Instead of loose nukes talk, modernize and cut arsenal
It’s hard to imagine an American leader boasting about his willingness to unleash a nuclear weapons race — and doing it on the telephone with a stunned talk-show host sitting in her pajamas the day before Christmas Eve. But that’s exactly what happened when Donald Trump reportedly told host Mika Brzezinski on Morning Joe, “Let it be an arms race. We will outmatch them at every pass and outlast them all.”
The president-elect was doubling down on a tweet he issued the day before that called for “greatly” strengthening and expanding U.S. nuclear capability until “the world comes to its senses regarding nukes.” The tweet and the boast left analysts scrambling for interpretations.
But whether Trump is engaging in some kind of negotiating ploy or invoking new strategy akin to the Reagan-era faceoff with the Soviets that produced more than enough bombs to “make the rubble bounce” (in the words of Winston Churchill) he misses the point entirely. America could and should reduce its nuclear arsenal — an idea Trump’s own nominee for Defense secretary, James Mattis, has endorsed — and still hold enough powerful weapons to intimidate any adversary.
The basic idea behind a nuclear arsenal is the ability to annihi- late any nation foolish enough to launch a first strike, thus deterring war. The U.S. at one time had more than 30,000 nuclear weapons and the Soviets 40,000. With the end of the Cold War, those arsenals have shrunk dramatically until today: The Americans and Russians now each have about 4,500 warheads.
The biggest problem with the U.S. arsenal isn’t that it needs to grow; it’s that it’s aging and needs to be modernized, a process President Obama already initiated at a potential cost of a trillion dollars over three decades. But that price tag is necessary only if America clings to the obsolete Cold War nuclear triad.
The term refers to the three ways that the U.S. can deliver nuclear weapons: by intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) buried in blast-hardened silos, heavy bombers and nuclear submarines.
All three means of delivery require updated hardware — new missiles, planes and submarines — at a cost that for decades would chew through a Pentagon budget that must also maintain a vast conventional force. But billions could be saved by streamlining the arsenal.
Land-based ICBMs were once valued for their accuracy. But missiles launched from submarines are now just as precise. Mattis questioned the need for ICBMs during congressional testimony in 2015: “Is it time to reduce the triad to a diad, removing the land-based missiles?”
Other experts argue that because missile-firing submarines are so impregnable roving the oceans, even nuclear-armed bombers might not be necessary. But the aircraft remain a good backup.
In any event, the future of the nation’s nuclear forces doesn’t lie in loose talk about an arms race, but rather in a determination to modernize — and streamline — an arsenal that could still threaten massive retaliation against any enemy of the United States.