Brian Bradley
NS&D Monitor
6/26/2015
Integrating a smaller, shorter-range cruise missile into the both land-based and carrier-based dual-capable F-35s could help the U.S. offset a low global “nuclear threshold” inadvertently caused by U.S. conventional weapons superiority, according to a nuclear strategy and posture report released June 22 by the Center for Strategic and International Studies (CSIS). “Project Atom: A Competitive Strategies Approach to Defining U.S. Nuclear Strategy and Posture for 2025-2050” asserts that forward-deployed tactical nuclear weapons can play an integral part in NATO’s deter-and-assure mission. “Dual-capable F-35As (based on land) and F-35Cs (based on carriers) would provide visible manifestations of U.S. extended deterrence and allied burden sharing,” the report states. “Discriminate employment options would be provided by a suite of low-yield, special-effects warheads (low collateral, enhanced radiation, earth penetration, electromagnetic pulse, and others as technology advances), including possibly a smaller, shorter-range cruise missile that could be delivered by F-35s.”
Could U.S. Conventional Superiority Increase the Likelihood of a Nuclear Attack?
Clark Murdock, Senior Adviser at CSIS’ International Security Program and the report’s principal author, argues that U.S. “conventional superiority” lowers the threshold for other countries to launch nuclear attacks on American soil. Other nations could view such an act as a way to offset U.S. conventional supremacy, the report states. To deter any potential offsetting nuclear strike, the U.S. should maintain “discriminate,” complementary and responsive nuclear options, the report states. Principally authored by four subject matter experts and co-authored by another five think tank experts, the final version of the report represents only Murdock’s conclusions. “As the author of the final report, my views were shaped and influenced by the debate among the independent think tank teams, but did not attempt to bridge the differences on fundamentals between the competing approaches,” Murdock wrote.
One co-author, Elbridge Colby, Robert M. Gates Senior Fellow at the Center for a New American Security, agreed with Murdock about the status of U.S. conventional superiority, saying during a speech in Washington on June 22 that the margin of U.S. conventional military superiority is declining. Colby cited Russia and China as two countries bolstering their conventional military capabilities, and said U.S. nuclear policy should consider technological weapons advancements around the globe. “The Pentagon is commendably trying to extend the U.S. military advantages through things like the Third Offset Strategy, and that makes a great deal of sense and I hope it succeeds, but it’s unlikely to lead to a restoration of the degree of military advantages that the United States enjoyed in the 1990s, and the first decade of the century,” Colby said during the report’s rollout at CSIS in Washington. “So these are the kind of basic, I think, background conditions that U.S. nuclear policy needs to take into account.”
Dissenting Opinion
Some participants of the study dissented with the Murdock’s notion that U.S. should maintain diverse nuclear options to hedge against potential nuclear attacks potentially invited by the superiority of U.S. conventional forces. In a dissenting opinion to Murdock’s report, Barry Blechman, co-founder of the Stimson Center, and Russell Rumbaugh, Special Assistant to the Director of the Office of Cost Assessment and Program Evaluation in the Office of the Secretary of Defense, wrote that U.S. conventional supremacy makes non-nuclear forces the “preferred means” of protecting American interests. “For the United States, nuclear weapons’ only role is to deter nuclear attacks on the United States and its allies,” wrote Blechman and Rumbaugh, who worked as Director of Budgeting for Foreign Affairs and Defense and Senior Associate at the Stimson Center until March. “They provide no military or political advantage for the United States against any other threat. In addition, any use of nuclear weapons, no matter how limited, would end the long-standing taboo on their use and make devastating nuclear wars more likely.”
Nuclear policies and doctrines, the two wrote, are still influenced by Cold War beliefs of nuclear-weapons utility. “These false hopes that nuclear weapons can play a range of political and military roles in U.S. security policy cause the United States to mistakenly pursue a nuclear strategy that is costly—not only in material terms but also in geopolitical terms,” Blechman and Rumbaugh wrote. “In the worst-case scenarios, the strategy could be catastrophic in terms of human lives and the nation’s future. The overarching goal of U.S. nuclear policy and strategy should be to seek to minimize the roles played by these weapons, both in our own policies and in the policies of all other nations.”
