover, it demands a new approach that makes bilateral cooperation an equal partnership.”

There are plenty of examples of continued cooperation on nuclear security, in spite of other political tensions, including the cooperation between Reagan and Gorbachev. If there was ever an issue that ought to push two rivals to cooperate, preventing nuclear terrorism has to be it.

The Disillusioned Babysitters of America’s Nuclear Weapons

Ever wonder what it would be like to hold the key to America’s most lethal weapons in your hand? According to a recent expose by Mother Jones, the job is less exciting than one might think.

The U.S. currently maintains some 4,800 nuclear warheads and 454 Intercontinental ballistic missile silos across the country. Josh Harkinson of Mother Jones recently visited the 10th Missile Squadron, Alpha Missile Alert Facility in central Montana to catch a glimpse of the life of the men in charge of the nuclear launch keys.

For a job with such gravity, the day-to-day grind is exceptionally boring. Harkinson writes, “[the] worst part of the gig, the guys agreed, might be the stultifying tedium of being stuck in a tiny room all day and night waiting for an order you knew would never come.” Obsolescence and low morale run rampant among missileers.

This is why Secretary Hagel’s announcement today is welcome, but not a fix for the more important problem at hand. Yes much of the U.S. nuclear fleet is out of date, but so is its cause.

While the ICBM program ostensibly exists to deter our nuclear-armed adversaries abroad, according to Lt. General James Kowalski, the real nuclear threat for America today is not Russia or North Korea, but “an accident. The greatest risk to my force is doing something stupid.”

According to Eric Schlosser, author of Command and Control, “you can’t screw up once—and that’s the unique danger of these machines.” Having a flawless safety record is imperative; but “nuclear bases that were once the military’s crown jewels are now ‘little orphanages that get scraps for dinner”’.

Harkinson sheds light on the fact that the dangers of maintaining the ICBM program outweigh its purpose as a viable deterrent–not to mention how expensive it is: “ditching the ICBMs would save taxpayers $14 billion over the next 10 years.”

Ultimately, the fewer nuclear weapons we maintain, the less risk for nuclear disaster. Scrapping the ICBM program would be a good start.

U.S. will attend Vienna Conference

The U.S. announced this evening that it will attend the third Conference on the Humanitarian Impact of Nuclear Weapons.

The Conference, set to take place on December 8-9, 2014 in Vienna, Austria, aims to strengthen the global nuclear disarmament and nonproliferation regime, highlight the health and environmental dangers of nuclear weapons use, and underscore the urgency for progress on the Non-Proliferation Treaty (NPT) action plan.

Up to this point, the “P5” nuclear weapons countries (Russia, China, U.S., U.K., and France) have boycotted the conferences, fearing that they might be used as a forum to push for the elimination of their stockpiles. North Korea and Israel also skipped the two previous events, while India and Pakistan attended the second.

What the U.K. or the rest of the P5 will choose to do, however, is still an open question.

No other P5 countries have confirmed attendance at the December conference, but they could be influenced by the U.S. move. At an Arms Control Association event in October, Lord Des Browne, Secretary of State for Defence under the previous British Labour government, said that, “From the point of view of the United Kingdom, if the U.S. agrees to go, we will go.” He continued on to say that it was “no coincidence that we have not made up our mind for each of the last two conferences until immediately after the United States made its decision.”

For its part, the U.S. has made clear that its participation in no way implies that the country supports the beginning of a diplomatic process that would lead to a ban on nuclear weapons or a convention on their elimination. Rather, U.S. participation in the Vienna Conference will help to reaffirm American commitment to the process laid out in the NPT.