SILENT RETREAT

Abstract

The stage may be set for what could be a historic turning point in America's reliance on nuclear weapons to meet its fundamental national security interests. Proponents of a refurbished nuclear stockpile and infrastructure are convinced that nuclear weapons will remain central to U.S. security interests, yet they admit that there is no national consensus on the need for and role of nuclear weapons. Nuclear opponents are gravely concerned that to the extent nuclear refurbishment creates a global perception that nuclear weapons remain essential instruments, it will eviscerate nuclear nonproliferation measures precisely at a time when nuclear ambitions are growing. Moreover, opponents see deterrence through advanced conventional weapons as decisively more credible than any nuclear alternative. With hopes of elevating discourse to the national level, this article examines the key current arguments pro and con within the specialist community and forecasts changes in the U.S. nuclear arsenal over the next decade. It concludes with a brief prognosis on prospects for complete nuclear disarmament.

Keywords:

• United States
• Nuclear weapons
• Reliable Replacement Warhead
• Nonproliferation regime
• National security

Acknowledgements

I would like to thank Jack Mendelsohn and Jonathan Stevenson for reading and commenting on an earlier draft of this article. I also benefited from the comments of several participants who attended a workshop at the Center for Nonproliferation Studies in Washington, DC, on February 8, 2007, where I presented the main arguments and conclusions of this article.

Notes

1. Report of the Defense Science Board Task Force on Nuclear Capabilities, Report Summary, hereafter 2006 DSB Report (Washington, DC: Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition, Technology, and Logistics, December 2006), <www.fas.org/irp/agency/dod/dsb/nuclear.pdf>.

2. George P. Shultz, William J. Perry, Henry A. Kissinger, and Sam Nunn, “A World Free of Nuclear Weapons,” Wall Street Journal, January 4, 2007, p. A15. The 2006 DSB Report's use of the word “entrenched” to describe the views of nuclear opponents unfairly suggests that they are inviolate. The mere fact that such views are spreading, not only among influential elite audiences but also within the public domain, suggests that perhaps the views of nuclear proponents are far less subject to systematic inquiry.

3. For a useful analysis of the Bush administration's attempts to revise nuclear strategy and elements of the nuclear stockpile, see David S. McDonough, Nuclear Superiority: The “New Triad” and the Evolution of Nuclear Strategy, Adelphi Paper 383 (New York: Routledge for the International Institute for Strategic Studies, 2006).

4. Interest in counterforce strategies naturally long preceded dependence on a mutual assured destruction strategy. The Eisenhower administration attempted unsuccessfully to reduce the stigma associated with nuclear use by placing heavy reliance on tactical nuclear weapons for battlefield use. Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara announced early in the new Kennedy administration (June 1962): “the principal military objectives, in the event of a nuclear war … should be the destruction of the enemy's military forces, not of his civilian population.” As the Soviet Union acquired an assured second-strike capacity, mutual assured destruction eventually replaced a predominantly counterforce strategy. For the source of the McNamara citation and further elaboration of U.S. nuclear strategy, see McDonough, Nuclear Superiority, chapter 1.

5. See Spurgeon M. Keeny Jr. and Wolfgang K.H. Panofsky, “Nuclear Weapons in the 1980s: MAD vs. NUTS,” Foreign Affairs 60 (Winter 1981/2), p. 289.

6. The abolitionists’ argument is perhaps best established in the 1997 Report of the Canberra Commission on the Elimination of Nuclear Weapons, <www.dfat.gov.au/cc/cchome.html>.

7. Mark Dean Millot, “Facing the Emerging Reality of Regional Nuclear Adversaries,” Washington Quarterly 17 (Summer 1994), pp. 50–51. This finding should come as no great surprise. Other than those officers who spent their careers in nuclear occupational specialties, the uniformed military largely viewed nuclear weapons as a custodial responsibility rather than as a useful instrument of warfare. As the 2006 DSB Report notes, “Even during the Cold War, nuclear weapons were something of a round peg in a square hole in DoD [Department of Defense].” See 2006 DSB Report, p. 29.

8. Cited in Jack Mendelsohn, “Deligitimizing Nuclear Weapons,” Issues in Science and Technology, Spring 2006, <www.issues.org/22.3/mendelsohn.html>.

9. For both the “Joint Statement on Reduction of Nuclear Weapons Arsenals: Declining Utility, Continuing Risks,” issued by Gen. Lee Butler and Gen. Andrew Goodpaster, and the full text of the 61 retired generals and admirals, <www.acronym.org.uk/dd/dd11/11nwfw.htm>.

10. Paul H. Nitze, “Is it Time to Junk Our Nukes?” Washington Post, January 16, 1994, p. C1.

11. Michael Quinlan, Thinking About Nuclear Weapons (London: RUSI Whitehall Paper Series, 1997), p. 15.

12. Report of the Defense Science Board Task Force on Nuclear Deterrence (Washington, DC: Office of the Under Secretary of Defense for Acquisition and Technology, October 1998). See also James J. Wirtz, “Do U.S. Nuclear Weapons Have a Future?” Strategic Insights, <www.ccc.nps.navy.mil/si/2006/Mar/wirtzMar06.pdf>.

13. The three legs of the old triad consisted of land-based, nuclear-armed ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and strategic aircraft.

14. A substantial number of non-deployed warheads would also be retained in strategic reserve. The Nuclear Posture Review's (NPR) official text remains classified, but most of it has been posted on the globalsecurity.org Web Site, <globalsecurity.org/wmd/library/policy/dod/npr.htm> (hereafter NPR Excerpts).

15. Cited in Andrew Krepinevich and Robert Martinage, The Transformation of Strategic-Strike Operations (Washington, DC: Center for Strategic and Budgetary Assessments, 2001), <www.csbaonline.org/>.

16. Cited in Andrew Krepinevich and Robert Martinage, The provenance of the New Triad and its relationship to the 1997 National Defense Panel surely relates to the fact that Andrew Krepinevich served as one of the panel's nine members as well as coauthor of The Transformation of Strategic-Strike Operations.

17. M. Elaine Bunn, a National Defense University senior research fellow, argues that the NPR was misnamed and should have been called the Strategic Posture Review because it addressed more than just nuclear capabilities. See M. Elaine Bunn, “Can Deterrence Be Tailored?” Strategic Forum 225 (Institute for National Strategic Studies, January 2007).

18. NPR Excerpts, p. 46.

19. “No Nuclear ‘Bunker Buster’ Money in FY 2006 DOE Funding Bill,” <www.aip.org/fyi/2005/152.html>.

20. Congress provided $9 million in fiscal 2005 and $25 million in fiscal 2006. The administration requested $27.7 million for fiscal 2007 and $88.8 for the National Nuclear Security Administration and $30 million for the navy in fiscal 2008. For details see Jonathan Medalia, Nuclear Weapons: The Reliable Replacement Warhead Program, RL32929 (Washington, DC: Congressional Research Service, February 8, 2007), <fas.org/sgp/crs/nuke/RL32929.pdf>.

21. Will Lester, “Most Americans Say No Nations Should Have Nuclear Weapons,” Associated Press, March 31, 2005, <www.commondreams.org/headlines05/0331-05.htm>.

22. This is roughly the point made by senior military officers, who in December 1996 issued a call for the elimination of nuclear weapons. See “Joint Statement on Reduction of Nuclear Weapons Arsenals: Declining Utility, Continuing Risks.” In a 1999 poll conducted by the University of New Mexico's Institute for Public Policy for Sandia National Laboratories, 69 percent of the respondents agreed that the world would be safer without nuclear weapons, but 84 percent admitted that such elimination couldn't be achieved because knowledge is too widespread. The full text of the survey is at <www.cmc.sandia.gov/survey.htm>.

23. 2006 DSB Report, p. 2.

24. 2006 DSB Report, p. 2.

25. 2006 DSB Report, p. 3.

26. Butler and Goodpaster, “Joint Statement on Reduction of Nuclear Weapons Arsenals.”

27. Nitze, “Is It Time To Junk Our Nukes?”

28. Nina Tannenwald, “Stigmatizing the Bomb,” International Security 29 (Spring 2005), p. 30.

29. Colin L. Powell with Joseph E. Perisco, My American Journey: An Autobiography (New York: Random House, 1995), pp. 323–324, 485–486, and 540–541. See also George Bush and Brent Scowcroft, A World Transformed (New York: Knopf, 1998), p. 463: “… No one advanced the notion of using nuclear weapons, and the President rejected it even in retaliation for chemical or biological attacks. We deliberately avoid spoken or unspoken threats to use them on the grounds that it is bad practice to threaten something you have no intention of carrying out. Publicly, we left the matter ambiguous. There was no point in undermining the deterrence it might be offering.”

30. Quadrennial Defense Review Report (Washington, DC: Department of Defense, February 6, 2006), pp. 27, 41, and 49.

31. M. Elaine Bunn, “Can Deterrence Be Tailored?” p. 1.

32. David S. Yost, “The NATO Allies,” in James J. Wirtz and Jeffrey A. Larsen, eds., Nuclear Transformation: The New U.S. Nuclear Doctrine (New York: Palgrave Macmillan, 2005), p. 187.

33. Government think tank analysts, interviews in Toyko, March 2005.

34. 2006 DSB Report, p. 3.

35. See Kurt M. Campbell, Robert J. Einhorn, and Mitchell B. Reiss, eds., The Nuclear Tipping Point: Why States Reconsider Their Nuclear Choices (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 2004), especially pp. 344–345. Campbell and Einhorn conclude: “There is no indication that controversial policies of the Bush administration regarding nuclear weapons … have had a direct impact on deliberations regarding the acquisition of an independent nuclear capability in any of the countries studied.”

36. Steven Andreasen and Dennis Gormley, “Edging Ever Closer to a Nuclear Death Row,” Minneapolis Star-Tribune, March 29, 2006, p. A13.

37. On Taiwan and China's interacting offensive doctrines, see Dennis M. Gormley, “Cruise Control,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 62 (March/April 2006), pp. 26–33; on Washington's concern, see Wendell Minnick, “Taiwan's Missile Program Draws Concern,” Defense News, June 19, 2006, p. 1.

38. 2006 DSB Report, p. 3.

39. For a recent and useful treatment of the subject, see Campbell, Einhorn, and Reiss, eds., The Nuclear Tipping Point.

40. 2006 DSB Report, pp. 3–4.

41. 2006 DSB Report, p. 3.

42. For the arguments of conventional proponents, see Dennis M. Gormley, “Securing Nuclear Obsolescence,” Survival 48 (Autumn 2006), pp. 127–148, <cns.miis.edu/pubs/other/Securing_Nuclear_Obsolescence.pdf>; Ivan Oelrich, Missions for Nuclear Weapons after the Cold War, Occasional Paper No. 3 (Washington, DC: Federation of American Scientists, 2005); and Michael A. Levi, Fire in the Hole: Nuclear and Non-Nuclear Options for Counterproliferation, Working Papers No. 31 (Washington, DC: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2002). For an analysis by nuclear proponents, see Bryan L. Fearey, Paul White, John St. Ledger, and John Immele, “An Analysis of Reduced Collateral Damage Nuclear Weapons,” Comparative Strategy 22 (October/November 2003), pp. 305–324.

43. One conventional concept under current consideration takes advantage of precision location accuracy by attacking a single entry point repeatedly, thus drilling down the same entry hole until the weapon achieves the required depth. The weapon's effectiveness would most critically depend on perhaps an order of magnitude improvement in accuracy over today's weapons, which are quite conceivable as improvements take place in the Global Positioning System. Interview with industry official, April 2006.

44. All information on casualties is taken from Effects of Nuclear Earth-Penetrator and Other Weapons (Washington, DC: National Academy of Sciences, 2005), at <www.nap.edu/catalog/11282.html>.

45. Instead of employing a surface burst, new weapons with perhaps 5–10 kiloton yields would penetrate the earth's surface to a depth of a few meters in granite and perhaps 30 meter in soil in order to destroy facilities buried up to 100 meters under ground. But even here collateral damage could be significant. See Roger Speed and Michael May, “Dangerous Doctrine,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 61 (March/April 2005), pp. 38–49, <thebulletin.metapress.com/content/9pmqq53321645902/fulltext.pdf>.

46. Commercially available boring equipment can now dig a tunnel 18 meters in diameter at a rate of 70 meters each day. See Gormley, “Securing Nuclear Obsolescence,” pp. 133–134 for more on adversary targeting such facilities.

47. “US Military Options Against Emerging Nuclear Threats,” IISS Strategic Comments 12 (April 2006).

48. Walter Pincus, “Rumsfeld Seeks to Revive Burrowing Nuclear Bomb,” Washington Post, February 1, 2005, p. A2.

49. It was special operations forces operating on the ground that achieved the only success by finding and destroying one Iraqi missile launcher. For more on this mission, see Gormley, “Securing Nuclear Obsolescence,” pp. 134–137.

50. Thomas E. Ricks, Fiasco: The American Military Adventure in Iraq (New York: Penguin Press, 2006), pp. 124–125. To be sure, the Iraqis managed to continue firing both ballistic and cruise missiles throughout the brief campaign, but not nearly at the same rate per day as during the first Gulf War in 1991.

51. In military parlance, this means developing special tactics, techniques, training, and procedures to find and attack such targets. See Robert P. Hoffa Jr. and Jasper Welch, “Command and Control Arrangements for the Attack of Time-Sensitive Targets,” Northrop-Grumman Analysis Center, November 2005, p. 34.

52. Gen. Hal M. Hornburg, air combat commander, quoted in Air Force, November 2004, p. 72, as cited in ibid., p. 39.

53. See Barbara Opall-Rome, “Sensor to Shooter in 1 Minute,” Defense News, October 2, 2006, p. 1. Opall-Rome reports “over 100” Hezbollah rocket launchers were destroyed. The figure, 125, is reported in No'am Ofir, “Look Not to the Skies: The IAF vs. Surface-to-Surface Rocket Launchers,” Strategic Assessment, November 1–30, 2006, e-mail text published by the Jaffee Center for Strategic Studies, Tel Aviv, Israel, <www.tau.ac.il/jcss>.

54. David Sanger, “Don't Shoot. We're Not Ready,” New York Times, June 25, 2006, Section 4, p. 1.

55. Russia remains concerned about America's capacity to employ powerful ground- and space-based radars and infrared sensors to greatly improve prospects for thick defenses. China is most animated about U.S. expansion of missile defense into space. See Tom Sauer, “Limiting National Missile Defence,” Bulletin 22—Nuclear Policy, Terrorism and Missile Defence, International Network of Engineers and Scientists Against Proliferation, <www.inesap.org/bulletin22/bul22art31.htm>.

56. Although Patriot units performed admirably during the 2003 war in Iraq against ballistic missiles (scoring 100 percent effectiveness), they failed altogether against Iraq's surprise use of five cruise missiles. This had little to do with Patriot itself, but instead with the failure to link airborne sensors to Patriot's ground-based radar. See Dennis M. Gormley, “Missile Defence Myopia: Lessons from the Iraq War,” Survival 45 (Winter 2003-04), pp. 61–86.

57. Rumors persist that such a move may well occur. For more on the mission, see Gormley, “Securing Nuclear Obsolescence,” pp. 139–140.

58. For an unfavorable technical evaluation of the concept, see Peter D. Zimmerman and Charles D. Ferguson, “Sweeping the Skies,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 59 (November/December 2003), pp. 57–61.

59. For a useful fact sheet on the subject, see the Arms Control Association Web Site, <www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/negsec.asp>. Note that such assurances do not pertain to an attacking state that is allied with a nuclear weapon state.

60. 2006 DSB Report, p. 4.

61. Wolfgang K.H. Panofsky, “A Damaging Designation,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 63 (January/February 2007), pp. 37–39, <thebulletin.metapress.com/content/n13mw46309hk7563/fulltext.pdf>.

62. See Lynn Eden, Whole World on Fire: Organizations, Knowledge, & Nuclear Weapons Devastation (Ithaca: Cornell University Press, 2004). As Eden demonstrates, no sinister plot lay behind why this failure occurred (e.g., reluctance to reduce the nuclear arsenal). Rather, the reasons relate more to constraints in the way knowledge organizations incorporate new routines.

63. Cited in McDonough, Nuclear Superiority, p. 39.

64. 2006 DSB Report, p. 5.

65. The air force has a $6 billion–$7 billion modernization program under way to provide the more sophisticated N-50 guidance system, while the navy also plans to upgrade the Mk-6 guidance system for its Trident missile fleet. McDonough, Nuclear Superiority, p. 46.

66. Speed and May, “Dangerous Doctrine.”

67. See Jonathan Medalia, Nuclear Weapons: The Reliable Replacement Warhead Program. For a critical appraisal, see Stephen I. Schwartz, “Warheads Aren't Forever,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists 61 (September/October 2005), pp. 58–64, <thebulletin.metapress.com/content/y604v12027758177/fulltext.pdf>.

68. See Donald MacKenzie and Graham Spinardi, “Tacit Knowledge, Weapons Design, and the Uninvention of Nuclear Weapons,” American Journal of Sociology 101 (July 1995), pp. 44–99.

69. James Sterngold, “Key Legislators Threaten Funds for Nuclear Weapons Overhaul,” San Francisco Chronicle, January 14, 2007, p. A4.

70. Jon Fox, “U.S. Reaffirms Need for Modernizing Nuclear Complex,” Global Security Newswire, December 15, 2006, <www.nti.org/d_newswire/issues/2006/12/15/774DFOAF-09BE-4E4E-BB2D-19AC324853F1.html>.

71. William J. Broad, David E. Sanger, and Thom Shanker, “U.S. Selecting Hybrid Design for Warheads,” New York Times, January 7, 2007, p. 1.

72. Walter Pincus, “U.S. Selects Design for New Nuclear Warhead,” Washington Post, March 3, 2007, p. A8.

73. Walter Pincus, “Nuclear Warhead Plan Draws Opposition,” Washington Post, March 4, 2007, p. A5.

74. Walter Pincus, “Nuclear Warhead Plan Draws Opposition,” Washington Post, March 4, 2007, p. A5. See also, R.J. Hemley and D. Meiron, et al., “Pit Lifetime,” JSR-06-335, November 20, 2006, <www.nukewatch.org/facts/nwd/JASON_ReportPuAging.pdf>.

75. John Deutch, “A Nuclear Posture for Today,” Foreign Affairs 84 (January/February 2005).

76. Robert Civiak, The Reliable Replacement Warhead Program: A Slippery Slope to New Nuclear Weapons (Livermore, CA: Tri-Valley CAREs, January 2005). Nuclear lab interest in the Reliable Replacement Warhead does not mean that they oppose the current warhead life extension program. See Medalia, Nuclear Weapons, p. 5.

77. As Stephen Schwartz has noted, to the military an unreliable weapon isn't one that will not explode, but one that achieves less than its expected nuclear yield. Such weapons would certainly leave something to chance in the minds of adversaries. See Schwartz, “Warheads Aren't Forever.”

78. “US, Russia to Set Up Bilateral Security Group,” Moscow ITAR-TASS in English, June 13, 2006.

79. Alexei Arbatov and Vladimir Dvorkin, Revising Nuclear Deterrence (College Park, MD: Center for International Security Studies, October 2005).

80. Cuts in respective U.S. and Russian arsenals should extend beyond so-called deployable warheads to include reserve and even dismantled ones. See Deutch, “A Nuclear Posture for Today,” p. 54.

81. Seth Owen, “New Warhead Could Siphon Funds From Sub Builders: Two Labs Compete to Design New Tips for Trident Missile,” The Day (Groton, CT), January 13, 2007, <www.theday.com/store/itm.aspx?re=d4dfcb56-86f8-4cdc-9faf-01aca0bf7522&itm=art>.

82. On congressional support, see William Matthews, “U.S. Lawmakers Push ‘Prompt Global Strike,’” Defense News, November 24, 2003, p. 4.

83. On congressional reaction, see Chris Johnson, “Senate Panel Kills Trident Missile Plan,” InsideDefense.com NewsStand, August 1, 2006, <www.military.com/features/0,15240,107820,00.html>. For a critical evaluation of the concept, see Steve Andreasen, “Off Target? The Bush Administration's Plan to Arm Long-Range Ballistic Missile with Conventional Warheads,” Arms Control Today, July/August 2006, <www.armscontrol.org/act/2006_07-08/CoverStory.asp>.

84. Noah Shachtman, “Hypersonic Cruise Missile: America's New Global Strike Weapon,” Popular Mechanics, January 2007, <www.popularmechanics.com/technology/military_law/4203874.html>.

85. For more on global strike plans, see Dennis M. Gormley, “Conventional Force Integration in Global Strike,” Wirtz and Larsen, Nuclear Transformation, pp. 53–68.

86. Mikhail Gorbachev, “The Nuclear Threat,” Wall Street Journal, January 31, 2007, p. A13.

87. For a general treatment of types of scientific knowledge, see H.M. Collins, “Tacit Knowledge, Trust, and the Q Sapphire,” Social Studies of Science 31 (2001), pp. 71–85. For its relevance to nuclear weapons, see MacKenzie and Spinardi, “Tacit Knowledge, Weapons Design, and the Uninvention of Nuclear Weapons.”

88. Donald MacKenzie, “Theories of Technology and the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons,” in Donald MacKenzie and Judy Wajcman, eds., The Social Shaping of Technology (Philadelphia: Open University Press, 1999), pp. 425–429.

89. Donald MacKenzie, “Theories of Technology and the Abolition of Nuclear Weapons,” in Donald MacKenzie and Judy Wajcman, eds., The Social Shaping of Technology (Philadelphia: Open University Press, 1999), p. 427.

90. MacKenzie and Spinardi, “Tacit Knowledge, Weapons Design, and the Uninvention of Nuclear Weapons,” p. 44.

91. And in that event, the United States would more than likely have a decided advantage over other states, not least because of its extensive advantages in conventional weapons development and the advanced state it had reached in its nuclear weapons program.