By Peter Huessy, Senior Fellow, NIDS

At the beginning of the 20th century, especially after WWI, the US and its allies sought arms control solutions to what were political problems, most seriously the great power rivalries and conflicts of the time. Proposals such as a ban on war and restrictions on the size of Naval vessels and army divisions were adopted but eventually without affect.

After WWII, both Japan and Germany became allies of the West while the USSR, an ally of the allies in WWII became a serious enemy of the West. Most importantly the USSR established in eastern Europe an alliance of nations under the Warsaw Pact. That initiated a decades long Cold War which only ended with the collapse of the USSR in 1991.

It was widely assumed that the end of the USSR heralded in an era of global cooperation and the end of great power competition and conflict. Arms control had brought us the INF, START I and II and the CFE agreements.

But now, as many military and diplomatic experts have concluded, the dangers facing the United States and its allies are more complex and more serious than perhaps any time since the end of WWII. And arms control deals still remain allusive.

Nuclear conflicts are now at the top of such potential dangers, including proliferation of nuclear weapons, the pending end to formal strategic arms limits and the actual use of theater nuclear force arising out of existing conventual conflicts such as Russia’s war against Ukraine.

To lessen such dangers and despite strategic realities, nuclear critics and abolitionists continue to proffer numerous arms control proposals. Six ideas are most common: (1) a policy of no first use of nuclear weapons; (2) adopting of what is described as a “minimum use” nuclear strategy; (3) the elimination of the land based ICBM force in the United States and significant cuts to the submarine based US nuclear deterrent; (4) a unilateral freeze of US nuclear force development; (5) an extension of the New START nuclear arms limits; and (6) abandoning any new theater nuclear forces such as the SLCM-N or the sea launched cruise missile.

Unfortunately, all these strategies would harm US and allied security and make worse the strategic nuclear balance.

The US extended deterrent has for 70 years rested on the option of using nuclear force to stop massive conventional attacks on US forces and allies overseas. Depending on the regional military balance, such nuclear extended deterrent options have been viewed by our allies as central to keeping their nation’s safe from Soviet and now Russian and Chinese aggression.

Minimum use deterrent strategies assume the only retaliatory targets the US needs to hold at risk are an adversary’s cities where a few hundred nuclear warheads are all that is needed to deter. This doctrine assumes Russia and China will be completely deterred by the fear of losing large numbers of their civilian population. But this ignores the fact that historically to gain and secure power such regimes have murdered millions of their own people. Even worse, a minimum deterrent strategy would also leave in sanctuary the leaders of such nations as well as their nuclear and conventional forces with which they will commit aggression.

Cutting out the land based ICBM the Sentinel and a third of the Columbia sea based submarine would unilaterally reduce the US strategic nuclear force to around 500 at sea on alert warheads. This would be only a third of the allowed New START treaty force, and lead over the next decade to anywhere from an 8/1 to 18/1 Russian and Chinese advantage in nuclear weapons. This would ensure that both nations frequently use nuclear weapons for coercion and blackmail.

A freeze on US force development would be a deterrent disaster as the US has not yet fielded any portion of the three legged Triad whether the B21 (test planes have been built); Sentinel (not initially deployed until next decade) and Columbia (projected to come into the force circa 2030.) Russia has completed over 90% of its own rebuilding and China is well on it wat to tripling the size of its nuclear force over the next decade. Both by definition would not be part of a unilateral US freeze.

An extension of New START sounds attractive but would be harmful to US interests. It would delay any needed uploading of US warheads. It would not affect or make transparent China’s breathtaking nuclear buildup. And without a sea change in Russian behavior, verifying current arms limits would still not been possible given the past five years of treaty violations by Moscow.

The Strategic Posture commission report of October 2023 emphasized the urgency of rebalancing the current gap in US regional or theater nuclear forces. The SLCM-N and better theater air-based deterrence were key recommended upgrades, both of which would be ended by a number of these arms deals or strategies. It has been precisely this deterrent gap which Moscow has leveraged to limit US and allied assistance to Ukraine.

The restraint these arms control ideas wish upon the US military assumes that Russia and China will reciprocate. But in the multiple decades after the end of the USSR, massive US restraint was eventually met with what Admiral Richard has described as a “breathtaking” Chinese build up and a near matching Russian modernization. As former Secretary of Defense Harold Brown once warned, “We build, they build. We stop; they build.”