by John Isaacs
There are signs that nuclear sanity is slowly gaining a foothold. Proposals are being considered by the Obama Administration that could pave the way for deep cuts in the number of U.S. nuclear weapons.
Despite howls of protest from the Jack D. Rippers of “Dr. Strangelove or: How I Learned to Stop Worrying and Love the Bomb” fame that any reductions in nuclear weapons undermines American security, the United States has in fact reduced its nuclear stockpiles significantly since the 1960s when America deployed more than 30,000 nuclear weapons – and the Soviets even more.
And the United States has remained more than secure from nuclear attack.
Despite those reductions and the end of the Cold War more than 20 years ago, the United States still maintains about 5,000 active nuclear weapons in its stockpile plus another 4,500 intact but slated for disassembly.
Almost every one of these weapons is many times the size of the two small nuclear bombs that destroyed Hiroshima and Nagasaki in 1945.
Now stop and think about that fact: two small atom bombs pulverized two cities while the United States still maintains 5,000 far more destructive weapons
Recently, an Associated Press piece by Robert Burns suggested that the Obama Administration is considering at least three options to reduce the number of deployed strategic nuclear weapons: 1,000 to 1,100; 700 to 800, and 300 to 400.
The article was not clear whether these reductions would be part of a negotiated treaty or unilateral, although Joint Chiefs Chairman Martin Dempsey on February 15 suggested that the reductions would be negotiated.
It is also clear that these numbers are proposals being drafted in the Pentagon for presentation to the President as alternatives, and are far from being adopted. In fact, one of the options under consideration is to keep U.S. nuclear forces at the levels agreed to in the New START treaty. However, the maintenance of 1,550 nuclear weapons in perpetuity doesn’t make fiscal or strategic sense.
Could 1,000 or 500 or even 300 nuclear bombs serve as an adequate deterrent force to prevent a nuclear attack on the United States and its allies? Most assuredly.
Today, the Chinese have an estimated 240 nuclear weapons, of which 40 – 50 could be launched by long range missiles to hit the United States. The Chinese feel secure with their nuclear deterrent which is a small fraction of the American and Russian forces.
In 2010, two Air Force analysts at the Air War College and the School of Advanced Air and Space Studies, along with an active duty Air Force planner,calculated that the country could meet its conceivable national defense and military concerns with only 311 deployed strategic nuclear weapons.
These analysts pointed out that instead of focusing on simple numbers, it is more relevant to examine the size and explosive power of that remaining nuclear force:
This may seem a trifling number compared with the arsenals built up in the cold war, but 311 warheads would provide the equivalent of 1,900 megatons of explosive power, or nine-and-a-half times the amount that Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara argued in 1965 could incapacitate the Soviet Union by destroying “one-quarter to one-third of its population and about two-thirds of its industrial capacity.”
Any of the numbers suggested in the Associate Press story could easily deter a nuclear attack by an adversary present or future.
It should also be noted that nuclear weapons have proved useless in the many conflicts in which the United States has been involved from Vietnam and Iraq to Afghanistan and Libya.
Some of the complaints about reductions ignore one of the most important features of the current security environment: the federal budget crunch and the need for the Pentagon to shrink its military budget to conform to congressionally mandated cuts to defense spending. The less the Pentagon needs to spend to build or maintain nuclear weapons, the more it has for conventional weapons that are needed to address 21st century threats and security priorities.
Thus when Rep. Mike Turner (R-OH), Chairman of the House Armed Services strategic forces subcommittee, says: “The administration reviews are all being done to support further U.S. reductions. This is concerning,” he needs to explain what conventional capacity he would give up to maintain a larger nuclear force. He should also recognize that the fewer nuclear weapons there are on the planet, the more secure the U.S. will be, given its overwhelming conventional dominance.
Proposals to reduce or even eliminate nuclear weapons have been studied many times before. In 1986, President Ronald Reagan, so much revered by many Republicans today, came close at the Reykjavik Summit to an agreement with Soviet General Secretary Gorbachev to eliminate all nuclear weapons.
An obvious but important fact about the politics of nuclear weapons is that Republicans seem to oppose only nuclear reductions (bilateral or otherwise) proposed by Democratic Presidents.
For example, in 1991, in the immediate aftermath of the Cold War, President George H.W. Bush announced that the U.S. would dramatically reduce its arsenal of tactical nuclear weapons, which led the Soviet Union to take similar steps, dramatically increasing U.S. security.
Furthermore, the George W. Bush administration announced in 2004 that it planned to unilaterally reduce the U.S. nuclear stockpile by “nearly 50 percent” by 2012. This reduction was achieved in December 2007, five years early, at which point the administration also stated that an additional 15 percent reduction would be completed by 2012.
The Republicans who are so noisy in their opposition today were silent then.
The 2010 Nuclear Posture Review stated that the fundamental role of nuclear weapons is to deter a nuclear attack on the U.S. and its allies rather than fighting and winning a nuclear war. Reductions of nuclear weapons in line with that policy would enable the military to increase its focus on the threats of today rather than the threats of the Cold War.
That Review provided a realistic appraisal that in today’s world, the strategic landscape has changed even while the view of the Cold Warriors has not and that nuclear security in the 21st century means preventing countries from developing nuclear weapons and terrorists from getting their hands on them.
While considering these options, the Obama Administration, in its just-presented budget for Fiscal Year 2013, made two other recommendations that are realistic in the current budget and threat environment. It delayed by two years construction of the highly expensive new generation of nuclear weapons submarines that are estimated to cost $350 billion over the sub’s lifetimes.
And it has postponed by five years the Los Alamos, N.M., nuclear weapons laboratory’s plutonium facility (Chemistry and Metallurgy Research Replacement Nuclear Facility).
Maybe nuclear sanity is slowing dawning.
