By Peter Huessy
Introduction
The nuclear age is now entering its 79th year. Throughout this era, the US nuclear deterrent strategy has been updated and fine-tuned, primarily to sustain a highly credible deterrent in a changing world. According to the former Commander of US Strategic Command, Admiral Charles Richard, and his top-notch successor, the United States and its allies are now facing some formidable nuclear challenges, not the least of which is confronting for the first time in its history, two peer nations both armed with nuclear weapons.
The bad news is the nuclear threats the US faces are indeed growing. The good news is the United States has the means to maintain current and sustain future deterrent requirements if the country follows these two commander’s wise counsel.
A New Nuclear Deterrent Strategy
From their 2021-3 Congressional testimony, respectively, one can organize a new deterrent strategy around six planks. These are (1) conventional deterrence will not hold if nuclear weapons are part of the mix of weapons used by our adversaries; (2) theUS would be out of the nuclear deterrent business if nuclear modernization does not smartly proceed not the least of which is due to our legacy nuclear systems being between 40-60 years old and cannot be sustained over time; and (3) the insurance hedge the US adopted in 2010 reflected conditions at the time and needs to be changed, as especially China is expanding its nuclear deterrent at a “breath-taking “ pace.
The further planks are: (4) Putin and Xi both appear to have adopted an “escalate to win” strategy of threatening to introduce the limited use of nuclear weapons into a conventional conflict which as Robert Haffa warned is precisely what the US needs to avoid, because in the view of Russia and China, the introduction of nuclear weapons is the best means of forcing the US and its allies to standdown; (5) arms control, while valuable at times, does not adequately address any of these challenges and as such can be a serious distraction especially if the objective is global zero or nuclear abolition; and (6) space dominance and robust missile and air defenses have both emerged as critical to enhanced deterrence, necessary for the United States to adopt in order to maintain its leadership of the free world.
Can Deterrence Hold?
On the first point, Admiral Richards in his March 9, 2022 Senate Armed Services (SASC) testimony explained “Every operational plan in the Department of Defense and every other capability we have rests on an assumption that strategic deterrence is holding. And in particular that nuclear deterrence is holding. If strategic or nuclear deterrence fails, no other plan and no other capability in the Department of Defense is going to work as designed.”
In August 2021, the Admiral made this point even more explicit: “Every operational plan in the DoD and every other capability we have, has an implicit assumption that strategic deterrence will hold. None of our plans and no other capability will work as designed if strategic deterrence fails. This is not well understood.”
Modernize or Disarm?
The Strategic Command head then further warned that the “the nation’s nuclear forces underpin integrated deterrence…and enable the U.S., our allies, and our partners to confront aggressive and coercive behavior”, but without nuclear modernization to secure a credible deterrent this will put the United States out of the nuclear deterrent business, a point also echoed by former Secretary of Defense Ash Carter.
It is often not recognized, but the current nuclear forces were built not less than forty years ago and when fully replaced will be near six decades old. the Strategic Command was sustaining deterrence but doing it with “submarines built in the 80s and 90s, an air launch cruise missile built in the 80s, intercontinental ballistic missiles built in the 70s, a bomber built in the 60s, part of our nuclear command and control that predates the internet, and a nuclear weapons complex that dates back to the Manhattan era.”
Anticipating Threats
The imperative of nuclear modernization also comes from another critical factor. Admiral Richard then warned that the pacing threat of Russia and China pose a threat to “unilaterally escalate to any level of violence in any domain worldwide with any instrument of national power at any time”, a situation as previously emphasized the US has “never faced…in our history.” General Cotton also spoke about this factor, noting with respect to China: “The PRC’s rapid qualitative and quantitative expansion of military capabilities enables a shift in its strategy and requires the Department of Defense (DoD) to make immediate and significant alterations to plans and capabilities.
In an essay written for the Naval Institute’s Proceedings, the Admiral had earlier written and explained when such a shift in Chinese strategy might occur. “There is a real possibility that a regional crisis with Russia or China could escalate quickly to a conflict involving nuclear weapons, if they perceived a conventional loss would threaten the regime or state,” a rationale that underscores what General John Hyten described as a Russian “escalate to wi
n” strategy adopted by Vladimir Putin of Russia. General Cotton echoed this concern in a May 2023 threat hearing, testifying “Russia presents a growing nuclear deterrence challenge centered on its potential perception that the threshold for regional nuclear employment is lower with low-yield systems.”
Video Above: A discussion with Peter Huessy, a seasoned expert in nuclear weapons analysis.
What then should the United States do? As far as a new hedge strategy Admiral Richard warned if the US fails to fix the gap in US deterrent strategy perceived by Russia and China, the United States “runs the risk of developing plans we cannot execute and procuring capabilities that will not deliver desired outcomes. In the absence of change, , once again, to prepare for the conflict we prefer, instead of one we are likely to face.”
As Washington Times expert Bill Gertz put it, “Moscow and Beijing in recent years have invested in nuclear and strategic capabilities designed to constrain U.S. actions, test alliances”and quoting Admiral Richard, “escalate past us — to include nuclear use.”
General Cotton summarized the need for the United States to in particular “account for nuclear, long-range conventional, space, electromagnetic spectrum, and cyberspace capabilities. Crucially, DoD’s plans must integrate all capabilities across the spectrum of conflict.” If the US does this correctly, General Cotton testified, then our adversaries will not have the perception “Of a threshold below which an adversary may believe it could employ nuclear weapons, such as non-treaty accountable, lower-yield, theater weapons, to obtain a benefit.”
Arms Control Losing
As for arms control, missile defense and space, Russia and China appear determined to avoid any central strategic system limits, with Russia currently developing significant systems outside of the New START limits in both the strategic and theater areas. China has no such limits on any of its nuclear weapons, has not even subscribed to the idea of extending transparency to the nuclear realm so the US at least knows the extent of the Chinese build, while fully 55% of Russian nuclear weapons are not under some kind of current arms control restraint.
As General Cotton informed the US Congress earlier this year, China now exceeds the US in the number of ICBM launchers, especially after the US discovered the Chinese had built at least three ICBM fields, each with 120 missile launchers.
Space and Missile Defense
Admiral Richard covered some China space systems in the Proceedings essay mentioned earlier, including underscoring “China continues to make technological leaps in capabilities in every domain. General Cotton further testified before Congress that “Missile defense capabilities are a key part of integrated deterrence to deny our potential adversaries coercive abilities or the benefit of attacks against the homeland, Allies, and partners.” Key said General Cotton “was the development of a Department-wide missile defeat approach with continued investment in systems integration and collaboration with Allies and partners.”
In addition General Cotton took the extra step to explain defenses against missiles did not stand alone, but was part of an “integration of space- and terrestrial-based sensors for warning, attribution, and tracking of ballistic, maneuvering, hypersonic, cruise missile, and UAS threats to optimize the effectiveness of our limited inventory of kinetic interceptors.”
Admiral Richard previously laid out similar requirements, explaining that integrated deterrence “…Includes space. It includes cyber. It includes information operations. It includes our allies and partners. And it includes missile defense. We have to maintain strategic deterrence in all domains utilizing all of the elements of our national power. This is the reality we must contend with.”
Instead of looking at missile defense as an alternative to deterrence, as many critics of SDI did, Admiral Richard explained “Missile defenses contribute to all three elements of current deterrence theory. It imposes cost on potential adversaries by forcing them to spend more energy and resources on their missile arsenals. When our missile defenses are deployed and employed wisely, they deny benefits of the adversary’s use of missiles. It even forces him to use more to achieve his aims. The first two elements encourage restraint on our adversary’s part.”
Richard also reiterated his support for the 2019 Missile Defense Review of new elements including directed energy, recapitalization of existing technologies, early warning capabilities coupled with integrated global planning, on top of the Joint All-Domain Command and Control systems and cooperative work with our allies. [Parenthetically, if Congress would add to the Admiral’s mix multiple space-basedinterceptors and a cooperative warning and tracking system, all of which is affordable and capable of timely employment, the US would be considerably down the road to a secure future.]
Conclusion
To put together these six proposed elements offers a way for the United States to credibly ensure our deterrent. But it will take a very considerable additional effort, particularly requiring Congress and administrations to continue a robust funding effort for at least the next 20 years. For the two decades since 9-11, the United States had primarily worried about terrorism, and non-nuclear armed adversaries, during which time Russia and China, again in the words of Admiral Richard, “rushed to build up their nuclear arsenals.”
Admiral Richard concluded with a warning that China and Russa are both challenging international norms, destabilizing the world and risking great power conflict, while any US concession to their aggression risks “reinforcin
g the perceptions that the United States is unwilling to respond.” He and his successor General Anthony Cotton have offered the US a blueprint for future security. It would be a very wise decision for the US to run with it—as General John Hyten the former Vice Chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff and Ellen Lord, the former Depuy Undersecretary of Defense would both say, respectively, “fast” and “at the speed of relevance.”
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These are the views of the author alone. He is Senior Fellow at the Hudson Institute and President of Geo-Strategic Analysis.
