Alissa Tabirian
NS&D Monitor
1/29/2016
The United States’ nuclear posture should be updated to reflect the increased danger posed by Russian nuclear weapons threats and modernization, according to a panel of experts that testified Wednesday before the Senate Armed Services Strategic Forces Subcommittee.
Keith Payne, president and co-founder of the National Institute for Public Policy, said the decades-long bipartisan consensus on U.S. nuclear policy has dictated that nuclear weapons are meant to deter enemies and assure allies, but that U.S. policies should be reviewed to accommodate Russia’s new strategic vision. In addition to re-establishing Russian dominance of former Soviet territories, “Moscow seeks to prevent any significant collective Western military opposition by threatening local nuclear first use,” Payne said, calling it “a fundamentally new coercive use of nuclear weapons and threats” that had not been accounted for in previous Nuclear Posture Reviews (NPR).
The next U.S. president is expected to direct a new NPR to establish the nation’s nuclear policy for the following five to 10 years. Past reviews have shaped U.S. strategies for deterrence and nuclear stockpile reductions. The latest NPR in 2010 highlighted the prevention of nuclear terrorism and proliferation as key policy goals, and decreased the role of nuclear weapons in the U.S. national security strategy.
“Russian military officials speak openly of pre-emptive use of nuclear weapons in a conventional war and, according to some open Russian sources, Russia has pursued specialized low-yield nuclear weapons to make its first-use threats credible and its nuclear weapons locally employable,” Payne said. He said this indicates that U.S. and NATO deterrence policy is “failing in a fundamental way, and the consequences of that failure could be catastrophic.”
NATO’s deterrence strategy is based on both nuclear and conventional capabilities and involves the independent nuclear forces of the U.S., U.K., and France, and nuclear-sharing arrangements through which NATO members contribute dual-capable aircraft that can carry U.S. nuclear bombs fielded at airbases in several nations. According to NATO’s declaratory policies, nuclear weapons use would only be considered under extremely remote circumstances.
Brad Roberts, director of the Center for Global Security Research at the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory, said U.S. nuclear policy does not necessarily need to change, but that considering Russia’s “escalate to de-escalate strategy” security policy, “the conditions do not now exist . . . that would allow us to take substantial additional steps to reduce the role and number of U.S. nuclear weapons.” Russia’s unwillingness to reduce its nuclear stockpile, he said, indicates that disarmament and arms control initiatives “are unlikely to pay any significant dividends anytime soon.” Roberts said although the U.S. should not abandon these objectives, “We should temper our expectations.”
NATO’s Role in Deterrence
NATO has been “the greatest nonproliferation mechanism since the end of World War II” by ensuring through extended deterrence that member states with the capability to produce their own nuclear weapons have not done so, testified John Harvey, former principal deputy assistant secretary of defense for nuclear, chemical, and biological defense programs.
Roberts said the U.S. should “focus on adapting, modernizing, and strengthening deterrence in Europe” for NATO allies facing the new Russian threat, because NATO’s current conventional force structure would not provide a timely response to a potential Russian invasion. The problem, he said, is not in NATO’s hardware, but rather in the ways it “expresses its convictions about the role of nuclear deterrence.” Citing the State Department’s assessment that Russia has violated the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, Roberts said that in the event the Kremlin deploys this type of weapon, “the problem for the NATO alliance becomes more complex” and existing nuclear-sharing arrangements might not adequately “signal the resolve of the alliance when threatened.”
According to Payne, for NATO to deter Russian nuclear escalation, the dual-capable aircraft that fall under the U.S. nuclear-sharing arrangement with NATO must stay in European bases, for use with weapons in the U.S. modernization program. These include the B61 nuclear bombs that are currently under refurbishment. “We must go ahead with the B61-12 [life extension program],” Payne said.
Designing New Nuclear Weapons
Franklin Miller, principal of The Scowcroft Group, challenged the existing U.S. government policy not to develop new nuclear warheads. “The intent of that policy . . . was to set an example for others not to either rely more on nuclear weapons or build new nuclear weapons,” he said. “The French, the Russians, the Chinese, the Indians, the Pakistanis, and the North Koreans are building new nuclear weapons. If the intent of our policy of self-restraint was to stop them from doing so, that policy has failed.”
“To the degree that our stockpile requires new capabilities, then I think we ought to examine that,” Miller said.
Roberts agreed there is a case for new nuclear weapons. “One argument we’ve heard is that this will reinforce deterrence because it will give us a lower-yield option that the president might find more credible to threaten,” he said. “Another argument is that we need new weapons in order to enhance the ability of our laboratories to produce in the future.” Roberts’ conclusion was that “we can move to the prototyping of new weapons without producing new ones, and gain the benefits that we need in our infrastructure.”
Harvey suggested that the U.S. “maybe” would need nuclear warheads with new military capabilities, and that it “most assuredly” would need to retain capabilities to produce these warheads if required. The current U.S. government policy on developing new nuclear warheads, he said, “should be reviewed in every administration.”
