Russia is making major advances in nuclear weapons delivery systems against which the US presently has no defense. Of equal concern, President Putin and Russia’s military leaders believe that their doctrines of first-use under threat and willingness to use nuclear-weapons in limited wars will force its opponents to back down without a fight. One must therefore conclude that the deterrence that restrained the Soviet Union during the Cold War is no longer operative. Keith B. Payne, one of the West’s leading nuclear strategists, writes
The Russian nuclear challenge follows from the combination of Russia’s goal to revise the existing international political order, and the apparent role Moscow envisages for its nuclear forces in advancing that goal….Russia’s leadership reportedly believes that Moscow can use the threat of nuclear first-use, or actual limited nuclear first-use if necessary, to help advance its goal of revising the political order in Eurasia…. The domestic challenge confronting us is whether there will be clear-eyed recognition of these external nuclear threat developments, and the corresponding establishment of an enduring and responsive deterrence policy and posture. Throughout much of the Cold War, the United States sustained a bipartisan deterrence policy and posture vis-à-vis the Soviet Union…. [But] For almost [last] three decades, the common Western expectation has been that great power nuclear threats were a thing of the past.
Payne convincingly argues that “[M]odernizing U.S. nuclear forces now in support of deterrence is more likely to reduce nuclear dangers than would their continuing reduction.” He wonders, however, “[W]ill we have the unity and stamina to do what we must do, possibly over many years, to address those gaps? That is the domestic challenge. It is the flip side of the external challenge.”
Right now Russia, perceiving Western and US disunity and an aging US nuclear deterrent, could miscalculate and trigger, instead of capitulation, a catastrophic nuclear war.
The strength of the US nuclear deterrent is the best — and only — antidote to such a miscalculation.
What are the impediments to a “Cold War” unity needed to modernize US deterrent nuclear strike forces?
- The Democrats’ determination to shun compromise with President Trump and the Republicans on all matters except opposition to China’s predatory economic policies;
- Bureaucratic inertia and intellectual torpor in the Pentagon, especially the Air Force, and other parts of the national security establishment;
- Libertarian and isolationist wishful thinking.
At present, the public is as ill-informed in key national security issues as it is in basic economics. That will need to change.
Hat tips: Eaglebeak, RealClearDefense
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