New Nuclear Challenges and Nuclear Arms Control Options

By Peter Huessy, President, Geostrategic Analysis, Senior Fellow, The Hudson Institute

The United States wants to secure an arms control framework which would provide Washington with an understanding of the future dimensions of both the Russian and Chinese nuclear forces. And to create a strategic stability where the first use of nuclear weapons against the US or our allies is totally deterred. To achieve this would require at least two major discoveries including (1) identifying the nuclear weapons that Russia and China have which they are deploying; and (2) the reasons these two countries would use nuclear weapons in the first place, which the West has long assumed were only weapons of deterrence not war.

Nuclear Weapons and War

Without knowing what weapons a treaty would have to control, one cannot have arms control. And without knowing the nuclear forces a country has, one cannot verify that a treaty is being observed. Given there is near zero transparency with respect to any of China’s nuclear forces, and Russia’s theater or regional nuclear forces could be anywhere from the DIA estimate of 1900 to Mark Schneider’s calculation that the number is closer to 4000, no further arms control deals should be undertaken let alone ideas put on the table until such time as full transparency and verification are in place or are in process of being fully implemented prior to a treaty coming into force.

The lack of transparency and verification is not a trivial matter. If numbers of nuclear weapons matter, it is not of little consequence that even the low estimate of Russian theater or regional nuclear forces exceeds the “allowed” strategic or long-range nuclear warheads under New START. *

In addition, whatever the US puts on the table, Washington should not let arms control proposals or possible deals prevent the US from having a strong and credible deterrent with which to keep our adversaries from ever using nuclear weapons against the US or our allies. To achieve this requires a sound and unflinching understanding of why both Russia and China would use nuclear weapons and thus what they would seek in any arms control deal or regimen. And to deflect Congressional opponents of nuclear modernization from proposing to “jump start” arms negotiations through such ideas as a nuclear freeze or a pause in deployment.

Most importantly, the United States needs to heed the multiple warnings from our senior military professionals that both Peking and Moscow believe nuclear weapons can be used coercively not to prevent any use of nuclear weapons—as traditional deterrent theory holds—but to actually allow Russia and China to commit aggression under the umbrella of nuclear weapons threats that would, for example, prevent the United States from coming to the defense of her friends such as Taiwan or the Republic of Korea in the western Pacific or the Baltics in Eastern Europe.

As a recent essay in Foreign Affairs explained, many in western Europe had previously refused to believe that China and Russia thought war was possible, particularly that nuclear weapons were instruments on the battlefield. For sure, some of the recent Russian nuclear threats are bluff. But the US and its NATO allies cannot make the mistake of mistakenly thinking all such nuclear threats are bluff. The HASC added funding for a Navy nuclear armed cruise missile precisely to deter such Russian or Chinese behavior.