September 2024
By Lynn Rusten

For 32 years, under Republican and Democratic administrations, the United States has observed a moratorium on explosive nuclear weapons testing. U.S. leadership prompted other countries to cease 
testing and to complete negotiation of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) in 1996.

Today, the national security, environmental, and humanitarian benefits of what has become a global moratorium are indisputable. The five states recognized as nuclear-weapon states under the nuclear Nonproliferation Treaty (NPT) have been observing a moratorium on nuclear testing since 1996 (1990 for the Soviet Union/Russia, 1991 for the United Kingdom, 1992 for the United States, and 1996 for China and France).

Of the world’s nine nuclear-armed states, only North Korea has tested since 1998. Between 1945 and the mid-1990s, there were approximately 2,000 explosive nuclear tests worldwide, with more than 500 tests conducted aboveground or underwater. The devasting environmental and health consequences of these tests for private citizens and veterans persist to this day, including in the United States.¹

For these and other reasons, a resumption of nuclear testing would face widespread opposition in the United States and globally. Yet, some, including the former national security adviser to President Donald Trump, are suggesting that the United States do just that.²

Fortunately, there is an alternative. The United States relies on the Stockpile Stewardship Program (SSP), which uses science-based assessments of nuclear weapons to ensure confidence in the safety, reliability, and effectiveness of its nuclear stockpile without the need for explosive nuclear testing. This program has proven remarkably successful.³ Every U.S. president since Bill Clinton has determined through the SSP that resuming explosive nuclear testing is scientifically and technically unnecessary, based on the assessment and certification by the directors of the national weapons laboratories.

A return to testing for any other reason, such as to develop new nuclear weapons or create negotiating leverage with Russia or China, would be extremely shortsighted. If the United States were to resume testing, a cascade of other states—Russia, perhaps China, and more—likely would follow suit, and proliferation pressures could grow on states that currently do not have nuclear weapons but might seek them.

The United States has the most to lose from a multilateral resumption of nuclear testing because of the high confidence in its stockpile provided by the SSP without testing. Other states may think they have more to gain by developing and testing new weapon types, but this too would be shortsighted.

A return to testing, particularly by any of the five NPT nuclear-weapon states, also risks unraveling the global nuclear nonproliferation regime. The commitment to conclude a test ban treaty was central to achieving the indefinite extension of the NPT in 1995. A return to nuclear testing would seriously erode the credibility of the nuclear-weapon states’ commitment to the NPT and their obligation to work toward nuclear disarmament. It also would exacerbate mounting frustrations among the non-nuclear-weapon states.

The next president should recognize the national security benefits of upholding the U.S. moratorium on explosive nuclear testing and encouraging all nuclear-armed states to maintain their moratoriums on nuclear testing. Beyond that, the president should advance the longer-term goal of U.S. ratification of the CTBT and work with other states to bring the treaty into force. The alternative, a resumption of nuclear testing in their backyards and beyond, will never be welcomed by the American people or the international community.

ENDNOTES

1. “Downwinders and the Radioactive West,” PBS, October 3, 2022, https://www.pbs.org/video/downwinders-and-the-radioactive-west-usugap/; Morgan Knibbe, “The Atomic Soldiers,” The New York Times, February 12, 2019.

2. Robert C. O’Brien, “The Return of Peace Through Strength: Making the Case for Trump’s Foreign Policy,” Foreign Affairs, Vol. 103, No. 4 (July/August 2024), https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/return-peace-strength-trump-obrien.

3. “Managing an Arsenal Without Nuclear Testing: An Interview With Jill Hruby of the U.S. National Nuclear Security Administration,” Arms Control Today, Vol. 53, No. 10 (December 2023): 14-18.

Lynn Rusten is vice president for the Global Nuclear Policy Program at the Nuclear Threat Initiative. 

September 2024
By Amy J. Nelson

How the candidates should handle Russia and its nuclear modernization program centers on two important questions: What should U.S. nuclear policy be in light of sovereign states that break from the status quo, particularly with respect to the nuclear order? How can the United States best prepare for nuclear eventualities resulting from Russia’s modernization plan, given that Russia no longer is constrained by the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty and perhaps even the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START)?

Russia’s aggressive actions over the past decade signal a departure from the major powers’ norms of behavior, which historically have included good-faith participation in international institutions and promotion of a rules-based order. Russia’s revisionist and risk-seeking tendencies include incursions into sovereign states, exerting undue influence over its neighbors, and claiming territory in states that flank NATO. Its behavior tracks an equally troubling course for nuclear norms. In the mid-2010s, Russia violated the INF Treaty, which banned all ground-launched ballistic and cruise missiles with ranges between 500 and 5,500 kilometers, with its 9M729 missile. Russia denied the violation and refused to provide transparency into the nuclear weapons system or to modify it in any way. The United States eventually withdrew from the treaty because of Russian noncompliance.¹

In 2022, Russia suspended U.S. inspections under New START after the West imposed sanctions in response to Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine.² In February 2023, Russia escalated its noncompliance by suspending participation in New START more broadly, halting inspections and data sharing. It stated, however, that it would still respect the treaty’s limits. The United States responded by halting its own obligations under the treaty, including ceasing to share certain data on missile launches and to participate in inspections.³

Additionally, Russia has been accused of providing nuclear assistance and technologies to Iran and North Korea and blocking or weakening nuclear nonproliferation language in UN Security Council resolutions. Russia also has occupied the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant in Ukraine, using the facility as a nuclear shield, violating norms concerning the protection of civilian infrastructure in wartime and increasing the risk of a nuclear accident.⁴

Russia’s most risky violation of nuclear norms may be its threatened nuclear use. This has included statements that Russia might use nuclear weapons if its own security is threatened and signals that it might be willing to escalate its war in Ukraine from a conventional conflict to a nuclear one.⁵ The United States has condemned such rhetoric.⁶

Meanwhile, Russia continues its military modernization plans, including for its nuclear forces. Although aimed at optimizing conventional forces for quick campaigns and decisive outcomes, these plans also involve the development of novel strategic weapons, including nuclear-powered cruise missiles, nuclear-powered “torpedoes,” and a hypersonic boost-glide system. These destabilizing systems are designed to evade U.S. missile defenses and complicate traditional deterrence calculations.⁷

Such developments highlight shortcomings with and challenges for U.S. nuclear policy. Russia’s saber-rattling underscores the paradox of possessing nuclear weapons for deterrence purposes, which requires signaling to an adversary a willingness to use them, but then balking at threats associated with their use. Because disarmament is not feasible in the near term, the United States must work with the four other main nuclear-weapon states to redefine the obligation of responsible nuclear powers to uphold deterrence norms.

Further, Russia is pursuing its exotic nuclear systems with no formal Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT) in place, only an informal moratorium that is weakening. Russia signed the treaty in 1996, ratified it in 2000, then withdrew ratification in 2023. The United States signed the treaty in 1996 but never ratified. Ratifying the CTBT could prove an important tool in constraining Russia’s development of novel nuclear weapons.

ENDNOTES

1.  Shannon Bugos, “U.S. Completes INF Treaty Withdrawal,” Arms Control Today, September 2019, https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2019-09/news/us-completes-inf-treaty-withdrawal.

2.  Shannon Bugos, “Russia Further Pauses New START Inspections,” Arms Control Today, September 2022, https://www.armscontrol.org/act/2022-09/news/russia-further-pauses-new-start-inspections.

3.  Bureau of Arms Control, Deterrence, and Stability, U.S. Department of State, “U.S. Countermeasures in Response to Russia’s Violations of the New START Treaty,” June 1, 2023, https://www.state.gov/u-s
-countermeasures-in-response-to-russias-violations-of-the-new-start-treaty/.

4.  Amy J. Nelson and Chinon Norteman, “What to Do About the Zaporizhzhia Nuclear Power Plant,” Brookings: Order From Chaos blog, March 23, 2023, https://www.brookings.edu/articles/what-to-do-about-the-zaporizhzhia-nuclear-power-plant/.

5.  Jim Sciutto, “Exclusive: U.S. Prepared ‘Rigorously’ for Potential Russian Nuclear Strike in Ukraine in Late 2022, Officials Say,” CNN, March 9, 2024, https://www.cnn.com/2024/03/09/politics/us-prepared-rigorously-potential-russian-nuclear-strike-ukraine/index.html.

6.  “Remarks by National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan for the Arms Control Association (ACA) Annual Forum,” The White House, June 2, 2023, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2023/06/02/remarks-by-national-security-advisor-jake-sullivan-for-the-arms-control-association-aca-annual-forum/.

7.  Matthew Kroenig, Mark Massa, and Christian Trotti, “Russia’s Exotic Nuclear Weapons and Implications for the United States and NATO,” Atlantic Council Issue Brief, March 2020, https://www.atlanticcouncil.org/wp-content/uploads/2020/07/Russias-Exotic-Nuclear-Weapons.pdf.

Amy J. Nelson is a visiting fellow in the International Security Program at New America and an adjunct faculty at Georgetown University.

September 2024
By James M. Acton

If states behaved like rational adults, China and the United States would sit down and try to negotiate an agreement to head off their emerging nuclear arms race. Unfortunately, that is not going to happen.

Beijing has made it very clear that it has “no interest” in discussing arms limitations.¹ If it changed its mind, it would become immediately apparent how little thought the United States has put into the question of what it would be prepared to give China in return for such limits. Although the next U.S. administration should think through this issue and articulate a vision for a mutually beneficial Chinese-U.S. arms control regime, even talks appear unlikely for the foreseeable future.

Fueled by a growing bipartisan consensus that the United States must augment its nuclear force in response to China’s nuclear buildup and the possibility that Beijing may forge some kind of alliance with Moscow, a Chinese-U.S. arms race now seems virtually certain.² Indeed, the last legal barrier to this outcome, the limits on long-range nuclear forces imposed by the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), will expire just more than one year into the next president’s term.

Yet, even if averting a new arms race will be extremely difficult, the next president still should try to do that by forcing the bureaucracy to consider its costs seriously. Specifically, the next president should require, as part of the next nuclear posture review, a realistic assessment of the feasibility of effective nuclear “counterforce” operations, the U.S. practice of targeting an opponent’s nuclear forces and command-and-control systems, compared to the alternatives.³

As far as is publicly known, although the Pentagon draws up plans to limit damage to the extent possible, it does not assess whether those plans would meet a presidentially determined threshold for effectiveness. Furthermore, the president should make clear that the alternatives to counterforce targeting should not involve aiming nuclear weapons at civilians. Instead, the United States could exclusively target conventional military forces and war-supporting industry, which have been on the U.S. target list for decades.⁴

Counterforce targeting is justified primarily as a way to enable the United States to limit the damage it would suffer in a nuclear war. It provides the intellectual ballast for why the United States should build up its nuclear arsenal in response to China; the more nuclear weapons Beijing has, the more Washington needs to destroy them preemptively. Thus, the congressionally mandated 2024 strategic posture commission calls on the Pentagon to modify its nuclear posture to “address the larger number of targets.”⁵

As part of the next nuclear posture review, the president should require the intelligence community and the Department of State to analyze how China and, for that matter, Russia would respond to a U.S. buildup. Would Beijing simply pursue its existing plans. or would it further augment its force requirements? After all, an arms race, which would be expensive and raise tensions, would be worth running only if it actually ended up increasing the security of the United States.

If China can ensure that U.S. counterforce attacks would not limit meaningfully the damage that the United States would suffer in a nuclear war, arms racing would be an exercise in pure futility. The next president should want to know what kind of arms race the country will be running before the spending bill that begins it is placed on the Resolute Desk.

ENDNOTES

1. Ministry of Foreign Affairs of the People’s Republic of China, “Department of Arms Control and Disarmament Holds Briefing for International Arms Control and Disarmament Issues,” July 8, 2020, https://web.archive.org/web/20211014015131/https:/www.fmprc.gov.cn/mfa_eng/wjbxw/t1795979.shtml.

2. Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States, “America’s Strategic Posture,” October 2023, https://www.ida.org/-/media/feature/publications/a/am/americas-strategic-posture/strategic-posture-commission-report.ashx.

3. Charles L. Glaser, James M. Acton, and Steve Fetter, “The U.S. Nuclear Arsenal Can Deter Both China and Russia: Why America Doesn’t Need More Missiles,” Foreign Affairs, October 5, 2023, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/united-states/us-nuclear-arsenal-can-deter-both-china-and-russia.

4. James Acton, “Two Myths About Counterforce,” War on the Rocks, November 6, 2023, https://warontherocks.com/2023/11/two-myths-about-counterforce/.

5. Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States, “America’s Strategic Posture,” p. viii.

James M. Acton is the Jessica T. Mathews Chair and co-director of the Nuclear Policy Program at the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace.

September 2024
By Barbara Slavin

The next president’s ability to handle the simmering issue of Iran’s advancing nuclear program will be complicated by Tehran’s growing regional influence and the spiraling Gaza war, which was triggered by Hamas’ heinous October 7 attack on Israel and since has embroiled Iran and other Iran-backed militant groups in various ways.

Former President Donald Trump, who withdrew the United States in 2018 from the nuclear deal with Iran known as the Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action (JCPOA), has long insisted that he could negotiate a better deal. Like presidents before and after him, he also has said that he would never allow Iran to develop nuclear weapons and has advocated a policy of “maximum pressure.”¹ Informed of an alleged Iranian plot to kill him in retaliation for his order to assassinate Iran’s most important general, Qassem Soleimani, in 2020, Trump threatened “to wipe [Iran] off the face of the earth” if Tehran succeeded.²

Vice President Kamala Harris has not laid out views on Iran that differ significantly from the Biden administration approach. She has demonstrated more empathy than President Joe Biden for the Palestinians, however, and spoken of the intensifying Israeli-Hamas conflict as not a “binary” matter, suggesting a nuanced understanding of the region and support for diplomacy.³ In this, she has been helped by her national security adviser, Philip Gordon, who nearly two decades ago criticized the George W. Bush administration for “benign neglect” toward European-led nuclear talks with Iran and wrote a book opposing the Bush policy of forceful regime change in the Middle East.⁴

Despite the plethora of other crises likely to face the next president, deescalating tensions with Iran should remain a priority. The best approach would be ending the Gaza war in a durable manner. As long as that war continues, the danger of a wider conflagration remains, eroding any hope of reaching new understandings with Iran on any topic.

If relative peace could be established, the next administration should embrace a step-by-step approach that diminishes Iran’s incentive to move from threshold nuclear status to nuclear- weapon-possessor  state. As others have suggested, there should be a series of reciprocal concessions by the United States on sanctions and by Iran on transparency and monitoring.⁵

Iran just inaugurated a new president, who has stressed the need for sanctions relief to boost the country’s battered economy. He has assembled a team of advisers that includes key figures who negotiated the JCPOA. To stabilize the Iran file before leaving office, the lame-duck Biden administration should resume contacts with Iran via Oman and Iran’s UN mission in New York.

If Harris wins, the United States will be well positioned to continue such work. If Trump is elected, the prospects for diplomacy with Tehran are less certain but not impossible. As one former Trump adviser said recently, “As long as you call it the ‘Trump Plan of Action and not JCPOA 2.0,’ and tell Trump he could win a Nobel prize, diplomacy with Iran can proceed.”⁶

ENDNOTES

1. “Remarks by President Donald Trump on Iran,” January 8, 2020, https://trumpwhitehouse.archives.gov/briefings-statements/remarks-president-trump-iran/.

2. “Trump: ‘If Iran Assassinates Me, U.S. Must Wipe It Off the Face of the Earth,’” Agence France-Presse, July 26, 2024.

3. “Remarks by Vice President Harris Following Meeting With Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu of Israel,” The White House, July 25, 2024, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2024/07/25/remarks-by-vice-president-harris-following-meeting-with-prime-minister-benjamin-netanyahu-of-israel/.

4. Barbara Slavin, Bitter Friends, Bosom Enemies: Iran, the U.S. and the Twisted Path to Confrontation (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2007), p. 212; Philip H. Gordon, Losing the Long Game: The False Promise of Regime Change in the Middle East (New York: St. Martin’s Press, 2020).

5. Kelsey Davenport, “Constraining Iran’s Nuclear Potential in the Absence of the JCPOA,” Arms Control Association Policy White Paper, July 2024, https://www.armscontrol.org/sites/default/files/files/PolicyPapers/ACA_PolicyPaper_Iran_2024.pdf.

6. Confidential comment to the author at a recent Track 1.5 meeting with Iranians.

Barbara Slavin is a distinguished fellow at the Stimson Center and editor of Middle East Perspectives.

September 2024
By Jean H. Lee

Former President Donald Trump has claimed that he and Kim Jong Un “fell in love” and speculated that the North Korean leader misses him.¹  Vice President Kamala Harris has said she can promise one thing: she will not be exchanging love letters with Kim.²

Whoever occupies the White House in 2025, North Korea’s nuclear program will be exponentially more challenging. Over the past decade, Kim has been amassing the arsenal of his dreams, one that is bigger and more dangerous than ever, including solid-fueled ballistic missiles, hypersonic weapons, and submarine-launched ballistic missiles.³

The problem extends beyond the Korean peninsula. North Korea allegedly is providing Russia with ammunition and ballistic missiles for the war in Ukraine,⁴ as well as Hamas with rockets for the conflict in Gaza,⁵ thus underlining the urgency of addressing a threat with global implications.

Now is the time for the U.S. presidential nominees to develop careful strategies on how to do that. These policies must anticipate Kim’s actions. They need to be tough yet creative, and the candidates need to be pragmatic.

Going into the presidency with no plan would cede the advantage to North Korea, which already is working to intensify tensions by provoking South Korea and the United States.⁶ The tensions are part of a bid to draw attention to North Korea in the leadup to the U.S. election, influencing its outcome and flagging North Korea as a foreign policy priority for the next administration.

Yet, Kim will not make it easy even if Trump becomes president. Any sustainable nuclear deal with North Korea will be more difficult than ever to negotiate. Not only is Pyongyang’s arsenal bigger, but the sanctions regime is weakened, and the stakes are even higher, for Kim and for the world.

The burgeoning relationship between Russia and North Korea also makes diplomacy more difficult. Russian President Vladimir Putin’s state visit to Pyongyang in June yielded a military pact that gives North Korea the potential to acquire specialized technology that could enable further nuclear advancement under the guise of space exploration. A Russian veto at the UN Security Council has deprived the international community of a way to track North Korean sanctions violations.⁷

Meanwhile, Kim has worked to blunt the impact of sanctions and isolation by investing in cybertheft. North Korean hackers are accused of stealing more than $3 billion through cyberattacks in recent years.⁸ The North Koreans know they need a contingency plan to accommodate geopolitical shifts, including the possibility that Trump may lose. They are watching closely for opportunities, especially as they make tentative steps out of isolation. But that window might be brief.

Harris, if elected, should be swifter in introducing a revamped North Korea policy than President Joe Biden was in 2020. She should explore creative ways to provide North Korea with a face-saving way to return to nuclear negotiations. That means remaining aggressive against cybertheft while stepping up collaboration with allies, as well as China and maybe Russia, on shared proliferation concerns.⁹

The candidates need to show strength in the face of the North Korean threat, but they also need to display diplomatic dexterity in seizing the opportunity that a change of administration can offer. The alternative of four more years of unfettered North Korean nuclear development must be considered untenable.

ENDNOTES

1. Former President Donald Trump, speech at Republican National Convention, July 2024.

2. Council on Foreign Relations, “Candidates Answer CFR’s Questions,” n.d., https://www.cfr.org/election2020/candidates-answer-cfrs-questions.

3. See Arms Control Association, “Arms Control and Proliferation Profile,” June 2024, https://www.armscontrol.org/factsheets/arms-control-and-proliferation-profile-north-korea.

4. U.S. Defense Intelligence Agency, “North Korea: Enabling Russian Missile Strikes Against Ukraine,” May 2024, https://www.dia.mil/Portals/110/Documents/News/Military_Power_Publications/DPRK_Russia_NK_Enabling_Russian_Missile_Strikes_Against_Ukraine.pdf.

5. Kim Soo-yeon, “S. Korea’s Spy Agency Confirms Hamas’ Suspected Use of N. Korean Weapons,” Yonhap News Agency, January 8, 2024.

6. Mike Valerio, Yoonjung Seo, and Brad Lendon, “North Korea Claims It’s Sending 250 New Missile Launchers Toward the South Korean Border,” CNN, August 5, 2024, https://www.cnn.com/2024/08/04/asia/north-korea-new-missile-launchers-border-intl-hnk.

7. George Lopez, “With Russia’s U.N. Veto, Where Do North Korea Sanctions Go From Here?” U.S. Institute of Peace, June 30, 2024, https://www.usip.org/publications/2024/07/russias-un-veto-where-do-north-korea-sanctions-go-here.

8. Edith M. Lederer, “UN Experts Investigating 58 Suspected North Korean Cyberattacks Valued at About $3 Billion,” February 9, 2024, https://apnews.com/article/un-experts-north-korea-cyberattacks-nuclear-sanctions-8e84703049dfb4fda011829115777c9e.

9. U.S. Cybersecurity and Infrastructure Security Agency, “North Korea Cyber Threat Overview and Advisories,” n.d., https://www.cisa.gov/topics/cyber-threats-and-advisories/advanced-persistent-threats/north-korea (accessed August 11, 2024).

Jean H. Lee, a journalist who opened the AP news bureau in Pyongyang and reported from North Korea for nine years, co-hosts the Lazarus Heist podcast about North Korea for the BBC World Service.

September 2024
By James Goldgeier

Since the fall of 2021, when the Biden administration recognized that Russia was preparing to launch a full-scale invasion of Ukraine, U.S. policy has been to help Ukraine and President Volodymyr Zelenskyy’s government survive while avoiding a direct NATO-Russian war. U.S. President Joe Biden led the alliance and its global partners to provide robust military assistance, but he has been careful, as he has often said, not to “start World War III.”¹

Biden’s approach has been more cautious than many in the West would have preferred. This caution is particularly manifest in the U.S. constraints imposed on Ukraine with respect to attacking targets within Russian territory. To date, Biden’s policy has helped Ukraine stave off defeat. He also strengthened NATO by facilitating the accession of Finland and Sweden as alliance members.

Containment of Russian aggression will remain NATO’s core role in European security as long as the Kremlin pursues imperialist policies and refuses to live within its 1991 internationally recognized territorial boundaries. Whether the United States continues to lead that effort depends on who wins the presidency in November.

Unlike Biden and Vice President Kamala Harris, former President Donald Trump has been hostile to Ukraine and sympathetic to Russian President Vladimir Putin. Yet, even a U.S. president who wants to continue to assist Ukraine has to decide on two central questions: Is there a theory of victory, and in the absence of total victory, is there a strategy for how to produce an end to the war that preserves a sovereign, independent Ukraine?²

The 75th anniversary NATO summit declaration emphasized an allied commitment “to provide sustainable levels of security assistance for Ukraine to prevail.”³ It did not define “prevail,” which could mean anything from surviving as a sovereign state controlling the territory currently not occupied by Russia all the way up to recovering the occupied territory, including Crimea, in a victory over Russian armed forces. The latter would require much greater assistance than NATO is willing to provide and, given Ukrainian manpower constraints, might be too much to achieve even if greater assistance were forthcoming.

If the goal is to support Ukraine’s ability to achieve sovereignty and security over its territory that is not occupied by Russia, without giving up hope of eventually liberating those occupied lands, then some strategy for how to end the fighting is needed. There could be negotiations between Russia and Ukraine, but the gulf between the sides is large. Putin does not seem interested in offering any concessions and appears to believe he can grind down Ukrainian opposition through a war of attrition.⁴ Zelenskyy would have to gain political support for accepting Russian occupation of nearly 20 percent of Ukrainian territory.⁵

Whether the current fighting stops through mutual exhaustion, a ceasefire, or a peace deal, NATO should invite Ukraine to join the alliance. Without the backing of NATO treaty Article 5, Ukraine will not deter future Russian attacks credibly, and thus endless instability will persist along whatever border emerges between Russia and Ukraine.

ENDNOTES

1.  Aaron Blake, “Why Biden and the White House Keep Talking About World War III,” 
The Washington Post, March 17, 2022.

2.  Eugene Rumer, “NATO’s Biggest Test Since the Cold War Is Still Ahead,” Carnegie 
Endowment for International Peace, July 9, 2024, https://carnegieendowment.org/emissary/2024/07/nato-summit-ukraine-russia-war?lang=en.

3.  NATO, “Washington Summit Declaration,” July 10, 2024, https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/official_texts_227678.htm.

4.  Veronika Melkozerova, “Ukraine Wants Peace but Can’t Trust Russia,” Politico, June 13, 2024, https://www.politico.eu/article/volodymyr-zelenskyy-war-in-ukraine-summit-on-peace-negotiations-russia-vladimir-putin/. For a different view that opportunities for a deal existed previously and could again, see Samuel Charap and Sergey Radchenko, “The Talks That Could Have Ended the War in Ukraine,” Foreign Affairs, April 16, 2024, https://www.foreignaffairs.com/ukraine/talks-could-have-ended-war-ukraine.

5.  Nicole Gonik and Eric Ciaramella, “War and Peace: Ukraine’s Impossible Choices,” Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, June 11, 2024, https://carnegieendowment.org/research/2024/06/ukraine-public-opinion-russia-war?lang=en.

James Goldgeier is a visiting fellow at the Brookings Institution and a professor of international relations at American University. 

September 2024

Weeks before the United States elects a new president, the global nuclear security environment could hardly be more precarious. Russia continues to raise the specter of escalating its war on Ukraine to nuclear use; Iran and North Korea persist in advancing their nuclear programs; China is moving to steadily expand its nuclear arsenal; the United States and Russia have costly modernization programs underway; and the war in Gaza threatens to explode into a region-wide catastrophe entangling Iran and nuclear-armed Israel, among other countries. Meanwhile, Russia and China are refusing to enter arms control talks with the United States, new countries are raising the possibility of acquiring nuclear weapons and decades of arms control treaties are unraveling. The situation has driven Rafael Mariano Grossi, director-general of the International Atomic Agency, to warn in an interview with The Financial Times on August 26 that the global nonproliferation regime is under greater pressure than at any time since the end of the Cold War. The U.S. presidential election campaign has not engaged publicly on most of these issues in any serious way despite the fact that whichever candidate wins will, once inaugurated, immediately inherit the sole authority to launch U.S. nuclear weapons. In an effort to foster debate and prudent decision-making, Arms Control Today asked a group of respected nuclear experts to consider the challenges facing the president ahead.—CAROL GIACOMO

• Avoiding Nuclear War Through Nuclear Failsafe 
  By Steven Andreasen
• How to Spend $1 Trillion for the Military?
  By Jessica Sleight
• Preventing a Resumption of Nuclear Testing
  By Lynn Rusten  
• Russia and Its Nuclear Modernization Plans
  By Amy J. Nelson
• Dealing With a China That Will Not Talk
  By James M. Acton
• Gaza Tensions Complicate Iranian Nuclear Threat
  By Barbara Slavin
• Grappling With North Korea’s Expanding Arsenal
  By Jean H. Lee
• How Will the Russian War in Ukraine End?
  By James Goldgeier

September 2024
By Oliver Meier

Getting a grip on the problem of shorter- and medium-range missiles in Europe is an urgent problem. Russia is using ground-, sea-, and air-launched shorter- and medium-range missiles in its war against Ukraine and wreaking havoc on the civilian infrastructure. For example, on July 8, Russia hit a children’s hospital in Kyiv with an air-launched Kh-101 medium-range missile.

Russian shorter- and medium-range missiles also directly threaten NATO members. It is particularly worrisome that all Russian medium-range missile systems are dual capable, meaning that the missiles can be fitted with conventional or nuclear warheads.

The militaries of some NATO members have air- and sea-based medium-range missiles, but they do not have any ground-based systems that can hold at risk targets deep inside Russia. This is about to change. On the sidelines of the NATO summit in Washington on July 9-11, Germany and the United States announced that the United States will “begin episodic deployments of the long-range fires capabilities of its Multi-Domain Task Force in Germany in 2026, as part of planning for enduring stationing of these capabilities in the future.”¹ These deployments would include the shorter-range Standard Missile-6 (SM-6), as well as medium-range Tomahawk cruise missiles and Dark Eagle hypersonic missiles, the latter of which are still under development. The stationing would mark the first time since 1991 that Germany will host ground-based missiles that can target Russia directly.

In response to the announcement, Moscow hinted at the possible deployment of additional medium-range missiles, which could be nuclear tipped. Thus, Europe is standing at the brink of an arms race with ground-based medium-range missiles. These missiles, because of the short flight time and the difficulties of detecting attacks with the hypersonic variant, are particularly destabilizing. All of this makes it important to pursue arms control now and to tackle the threat posed by medium-range missiles before Russia and NATO deploy such systems in larger numbers.

Patchy Explanations

In Germany, the agreement to deploy medium-range missiles came under fire from different directions. Some observers were surprised that Berlin and Washington had announced the decision bilaterally and not through NATO, especially while leaders of the 32 alliance members were gathering nearby for the organization’s 75th anniversary summit.

The backstory around the deployment remains hazy. Germany initially said that Washington “offered” the new systems to Berlin, which accepted that proposal. By contrast, the Süddeutsche Zeitung later reported that Berlin quietly had pressed the Biden administration for more than a year to deploy the new missiles in Germany. According to the newspaper, the U.S. Department of Defense initially hesitated because it preferred to deploy such assets in the Asia-Pacific region, but eventually relented.2

The bilateral nature of the agreement also is surprising because Germany historically has avoided being singled out in NATO and has been critical of other allies for making bilateral agreements with the United States outside of the alliance. The stationing of the missiles is a NATO affair because it affects the security of other allies. In a July 27 interview, Jasper Wieck, political director at the German Ministry of Defense, emphasized that these weapons would “protect not only Germany.” All missiles would be mobile and although they would be stationed in Germany during peacetime, could be deployed “outside of Germany’s borders,” Wieck explained.³ This possibility of moving the missiles to other NATO countries alone should necessitate a joint alliance approach.

Such allied coordination also would be important because of the risks associated with the deployment. Tomahawk cruise missiles and hypersonic missiles are counterforce weapons. In war, they likely would be used to destroy high-value targets, including Russian missile launchers deep in the Russian hinterland. Even though the U.S. weapons would carry only conventional warheads, they could fuel a crisis dynamic that could lead to nuclear weapons use. The chair of the Social Democrat Party in the German Parliament, Rolf Mützenich, has warned that the “danger of an unintentional military escalation is considerable” if the U.S. weapons were deployed.⁴

The Arms Control Void

Lawmakers in Berlin criticized the agreement because it lacked any reference to arms control. Ever since suspicions arose that Russia was violating the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty by developing and deploying the ground-based, mobile SSC-8/9M729 cruise missile, NATO has urged Russia to come clean on the violation and eliminate the system in question. The alliance had hoped to save the accord, which prohibited both sides from deploying ground-based missiles with a range between 500 and 5,500 kilometers. Concerns about Russian ground-based missiles persisted after the Trump administration withdrew from the treaty in 2019. They intensified against the background of Russia’s full-scale invasion of Ukraine in February 2022 and subsequent use of medium-range missiles.

In the NATO summit communiqué, allies stated that “arms control, disarmament, and nonproliferation have made and should continue to make an essential contribution to achieving the alliance’s security objectives and to ensuring strategic stability and our collective security.”⁵ As critics in Berlin pointed out, however, the German-U.S. agreement did not even attempt to use the forthcoming missile deployment as a lever to bring Russia back to the negotiating table.

A week after the summit, German Chancellor Olaf Scholz acknowledged that arms control gap, saying that “even if it is not on the agenda, we should not lose sight of the arms control issue.”⁶ Arms control options to avert a missile arms race likely will be among the issues discussed in the German Bundestag and possibly other European parliaments. Nils Schmid, foreign policy spokesperson for the Social Democrats, argued in an August 11 interview that ”it is crucial that we combine the announcement of the deployment decision with offers to Russia on arms control.” Schmid said this moment is an “opportunity to test, whether the Kremlin is willing to talk about medium-range weapons.” He cautioned that “over the last years, that willingness did not exist,” but announced that Germany “will try it now anyway.”⁷

It is not too late to combine the deployment decision with an arms control proposition that, if Russia seriously engages, could delay permanent deployment of medium-range missiles, limit their numbers, and, should political conditions allow, open a path to reductions of the most destabilizing systems. Even an unsuccessful arms control initiative could have benefits by making the NATO-Russian deterrence relationship less risky if it increases NATO cohesion, improves empathy between Russia and NATO, and delineates those issues where both sides see arms control as feasible and desirable. To prepare for such an opening, it is necessary to think through the rationale behind such an approach, the obstacles that would have to be overcome, and the shape of the arms control proposal.

Arms Control Hurdles

Any thinking about an arms control proposal on shorter-range (500-1,000 kilometers) and medium-range (1,000-3,000 kilometers) missiles has to account for Russia’s refusal to engage on this issue. As long as Russia continues to wage war against Ukraine, nuclear arms control seems impossible. Since early 2023, Russia has rejected any nuclear arms control talks with the United States, including a new framework to succeed the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), which expires in 2026, arguing that the West would first have to change its “anti-Russian attitudes.” This policy of leveraging arms control in an attempt to weaken Western support for Ukraine has been unsuccessful, but Russia is sticking to its position.

Meanwhile, NATO is divided over arms control with Russia. In June 2023, U.S. National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan stated the U.S. “willingness to engage in bilateral arms control discussions with Russia and with China without preconditions.”⁸ One year later, Pranay Vaddi, another senior National Security Council official, did not repeat the “without preconditions” formula, but still affirmed that the Biden administration remains “ready to pursue critical arms control measures” in order “to reduce nuclear threats to the United States and our allies and partners by limiting and shaping adversary nuclear forces.”⁹

Some central European countries, including the Baltic states, take a different stance and argue that Russia cannot be a trusted now or in the future. For example, former Estonian Prime Minister Kaja Kallas, who recently became the European Union’s high representative for foreign affairs and security policy, has made it clear that she thinks that a dialogue with Russia is futile.¹⁰

There is also the problem of path dependency. Any route to arms control likely would have to overcome pushback from those in the political, military, and private sectors who have vested interests in new deployments. The new missiles are going to be part of the U.S. Army’s Multi-Domain Task Forces, which combine several military assets to improve the U.S. ability to respond quickly to conflicts in key regions overseas and to neutralize an adversary’s anti-access and area-denial capabilities. The task force headquarters in Germany was activated in 2021, but the initial planning was for long-range missile components to remain in the United States.¹¹ The lack of an arms control dimension to the announcement regarding Germany may reflect U.S. reluctance to include the missile components of their brand-new task force in any future arms control talks.

Separate from the German-U.S. bilateral agreement, France, Germany, Italy, and Poland on July 11 signed a letter of intent committing them to joint production of their own medium-range missiles under the European Long-Range Strike Approach. This program is likely aiming at production of a European ground-launched cruise missile with a range of 1,000-2,000 kilometers.¹² The number of missiles to be produced, the specific configuration of partners and projects, and the main goals have not been announced, but Wieck argued that NATO should seek “parity” with Russia. This would imply that several hundred medium-range missiles could be built, given that Russia probably now has around 500 ground-based medium-range missiles. Wieck argued that production of large numbers would be desirable to bring down unit costs. This logic of defense economies at scale would further complicate any arms control initiative.

Beyond these political and military problems, regulating medium-range missiles is an inherently difficult problem. Any future talks would need to tackle several difficult and controversial questions. How would an agreement account for the different conventional and nuclear payloads? Should an agreement cover only ground-based missiles or also air- and sea-based shorter- and medium-range missiles? What missile ranges should be covered? What geographic area of deployment would be relevant?

Commonsense Arms Control

NATO does not need to resolve these and other difficult challenges before formally proposing that Russia engage on arms control on the subject of shorter- and medium-range missiles. Premature discussions on a NATO arms control proposal would expose competing priorities among the allies and could be seen as putting NATO unity at risk. Attempting to achieve allied consensus on the scope and shape of a future agreement even before arms control talks have been proposed to the Kremlin would be akin to throwing out the baby with the bath water. That is because arms control opponents easily could misuse such allied discussions to derail any attempt to engage Russia. In 2010-2012, when political conditions were more favorable and NATO tried to agree internally on a list of reciprocal confidence-building measures on nonstrategic nuclear weapons to discuss with Russia, opponents of such dialogue prevented any meaningful outcome by invoking NATO’s consensus principle and thus shorter-circuiting any chance for engagement.¹³

Some fuzziness on NATO’s terms of engagement could be positive if both sides want to maintain flexibility in future talks. In addition, allied discussions concerning a prospective arms control proposal could improve NATO cohesion if it helps member governments such as Germany, where arms control is seen as an integral part of a sound and sustainable security policy, to make the case for the U.S. missile deployments.

Europeans generally support arms control. A recent study found that popular support for arms control in Germany and the Netherlands had dropped substantially after the Russian invasion of Ukraine, but also underscored “the continuous popularity of arms control among the European publics.”¹⁴

Arms control engagement offers an important mechanism for understanding an adversary’s motivations and redlines better, particularly at a time when direct channels of communication are scarce. Russia’s recent threats of possible nuclear use make it more important than ever that the West understand Russian signals and that the Kremlin correctly interpret NATO intentions and moves.

Deterrence will be the name of the game between NATO and Russia for the foreseeable future, but alliance members can influence the level of nuclear risks in that deterrence relationship. Discussions involving arms control could help the allies build a new consensus on what kind of deterrence relationship NATO wants to have with Russia and how best to use arms control to ensure that deterrence is more stable. For the alliance, an arms control proposal is a way to prepare the ground for when political conditions improve for nuclear risk reduction and a cooperative regulation of weapons.

For some time, the Kremlin has pursued a policy based on increasing nuclear risks, but its security calculus could change. Economic considerations, a preference to avoid risky arms races, and various international pressures could come into play once the war against Ukraine is over or possibly earlier if there is a change in the Russian political leadership.

A NATO decision to agree now on a blueprint for preventing a new, dangerous arms race would be consistent with the alliance’s 60-plus-year-old proven policy of combining defense and deterrence with pragmatic arms control proposals. The alternative of deploying new missiles without any arms control framework is simply too dangerous to contemplate.

A Phased Approach

Given Russia’s war of aggression against Ukraine, its dismal arms control record, and nationalist-populist leadership, any NATO arms control proposal would have to be based on at least four principles, which should be stated up front.

First, any agreement would have to be verifiable. Given the high level of distrust between NATO and Russia, allies are not going to take any Russian statements on current or future actions at face value. This hurdle is not insurmountable, even if Moscow now rejects the notion that arms control can build trust.¹⁵ Trust facilitates arms control, but it is not a necessary precondition for agreements, particularly if they do not require substantial and irreversible changes to one side’s defense posture.

Second, any agreement would need to be reciprocal. There is no political space between NATO and Russia for unilateral goodwill gestures now or in the foreseeable future. In principle, however, both sides accept reciprocity. NATO already included this principle in its 2010 strategic concept, and Moscow has a long tradition of demanding reciprocity as a necessary element of any arms control agreement.

Third, an arms control proposal needs to be sincere. Any suggestion for a dialogue would have to provide incentives for Russia to engage and must meet NATO interests. Such a proposal should address NATO concerns about Russia’s dual-capable missiles and offer a way to prevent permanent new deployments of U.S. and future European medium-range missiles that Russia sees as destabilizing.

Fourth, NATO consensus must be sought. This is important because the Kremlin is very likely to exploit and amplify different interests among the allies. At the same time, those fundamentally opposed to any talks with Russia must not be allowed to prevent progress, given that NATO continues to see arms control as a useful instrument. Allies such as Hungary that are close to Russia should not be able to unduly influence NATO policy on this issue. A practical way to meet that requirement and still make progress would be an arrangement similar to how the INF Treaty was negotiated in the 1980s: Washington would talk directly with Moscow, but would consult closely with allies in the relevant NATO bodies. The phased deployment of new medium-range missiles in Germany offers an opportunity to test the arms control waters with Russia. NATO could propose a step-by-step approach, starting with small, tangible measures to stabilize the situation followed by more ambitious steps if both sides deem implementation of previous steps successful. Such an approach would guard against Russia playing NATO along. It would provide an opportunity for the alliance to finesse its position on arms control as talks develop.

NATO could outline a three-stage arms control proposal to Russia. The first phase could last through the “episodic deployments” of U.S. missiles beginning in 2026 and would be open-ended as long as no date for the permanent deployment of the new missiles has been announced.

During this initial period, both sides would agree to a freeze on permanent deployments. This could build on Russia’s October 2020 proposal, which suggested verification measures to go with a moratorium on the deployment of medium-range missiles. There is some confusion regarding whether the Kremlin still considers this proposal valid, but NATO could seek clarification, including on any transparency or monitoring provisions.¹⁶

In return, NATO would offer to postpone the permanent deployment of ground-based medium-range missiles in Europe as long as Russia does not increase the number of its ground-based missiles deployed east of the Urals. Russia would need to be sufficiently transparent on its shorter- and medium-range missile holdings to facilitate monitoring of the freeze. In return, the alliance could propose some transparency around temporary deployments in Germany.

Even without on-site verification measures, NATO and Russia should be able to detect significant violations and movement of missiles, particularly if nuclear armed, through remote monitoring and national technical means. There is precedent for this in that the United States so far has been able to certify Russian compliance with core limits of New START even though Russia has stopped implementing the treaty’s verification provisions.

NATO also could outline a second phase involving reciprocal, limited withdrawal or disarmament of ground-based missiles. This would have to be based on faithful implementation of the first phase of an agreement over several years. A gradual reduction of the most destabilizing systems could then be combined with upper limits for sea- and air-based medium-range systems. The focus in this stage could be on those Russian 9M729 nuclear-capable medium-range systems about which NATO has been worried and tried to get eliminated for a long time.

The general goal of this phase would be to reduce or eliminate Russia’s numerical superiority of land-based missiles in Europe.¹⁷ In return, the alliance could offer temporal or quantitative limitations on the episodic deployments of SM-6s, Tomahawk cruise missiles, and Dark Eagle hypersonic weapons, which Moscow likely sees as destabilizing. In this case, some level of on-site verification probably would be required, although novel verification and remote monitoring technologies might make it possible to reduce their intrusiveness.

Putting the European Long-Range Strike Approach on hold during this second stage likely would be difficult but not without precedent. After all, Moscow and Washington agreed in 1987 to cover modern shorter- and intermediate-range systems under the INF Treaty and subsequently eliminated 1,846 Soviet and 846 U.S. missiles in these categories.

Finally, in a third phase, NATO could outline to Russia an even more ambitious agenda to be pursued if both sides have implemented previous steps successfully. Such a menu of possible steps could include options that are out of reach today, but might provide both sides with further incentives for engagement.

Thus, an agreement on the nondeployment of nuclear-armed missiles could put “the N back into INF,” as NATO’s former Deputy Secretary-General Rose Gottemoeller has argued.¹⁸ One option, to be pursued alone or in combination with other steps, could be talks on banning all intermediate-range missiles of a certain range, whether land or air based. Such a ban would be immensely stabilizing and of interest to Russia, which has been concerned about Western weapons that threaten its nuclear second-strike capabilities.

An alternative approach would be to declare certain regions “missile free,” especially in Europe. Recent research has demonstrated that it is easier to verify the absence of certain types of nuclear weapons in geographically well-defined areas than to monitor upper limits.¹⁹

Any of these proposals could be called into question because they initially would sidestep important details, but that cannot be an excuse to do nothing. For now, NATO’s main task is to demonstrate its willingness to avert a new missile arms race, provided Russia engages in serious arms control discussions. Implementation would have to wait until Russia has stopped its aggression against Ukraine and both sides are willing to consider ways to make the postwar security situation less risky. Until then, NATO should demonstrate that it can unite around using arms control to improve strategic stability. The alternative of relying only on deterrence is simply too perilous.

ENDNOTES

1. The White House, “Joint Statement From United States and Germany on Long-Range Fires Deployment in Germany,” July 10, 2024, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/statements-releases/2024/07/10/joint-statement-from-united-states-and-germany-on-long-range-fires-deployment-in-germany/.

2. Daniel Brössler et al., “Raketen für den Frieden,” Süddeutsche Zeitung, July 26, 2024, https://www.sueddeutsche.de/politik/scholz-biden-raketen-russland-deutschland-lux.KnYokHExRoyS398cG3zYBQ.

3. Bundeswehr, “Nachgefragt - U.S.-Mittelstreckenraketen in Deutschland I Bundeswehr,” YouTube, July 26, 2024, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DKdJncyyxYY.

4. Victor Goury-Laffont, “U.S. Missiles Are Welcome in Germany, Foreign Minister Says,” Politico, July 21, 2024, https://www.politico.eu/article/us-missiles-welcome-germany-foreign-minister-annalena-baerbock/.

5. NATO, “Washington Summit Declaration,” July 10, 2024, https://www.nato.int/cps/en/natohq/official_texts_227678.htm.

6. “Olaf Scholz im Interview mit t-online,” Sozialdemokratische Partei Deutschlands, July 18, 2024, https://olaf-scholz.spd.de/aktuelles/detail/news/olaf-scholz-im-interview-mit-t-online/18/07/2024.

7. Simon Kaminski, “U.S.-Mittelstreckenwaffen für Deutschland: Nötiger Schutz oder gefährliche Aufrüstung?” Augsburger Allgemeine, August 11, 2024, https://www.augsburger-allgemeine.de/politik/mittelstreckenraketen-in-deutschland-schutz-oder-aufruestung-102958227.

8. “Remarks by National Security Advisor Jake Sullivan for the Arms Control Association (ACA) Annual Forum,” The White House, June 2, 2023, https://www.whitehouse.gov/briefing-room/speeches-remarks/2023/06/02/remarks-by-national-security-advisor-jake-sullivan-for-the-arms-control-association-aca-annual-forum/.

9. Pranay Vaddi, “Adapting the U.S. Approach to Arms Control and Nonproliferation to a 
New Era,” Arms Control Association, June 7,2024, https://www.armscontrol.org/2024AnnualMeeting/Pranay-Vaddi-remarks.

10. Mared Gwyn Jones, “Kaja Kallas: The Russia Hawk Poised to Become the EU’s Top Diplomat,” Euronews, June 26, 2024, https://www.euronews.com/my-europe/2024/06/26/kaja-kallas-the-russia-hawk-poised-to-become-the-eus-top-diplomat.

11. Andrew Feickert, “The Army’s Multi-Domain Task Force (MDTF),” CRS in Focus, IF11797, July 10, 2024, https://crsreports.congress.gov/product/pdf/IF/IF11797.

12. Timothy Wright and Douglas Barrie, “The Return of Long-Range U.S. Missiles to Europe,” International Institute for Strategic Studies, August 7, 2024, https://www.iiss.org/online-analysis/online-analysis/2024/08/the-return-of-long-range-us-missiles-to-europe/.

13. Oliver Meier and Simon Lunn, “Trapped: NATO, Russia, and the Problem of Tactical Nuclear Weapons,” Arms Control Today, Vol. 44, No. 1 (January/February 2014): 18-24.

14. Michal Onderco, Michal Smetana, and Tom W. Etienne, “Hawks in the Making? European Public Views on Nuclear Weapons Post-Ukraine,” Global Policy, Vol. 14, No. 2 (May 2023): 305-317.

15. “Russian Ambassador Doesn’t See Chance for Moscow-Washington Ties to Improve Just Yet,” Tass, August 5, 2024, https://tass.com/politics/1825583.

16. “Russia’s Putin Vows ‘Mirror Measures’ in Response to U.S. Missiles in Germany,” Associated Press, July 28, 2024.

17. Simon Lunn and Nicholas Williams, “The Challenge of Russian Dual-Capable Missiles,” European Leadership Network, July 2024, https://europeanleadershipnetwork.org/wp-content/uploads/2024/07/The-challenge-of-Russian-dual-capable-missiles-2.pdf.

18. Rose Gottemoeller, “Rethinking Nuclear Arms Control,” The Washington Quarterly 43, no. 3 (January 1, 2020):139–59, 148.

19. Pavel Podvig and Javier Serrat, “Lock Them Up: Zero-Deployed Non-strategic Nuclear Weapons in Europe,” UN Institute for Disarmament Research, 2017, http://www.unidir.org/files/publications/pdfs/lock-them-up-zero-deployed-non-strategic-nuclear-weapons-in-europe-en-675.pdf.

Oliver Meier is policy and research director at the European Leadership Network.

September 2024
By Peter Burds

Chinese-U.S. nuclear tensions are approaching levels that have not been seen since the Cold War. Both countries’ miscalculated response stratagems are veering toward a “security paradox,” a downward spiral of self-perpetuating mutual hostility arising when myopic perceptions of antagonism and threat are read into a situation in which each party sought only defense and safety.¹ This trend can be reversed only if China and the United States offset their reliance on strategic uncertainty by giving each other greater clarity regarding their intentions for modernizing their nuclear weapons arsenals and the conditions under which they would employ nuclear force.

To begin, China must base the conditions of its modernization and proliferation on concrete standards rather than on “minimum deterrence,” its blurred and ever-changing finish line. Second, the United States, if unwilling to adopt a universal no-first-use policy, must make clear at a minimum that the scope of its ambiguous defense agreement with Taiwan would not include first use of nuclear force as a response to Beijing intervening militarily on the island.² Finally, the United States must change its fatalist nuclear logic, which unnecessarily labels defensively oriented states as military competitors. It also must alter its aim from developing capabilities to win a nuclear war to reaching a level of mutual vulnerability as is the only way to maintain global nuclear stability. Bilateral military-to-military meetings should serve as forums for these discussions.

The U.S. Department of Defense has reported that as of May 2023, China had more than 500 operational nuclear warheads and is expected to double that number by 2030.³ As a result, the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States called for “fully and urgently” modernizing the U.S. nuclear force, with the aim of upgrading to capabilities that are able to facilitate “[increased] reliance on nuclear weapons to deter or counter” and “defeat” hypothetical joint Chinese-Russian aggressions if conventional methods proved unsuccessful.⁴

Although these reports correctly identify the trend, narratives framing China’s nuclear development as evidence that the country is “less interested in coexistence and more interested in dominance” fail to address how such hegemonic bids fit within the greater scheme of its nuclear and national security policies.⁵ The defensive, no-first-use posture that China has held steadily since nuclearizing in 1964 shows that, rather than power, Chinese national security is built on mutual vulnerability and second-strike assurance. This is underpinned by a “lean but effective” principle of maintaining the minimum nuclear level necessary for deterrence, made possible by spreading quantitative and geographical uncertainty regarding China’s nuclear stockpile.⁶ This uncertainty, facilitated in part by an extensive network of tunnels, heightens the survivability rate of China’s arsenal by making it impossible for an attacking state to be certain that a first strike would successfully disarm China’s retaliatory capabilities.⁷

Uncertainty, therefore, is crucial to enabling China to maintain a comparably small nuclear stockpile, at a ratio of approximately 1:7 compared to the United States in 2024; keep its nuclear weapons on lowered day-to-day alert levels, thus lowering the risk of accidental launch,⁸ and lower the chance that nuclear force will be used against China in a preemptive attack. At the same time, the ever-changing and ambiguous standard determining China’s minimum level of deterrence stands out as problematic because it leaves states with no ability to forecast when this bar will be met and for how long. All that this phrase conveys is a rhetorical image of the arsenal’s effect, not any quantifiable truth.

As a result, China is able to change its subjective understanding of what minimum deterrence means numerically in light of any new, unexpected security dilemmas that may arise without having to change the rhetoric used publicly to discuss its nuclear stance. Such ambiguity is dangerous because the ability to predict future trends is essential for other parties to know how to respond proportionally to the security dilemma posed by China’s expanding arsenal.

Nonetheless, China always has made its no-first-use, retaliation-based nuclear policy explicitly clear. Leaders in Beijing see that this is the way through which bilateral confidence and stability are nurtured, by choosing doctrinal transparency over numerical transparency.⁹ The United States, on the other hand, leaves details regarding the circumstances under which it would employ nuclear weapons highly ambiguous, for example, “to protect U.S. vital interests.”¹⁰ Yet, Washington simultaneously makes clear that it reserves the right to use nuclear weapons first. The result is a dangerous information gap that sets the stage for the tensions faced today.

U.S. doctrinal uncertainty becomes especially relevant when considering the question of whether nuclear force falls within the scope of the ambiguous U.S. defense agreement with Taiwan.¹¹ The strategic ambiguity that Washington pursues regarding its “One China” policy with Beijing must not bleed over to the context of nuclear use in the event of Beijing’s military intervention on the island. Up to this point, the unpredictability of what the U.S. reaction would be in this circumstance very likely has been a factor in preventing its occurrence.¹² Yet, if China continues to modernize at its current rate, the risk of its successful retaliation following U.S. first use of nuclear weapons would be unacceptably high enough to cancel out such nuclear resort as a viable strategic option from the outset.

Furthermore, global and regional stability cannot be maintained through nuclear coercion. The United States must take the threat of nuclear confrontation out of the Taiwan equation by clarifying that it will not resort to first use of nuclear weapons in the island’s defense. This will open up paths for reaching a lasting solution through peaceful diplomatic means by removing the most volatile catalyst for nuclear competition and conflict in contemporary Chinese-U.S. relations. A Taiwan-specific no-first-use agreement would alleviate the worries of Washington’s East Asian allies by keeping the threat of nuclear escalation out of their backyards.¹³ Likewise, the specificity of this agreement would skirt issues impeding U.S. adoption of a universal no-first-use policy by allowing the United States to continue providing nuclear protection to these allies.

U.S. nuclear policy indicates that the country’s international relations are driven, as a general rule, by a fatalist logic, or what in lay terms could be called fear. In this paradigm, a country assumes that competition and conflict never can be escaped; hence, there is always an expectant fear of being attacked and of attacking. This mentality is evidenced further by the U.S. Department of State’s 2018 designation of China and Russia as long-term strategic competitors who want “to shape a world consistent with their authoritarian model.”¹⁴ Consequently, the U.S. approach to China’s nuclear modernization during the 2027 to 2035 threat environment is based around military preparedness rather than diplomacy and assumes a “worst is possible” security policy that makes it “impossible for defensively motivated states to communicate effectively to others their defence-only intentions.”¹⁵

This mindset is partly why the United States has difficulty accepting the nuclear stability paradigm of mutual vulnerability and instead pursues a nuclear arsenal able to “defeat” even joint Chinese-Russian attacks. As long as this policy is maintained, global nuclear polarity will suffer a dangerous imbalance that makes the possibility of unilateral nuclear use ever more likely. Mutual vulnerability is the reason that ballistic missile defense and Terminal High Altitude Area Defense systems deployed or upgraded by the United States in recent years have caused such controversy in Chinese-U.S. relations. Although the intentions behind and capabilities of these systems are up for debate, they could pose a serious threat to retaliation-oriented no-first-use states such as China by rendering the United States overly protected from reprisal if it were the first one to use nuclear force. China’s initial transition to multiple independently targetable reentry vehicle technology may have been a response to U.S. ballistic missile defense upsetting this polarity.¹⁶

Up to now, China and the United States have responded to growing tensions by taking steps to increase their own security, addressing nuclear modernization with nuclear modernization. Countermeasures have led to higher insecurity for the other side, stimulated similar countermeasures, and left the two parties with less security in the end.¹⁷ Despite this serious escalation, the two countries have not discussed nuclear arms control directly in any bilateral military meeting that has occurred since Chinese President Xi Jinping and U.S. President Joe Biden directed a resumption of these during their November 2023 summit.¹⁸ It is imperative that the two countries hold open-minded, detailed nuclear arms control discussions and swiftly put in place radical measures to reach a lasting solution that steers away from the grim security paradox now confronting them.

ENDNOTES

1. Ken Booth and Nicholas J. Wheeler, “Uncertainty,” in Security Studies: An Introduction, 3rd ed., ed. Paul D. Williams and Matt McDonald (New York: Routledge, 2018), p. 133.

2. U.S. first use of nuclear weapons involving conflict in Taiwan has been a serious source of Chinese concern. See Henrik Stålhane Hiim, M. Taylor Fravel, and Magnus Langset Trøan, “The Dynamics of an Entangled Security Dilemma,” International Security, Vol. 47, No. 4 (2023): 158-159.

3. U.S. Department of Defense, “Military and Security Developments Involving the People’s Republic of China, 2023: Annual Report to Congress,” n.d., p. viii, https://media.defense.gov/2023/Oct/19/2003323409/-1/-1/1/2023-MILITARY-AND-SECURITY-DEVELOPMENTS-INVOLVING-THE-PEOPLES-REPUBLIC-OF-CHINA.PDF.

4. Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States, “America’s Strategic Posture,” October 2023, p. viii, https://www.ida.org//media/feature/publications/a/am/americas-strategic-posture/strategic-posture-commission-report.ashx.

5. “Biden’s New China Doctrine,” The Economist, July 17, 2021, https://www.economist.com/leaders/2021/07/17/bidens-new-china-doctrine.

6. Sun Xiangli, “The Development of Nuclear Weapons in China,” in Understanding Chinese Nuclear Thinking, ed. Tong Zhao and Li Bin (Washington: Carnegie Endowment for International Peace, 2016), p. 96.

7. 战略学 [The Science of Military Strategy] (军事科学出版社 [Beijing: Military Science Publishing House], 2013), p. 172.

8. Transition to a launch-on-warning system has not been confirmed, and the official status of China’s nuclear weapons remains offline. Gregory Kulacki and Robert Rust, “Xi Jinping’s Thoughts on China’s Nuclear Weapons,” Union of Concerned Scientists, April 1, 2024, https://blog.ucsusa.org/gregory-kulacki/xi-jinpings-thoughts-on-chinas-nuclear-weapons/.

9. Tong Zhao, “China’s Role in Reshaping the Global Nuclear Non-Proliferation Regime,” St Anthony’s International Review, Vol. 6, No. 2 (January 2011): 73.

10. Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States, “America’s Strategic Posture,” p. 25.

11. Taiwan Relations Act, Pub. L. No. 96-8, 22 U.S.C. § 3301(b).

12. Richard Bush, “The United States Security Partnership With Taiwan,” Brookings Institute, n.d., https://www.brookings.edu/wpcontent/uploads/2016/11/fp_20160713_taiwan_alliance.pdf.

13. Tong Zhao, “It’s Time to Talk About No First Use,” Foreign Policy, November 6, 2023, https://foreignpolicy.com/2023/11/06/united-states-china-nuclear-meeting-no-first-use-arms-control/.

14. U.S. Department of Defense, “Summary of the 2018 National Defense Strategy of the United States of America,” n.d., p. 2, https://dod.defense.gov/Portals/1/Documents/pubs/2018-National-Defense-Strategy-Summary.pdf.

15. Booth and Wheeler, “Uncertainty,” p. 137.

16. Hans M. Kristensen and Robert S. Norris, “Chinese Nuclear Forces, 2016,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Vol. 72, No. 4 (2016): 207.

17. Oliver Kessler and Christopher Daase, “From Insecurity to Uncertainty: Risk and 
the Paradox of Security Politics,” Alternatives, Vol. 33, No. 2 (2008): 215.

18. Three meetings occurred between December 2023 and May 2024.

Peter Burds is pursuing his master’s degree at the Johns Hopkins University-Nanjing University Center for Chinese and American Studies in Nanjing, China. 

September 2024
By Frank N. von Hippel

During the 1950s, 1960s, and 1970s, the technological nuclear arms race between the United States and the Soviet Union was fast, furious, and frightening.

The United States realized it was in a competition when it detected the first Soviet nuclear test in 1949, sooner than almost all predictions. That test triggered a race for the much more powerful thermonuclear bombs that were tested by both countries a half-decade later.

For nuclear delivery vehicles, the United States focused initially on transitioning from the World War II propeller-driven bomber to a jet-powered long-range version. The Soviet Union focused more on intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), building on the V-2 ballistic missile technology developed by Nazi Germany during World War II.

The U.S. ICBM program was launched 70 years ago, on August 5, 1954, when the U.S. Air Force top secret Western Development Division started work on the goal of  delivering a fully operational weapon system to the Strategic Air Command within six years. U.S. ICBMs were initially liquid fueled but later solid fueled, enabling low maintenance and constant launch readiness. A decade after Sputnik’s flight, the United States had 1,000 solid-fueled Minuteman ICBMs sheltered in underground silos in the Great Plains, plus 656 shorter-range submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), also solid fueled, on 41 ballistic missile submarines.¹

Simultaneously, both countries began to develop ballistic missile defense systems. They then deployed multiple warheads on their ballistic missiles to assure that they could overwhelm any large-scale defenses. Despite the fact that the Soviet Union and the United States agreed in 1972 to limit themselves to 100 interceptor missiles each, by the end of the Cold War, they each had deployed about 10,000 offensive strategic ballistic missile warheads.

Today, Russia and the United States have reduced their arsenals to about 1,500 deployed strategic ballistic missile warheads each, still enough to destroy civilization many times over. Yet, in July, the Senate Armed Services Committee added to its version of the annual National Defense Authorization Act a requirement for an “assessment of [an] updated force sizing requirement” and for the Pentagon to submit to Congress “a strategy that enables the United States to concurrently...achieve the nuclear employment objectives of the President against any adversary that conducts a strategic attack against the United States or its allies [and] hold[s] at risk all classes of adversary targets [in China, Iran, North Korea, and Russia] described in the nuclear weapons employment guidance issued by the President.”²

The ‘Window of Vulnerability’

The short flight times of strategic ballistic missiles—30 minutes for ICBMs and half that for SLBMs—have long inspired nightmares about the possibility of Pearl Harbor-type surprise attacks. Albert Wohlstetter’s 1958 article, “The Delicate Balance of Terror,” published the year after Sputnik’s flight, provoked a large amount of literature on this subject.³

During the 1970s, the possibility that Soviet ICBMs could become accurate enough (within about 1,000 feet)⁴ to destroy missile silos hardened to survive a blast overpressure of 2,000 pounds per square inch became one of the founding issues for the Committee on the Present Danger, which was established in 1976 by a group of leading U.S. nuclear hawks. The committee did not accept the intelligence community’s assessment of the accuracy of Soviet ICBMs and pressed the Ford administration for an independent review by committee experts. President Gerald Ford’s Foreign Intelligence Advisory Board supported the proposal, and the CIA agreed to allow a “Team B” assessment of its intelligence. That assessment erred in the direction of worst-case estimates of Soviet missile accuracy, resulting in subsequent CIA estimates being similarly skewed.⁵ Committee members filled top security posts in the Reagan administration and pushed for a buildup of similar capabilities.

Later, it was learned from the archive of Vitalii Kataev, the top nuclear expert in the Soviet Central Committee, that Soviet ICBMs still had not achieved an accuracy sufficient to realize the feared “window of vulnerability” for U.S. ICBM silos as of 1991, when the Soviet Union disintegrated.⁶ U.S. ballistic missile accuracy, however, improved more rapidly. With deployment of the 10-warhead MX ICBM and eight-warhead Trident II SLBM in 1986 and 1990, respectively, the United States created a window of vulnerability for Soviet/Russian and Chinese silo-based ICBMs.⁷ Those countries responded by deploying significant fractions of their ICBMs on mobile launchers.

The Pentagon also decided on mobile basing for 200 MX ICBMs on massive transporters that would shuttle the missiles between 5,000 missile shelters on 8,000 miles of special heavy-duty roads in a manner designed to make it impossible for the Soviets to determine which shelters contained the missiles.⁸ This proposal was rejected by candidate base states Nevada and Utah. With the Cold War winding down, the Pentagon simply deployed 50 MX missiles in Minuteman silos and adopted on an “interim” basis a “launch under attack” posture for all of its silo-based ICBMs, which is still in effect 50 years later.

Launch Under Attack

The primary advantage of a launch-under-attack posture is its low cost. Its major disadvantage is the danger of accidental launch. In 1979, National Security Advisor Zbigniew Brzezinski’s military assistant argued that U.S. early-warning systems were “just not good enough to let us know that our ICBMs are under attack” and that a launch-on-warning posture would be futile in any case because U.S. ICBMs would be targeted on “empty Soviet silos.” He pressed Brzezinski to call on Secretary of Defense Harold Brown “to withdraw the [launch-under-attack] option.”⁹

Nevertheless, today, the launch-under-attack posture remains for Minuteman III ICBMs and for their proposed silo-based successors, the Sentinel ICBMs, which are planned for deployment starting around 2030.

Despite the “dual phenomenology” requirement that indications of a possible missile attack detected by satellites be confirmed by early-warning radars, command-and-control expert Bruce Blair reported that,

in the two scariest episodes [of false warning], early[-]warning crews cancelled the alarms after eight minutes...a delay over the requisite three minutes designated in the launch-on-warning protocol that was deemed so egregious that it got them fired on the spot…. 
[C]yber warfare is compounding these risks. Cyber penetration of early[-]warning networks could corrupt the data on which a presidential launch decision would depend…. [T]he requirement for bug-free nuclear command, control and communication is officially waived in order to provide the president with prompt launch options.¹⁰

As frightening as the possibility of an accidental launch is the scenario for an end-of-civilization spasm that the Pentagon’s launch-under-attack posture sets up. In a 1998 interview, General George Lee Butler, the first commander of Strategic Command (1992-1994), warned that Strategic Command had become obsessed by its requirement for

exact destruction of 80 percent of the adversary’s nuclear forces, [and when] they realized that they could not in fact assure those levels of damage if the president chose to ride out an attack…[t]hey built a construct that powerfully biased the president’s decision process toward launch before the arrival of the first enemy warhead…. The consequences of deterrence built on a massive arsenal made up of a triad of forces now simply ensured that neither nation would survive the ensuing holocaust.¹¹

U.S. presidents since Ronald Reagan have been terrified by the possibility of being put into the position of having to make a launch-on-warning decision within a few minutes on the basis of uncertain information.¹² In 1994, Ashton Carter, assistant secretary of defense for nuclear security, asked that the team working on the Clinton administration’s Nuclear Posture Review consider the elimination of land-based ICBMs. This triggered a revolt in the Joint Staff and a letter of protest that was leaked to the Senate Armed Services Committee. Carter was dressed down by a group of generals and abandoned his effort to change the U.S. strategic posture.¹³

Carter never returned to the issue, even after he became defense secretary in the Obama administration. Some two decades later, however, William Perry, a defense secretary in the Clinton administration, became a leading advocate of eliminating silo-based ICBMs, which he described as “some of the most dangerous weapons in the world [because they could] trigger an accidental nuclear war.”¹⁴

President Barack Obama tried and failed to end the launch-on-warning protocol. Yet, his administration’s 2010 Nuclear Posture Review resulted in a decision to reduce from three to one the number of warheads deployed on each Minuteman III ballistic missile in order to “enhance the stability of the nuclear balance by reducing the incentives for either side to strike first.”¹⁵ The logic was that, with the reduced loading, it would require on average more than one attacking warhead to destroy each U.S. ICBM warhead. This also would better position a U.S. president to resist pressure to launch on warning. Unfortunately, the Senate Armed Services Committee is pressing the Pentagon today for a “plan for decreasing the time to upload additional warheads” to the ICBM fleet.¹⁶

The Biden administration’s 2022 Nuclear Posture Review stated reassuringly that “while the United States maintains the capability to launch nuclear forces under conditions of an ongoing nuclear attack, it does not rely on launch-under-attack policy to ensure a credible response.”¹⁷ This would appear to allow the elimination of silo-based ICBMs. It also would allow a leader such as President Joe Biden, who is familiar with the nuclear debate, to resist the pressure that Butler described for a launch-on-warning posture, but not less knowledgeable presidents.

Weak Protections Against False Warnings

Strategic Command’s insistence on having the option of launching ICBMs before they can be destroyed has been compounded by its concerns about the vulnerability of its nuclear command-and-control system. Therefore, it has built redundancy into the number of ways in which the ICBMs can be launched. Each ICBM can be launched by any of five underground launch-control bunkers or an airborne control post communicating through multiple ground and radio communication links (fig. 1).¹⁸

In contrast to this redundancy of positive controls to assure the ICBMs would be launched if ordered, there is not a single system to deal with the possibility of a mistaken or unauthorized launch.

When Minuteman III ICBMs are test-launched with dummy warheads into the Pacific Ocean from Vandenburg Air Force Base on the California coast, they are equipped with command-destruct devices in case a missile veers off course during its powered flight. Each stage of the booster has a linear-shaped charge attached to its side that can be detonated on command to split the stage open so that it loses power and falls into the sea.¹⁹

In contrast, ICBMs loaded with nuclear warheads are not equipped with command-destruct devices. They have been excluded because the destruct code might leak and be used by an enemy, even though the probability of that happening could be reduced to an infinitesimal level.²⁰

The ICBM launch-on-warning posture and the lack of a command-destruct system make clear that the Pentagon’s priority is to make sure that nothing can prevent U.S. nuclear missiles from launching. The priority should be that they will not launch until after the determination that a nuclear attack has occurred and a thorough assessment has been made of how the United States should best respond in a way that minimizes the probability of an escalation to nuclear Armageddon.

U.S. silo-based ICBMs are not well matched to that priority, but other legs of the triad could be. U.S. ballistic missile submarines at sea are survivable. In a crisis, bombers could be kept on strip alert so that they could be launched on warning to assure their survival because, unlike ballistic missiles, they can be recalled.²¹

The United States has lived with its nuclear ICBMs on hair trigger for 50 years. It should end that posture before it runs out of luck.

ENDNOTES

1. U.S. National Park Service, “History of Minuteman Missile Sites,” n.d., https://npshistory.com/publications/mimi/srs/history.htm (accessed August 26, 2024); Robert S. Norris and Thomas B. Cochran, “US-USSR/Russian Strategic Offensive Nuclear Forces: 1945-1996,” Natural Resources Defense Council, January 1997, https://nuke.fas.org/norris/nuc_01009701a_181.pdf.

2. National Defense Authorization Act for Fiscal Year 2025, S. 4638, 118th Cong. (2024), sec. 1514 (hereinafter 2025 NDAA).

3. Albert Wohlstetter, “The Delicate Balance of Terror,” Rand Corp., n.d., https://www.rand.org/pubs/papers/P1472.html.

4. Samuel Glasstone and Philip J. Dolan, “The Effects of Nuclear Weapons,” 3rd ed., U.S. Departments of Defense and Energy, 1977, pp. 110-111

5. Anne H. Cahn, Killing Detente: The Right Attacks the CIA (University Park, PA: Pennsylvania State University Press, 1998).

6. Pavel Podvig, “The Window of Vulnerability That Wasn’t,” International Security, Vol. 33, 
No. 1 (2008): 118-138.

7. Donald MacKenzie, Inventing Accuracy (Cambridge, MA: MIT Press, 1990), app. A.

8. Office of Technology Assessment, “MX Missile Basing,” 1981, pp. 60, 65.

9. William E. Odom to Zbigniew Brzezinski, memorandum, October 8, 1979, https://nsarchive.gwu.edu/document/19357-national-security-archive-doc-30-william-e-odom.

10. Bruce G. Blair, “Loose Cannons: The President and U.S. Nuclear Posture,” Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, January 1, 2020, https://thebulletin.org/premium/2020-01/loose-cannons-the-president-and-us-nuclear-posture/.

11. Jonathan Schell, The Gift of Time (New York: Henry Holt, 1998), p. 194.

12. Blair, “Loose Cannons.”

13. Janne E. Nolan, An Elusive Consensus: Nuclear Weapons and American Security After the Cold War (Washington, DC: Brookings Institution Press, 1999), ch. 3.

14. William J. Perry, “Why It’s Safe to Scrap America’s ICBMs,” The New York Times, September 30, 2016.

15. U.S. Department of Defense, “Nuclear Posture Review Report,” April 2010, p. 23, https://dod.defense.gov/Portals/1/features/defenseReviews/NPR/2010_Nuclear_Posture_Review_Report.pdf.

16. 2025 NDAA, sec. 1520.

17. U.S. Department of Defense, “2022 Nuclear Posture Review,” October 27, 2022, 
p. 15, https://media.defense.gov/2022/Oct/27/2003103845/-1/-1/1/2022-NATIONAL-DEFENSE-STRATEGY-NPR-MDR.PDF#page=51.

18. The Military Standard, “Minuteman Communications Network,” n.d., http://www.themilitarystandard.com/missile/minuteman/communications.php (accessed August 26, 2024).

19. U.S. Department of Defense, “Missile Work,” n.d., https://www.defense.gov/Multimedia/Photos/igphoto/2002067554/ (accessed August 26, 2024); Naval Surface Weapons Center, “Space Shuttle Range Safety Command Destruct System Analysis and Verification: Phase 1 - Destruct System Analysis and Verification,” NSWC/TR 80-417, March 1981, https://apps.dtic.mil/sti/pdfs/ADA103453.pdf.

20. Sherman Frankel, “Aborting Unauthorized Launches of Nuclear-Armed Ballistic Missiles Through Post-Launch Destruction,” Science & Global Security, Vol. 2 (1990), pp. 1-20.

21. See, e.g., Global Zero U.S. Nuclear Policy Commission, “Modernizing U.S. Nuclear Strategy, Force Structure and Posture,” Global Zero, May 2012, https://www.globalzero.org/wp-content/uploads/2018/09/gz_us_nuclear_policy_commission_report.pdf.

Frank N. von Hippel is a professor of public and international affairs emeritus at Princeton University.