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America’s strategic nuclear posture review is miles off the mark

has the report exaggerated the threats of China and Russia? While America is obsessed with the prospect of a Chinese World War II-like amphibious invasion of Taiwan, China does not now and for the foreseeable future have that capability.

And there is no reason why Russia would attack NATO

BY HARLAN K. ULLMAN, – 10/30/23,  https://thehill.com/opinion/national-security/4282404-americas-strategic-nuclear-posture-more-deterrence-and-more-weapons/

Most Americans are unaware of the congressional commission that just released its report on America’s strategic posture, or of the complicated business of nuclear deterrence. After identifying what it calls the unique threats posed by two peer adversaries, China and Russia, the report lays out a comprehensive, all-of-government approach for the nation’s future security, with a clear emphasis on strategic nuclear issues.  

What does this mean in simple English?

During the Cold War, U.S. nuclear deterrence was predicated on maintaining enough weaponry to destroy the Soviet Union after surviving a USSR first strike. To understand the power of these weapons, one kiloton is the explosive equivalent of 1,000 tons of TNT. A megaton is equal to 1 million tons of TNT.

In the late 1960s, Secretary of Defense Robert McNamara arbitrarily set the requirement for deterrence as being able to strike the USSR with 400 megatons of explosives. By comparison, the Hiroshima nuclear weapon was rated at less than 20 kilotons — or 1/20,000 of the McNamara standard. To ensure the survival of its strategic deterrent, the U.S. maintained the triad divided among sea-based nuclear ballistic submarines, land-based intercontinental missiles and manned bombers.

Until China began to expand its nuclear deterrent force, deterrence was a bilateral U.S.-Soviet/Russian relationship. Because of arms control agreements of the New START Treaty, the U.S. and Russia are now limited to 1,550 nuclear and thermonuclear warheads each. Now, with China, the strategic balance is becoming “triterrence” and not deterrence.

The report states that the U.S. strategy must plan to deter and defeat “simultaneous Russian and Chinese aggression in Europe and Asia using conventional forces.” If the U.S. and its allies’ conventional forces aren’t enough, “U.S. strategy would need to be altered to increase reliance on nuclear weapons to deter or counter opportunistic or collaborative aggression.”

Its major recommendations are based on the urgent need to expand and modernize our conventional and nuclear forces as well as capabilities across all of government including the defense industrial base. This will cost a great deal of money. Unfortunately, the report does not provide any cost analysis of what the nation must spend in this process. And, unfortunately, there are other unanswered questions the report did not address.

The first is to define deterrence in specific terms and what is needed to discourage China and Russia from taking what actions. China has not been deterred from threatening Taiwan or aggressively expanding its presence in the various Chinese seas to expand its influence and control. Russia has not been deterred from invading Georgia and Ukraine and threatening the use of nuclear weapons in Ukraine. 

Second, why was a strategic framework for a triterrence and not a deterrence-based world to incorporate China not considered as well as other force-level options such as a dyad that emphasizes submarines and bombers over nuclear missiles?  

Third, has the report exaggerated the threats of China and Russia? While America is obsessed with the prospect of a Chinese World War II-like amphibious invasion of Taiwan, China does not now and for the foreseeable future have that capability. Other options such as a blockade or seizure of Taiwan’s offshore island are more effective and likely.

According to United Kingdom Chief of Defense Admiral Tony Radakin, Russia has lost about half of its military capability in Ukraine. Currently, NATO maintains a large conventional military advantage over Russia. The accession of Finland surely complicates Kremlin thinking. And there is no reason why Russia would attack NATO.

Costs are a critical factor. In fiscal 2024, the U.S. could spend nearly $900 billion on defense. And the force still continues to shrink. This is the contradiction of uncontrolled real annual cost growth of about 5 percent to 7 percent plus inflation of 3 percent to 7 percent. About 8 percent to 14 percent increases a year in defense are needed just to stay even. The irony is that the more America spends, the more the force contracts, quantitatively and qualitatively. 

To meet the recommendations for increasing conventional forces and modernizing the triad’s forces with strategic bombers and intercontinental ballistic missiles, an annual increase of one-fifth to a quarter in defense spending ($1.08 trillion to $1.12 trillion a year) is needed. Given the debt and deficits and nearly $700 billion for annual interest payments, will Congress approve that short of war?

Before this report becomes policy, perhaps answering these questions is a good idea. #nuclear #antinuclear #nuclearfree #NoNukes

November 1, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment

Why the US fixation on increased nuclear capability won’t deter China but could lead to instability and nuclear war

Bulletin By Andrew Facini | October 27, 2023

“……………………………………..In the span of two weeks, several major policy documents—including a bipartisan Congressional report on strategic posture and a Defense Department update on China’s estimated nuclear stockpile—have put the US nuclear posture vis-à-vis China front and center. The reports, which focus heavily on hardware and capability, contribute to a years-long deliberation with policymakers and analysts attempting to counter a perceived risk of tipping military balance in the Indo-Pacific. China’s nuclear weapons buildup is driving concerns among US allies and partners in the region over the aggression Beijing could possibly engage in, once its nuclear arsenal can “shield” the country from retaliation. The perceived threat is so intense that it has become a top national security concern in Washington.

Concerningly, however, the domestic debate about countering China’s growing arsenal has thus far dwelled almost exclusively on US capability—narrowly defining the problem and asking what combination of new nuclear missiles, increased forward-deployments, or friendly technology-sharing can maintain US dominance in a crisis and therefore deter China from taking aggressive steps. Unsurprisingly, the recommendations that followed ranged from adding more warheads to US missiles and building more nuclear submarines to—considered as important—adopting a posture of force-meets-force superiority at all levels against Chinese nuclear weapons in the Pacific.

But in aggressively pursuing capability surges alone, the United States may end up on the wrong side of the stability-instability paradox, risking escalation to nuclear war—intentional or not—through an overreliance on introducing untested or provocative technologies.

 Instead, a stronger US strategy for responding to the challenge posed by China’s growing arsenal should be for the United States to supplement military capability by building multiple levels of mutual understanding and routes toward risk reduction across the Pacific. These measures must be implemented urgently and certainly before a crisis forces China and the United States to seriously test their nuclear deterrence relationship.

Capability fixation drives instability. One counter-productive distraction from a multi-level, risk-reduction approach to China is found in the sustained call for the fielding of new systems like the sea-launched nuclear cruise missile (SLCM-N) and other tactical nuclear weapons ostensibly meant for battlefield use. Promoting these systems as a purported solution to future crises places incentives in all the wrong places and dangerously complicates the possible outcomes in a conflict.

For its part, the SLCM-N (which the White House has already rejected via its most recent Nuclear Posture Review but a hawks-dominated Congress funded anyway) is a seemingly straightforward proposal to replace some of the cruise missiles on submarines with nuclear-armed ones. But just by its presence, the SLCM-N would pave the way for all US cruise missiles deployed to the Pacific to be potentially armed with nuclear warheads. If this happens, Chinese political and military leaders would have to conservatively assume that any incoming US cruise missile is nuclear-armed, prompting a presumption of escalation and adding extreme pressures for a rapid nuclear counter-attack, even as the US missile is still en route. If a regional crisis erupts for which a conventionally armed Tomahawk sea-launched strike would be an appropriate response, US leaders would suddenly have very good reason to hesitate.

By all accounts, the expanded destructive capability of the SLCM-N would create a self-imposed constraint that risks cutting out a major swath of conventional escalation options by muddling intermediate systems like cruise missiles with a nuclear option. Making an entire rapid-response weapons platform (one already with broad new investments in the region) less usable in favor of implied nuclear escalation is precisely the scenario SLCM-N advocates are trying to head off.

Tactical nuclear weapons also complicate the deterrence equation in a broader sense. In a contested and alarming information environment, even cautious beliefs about escalation control would be rendered academic while mushroom clouds rise over a battlefield. Far better would be to drive up the threshold for nuclear use at any level and communicate that intention clearly through both policy and force posture decisions.

Even during the early years of the Cold War when emerging technologies were filling out more of the “middle rungs” of the escalation ladder with tactical nuclear capabilities, it was seen as critical to maintain and keep clear the distinction between the first battle in West Germany and the ultimate destruction of Washington and Moscow. In blurring the picture of how the first hours of a nuclear conflict with China would be managed by both sides, setting clear decision-making timeframes and thresholds ahead of time would prove to be a safer and stronger strategic posture, helping to reduce uncertainty and panic in a crisis……………………………………………………………………………………………

Now is the time to forge a better mutual understanding with Beijing, not to escalate tensions. Holding multi-level dialogues about intentions; building reliable, resilient communication channels; and fostering those hard-to-quantify personal connections that can quell dangerous arms-racing instincts—or at least add critical resistance to escalation in a crisis—should be emphasized alongside any examination of force posture. Some military policy changes—including weapons modernization—may be required to meet the moment, but the approach in Washington thus far has been badly constrained to the force-meets-force thinking which, if taken alone, will only multiply risks and add untested variables for the United States and its allies.

The need to understand Beijing and find pre-crisis paths to reduce tensions is ultimately much more important and urgent than any given weapons system or revised strategic posture. Doing that work will be difficult and require sustained investment in both civil society and government processes at the highest levels, but it is a necessary component of maintaining deterrence to avoid nuclear war. https://thebulletin.org/2023/10/why-the-us-fixation-on-increased-nuclear-capability-wont-deter-china-but-could-lead-to-instability-and-nuclear-war/ #nuclear #antinuclear #NoNukes

October 28, 2023 Posted by Christina Macpherson | USA, weapons and war | Leave a comment