global_zero_commission_on_nuclear_risk_reduction_report

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GLOBAL ZERO COMMISSION ON NUCLEAR RISK REDUCTION REPORTDE-ALERTING AND STABILIZING THE WORLD’S NUCLEAR FORCE POSTURESegated nuclear launch authority to military commandersduring the Cold War. The Soviets built a fantastic doomsdaymachine designed to trigger semi-automatic retaliation in theevent of a decapitating strike. “Use or lose” pressure grew inspite of these hedges, partly due to vulnerabilities but also dueto ambitious wartime objectives that went well beyond seekingthe ability to destroy the enemy’s war-making industrialbase (and thus its cities) in retaliation to attack. Both sidesalso sought the capability to destroy the opponent’s nuclearforces and thereby limit the amount of damage the opponentcould inflict.To avoid decapitation and increase their counterforce capabilitiesto destroy thousands of military targets, both sides adopteda stance of launch on warning. They put their nuclearforces on hair-trigger alert and prepared to launch them afterincoming warheads were detected by early warning satellitesand ground radar but before the warheads arrived. As a consequence,both sides ran the risk of launching on false indicationsof enemy attack – and indeed false alarms have broughtboth close to mistaken launch on numerous occasions. Theshort timelines of just a few minutes for detecting and assessingan attack, briefing the top leaders, picking a response option,and implementing the option reduced decision-makingon both sides to a checklist-driven rote enactment of a preparedscript that could too easily have collapsed in confusionor led to a mistaken or unauthorized launch. And stronglydoubting the feasibility of retaliating at all, both sides leanedtoward initiating a first strike in a crisis. Second-strike retaliationand launch on warning were problematic, difficult options,and thus preemptive attack would have become moretempting during the heat of crisis.Both sides inherited these ill-configured postures at the end ofthe Cold War. As they remain in place today, they are a continuingsource of strategic instability. They run an unacceptable levelof nuclear risk, offer inadequate warning and decision timeto support rational decision-making, and severely constrain theflexibility of national leaders during crises and conflict.A transformational change in U.S. and Russian nuclear strategy,posture and force structure is therefore urgently needed toaddress squarely the security threats facing them and the worldin the 21st century. The current strategy of mutual assured destructionperpetuates nuclear stockpiles that are much largerthan required for deterrence and that have scant efficacy indealing with these contemporary threats – nuclear proliferation,terrorism, cyber warfare and a multitude of other threatsstemming from the diffusion of power in the world today.Mutual assured destruction based on a bilateral balance ofnuclear terror, the unvarnished version of the anodyne euphemism“mutual deterrence,” is a dated and less useful constructin today’s security environment. Strategy and stabilityhave both become a multipolar and multidimensional concernthat includes many factors besides nuclear forces: cyberwarfare capabilities, missile defenses, conventional forces,special operations and “softer” factors including diplomaticand economic clout.The United States can and will proceed on its own accord tomake many of the necessary changes to its nuclear strategyand force posture, but Russia and China are critical partnersin the resolution of <strong>global</strong> security problems. The importanceof achieving greater security cooperation among these threenations is difficult to overstate. The world looks to them forleadership in grappling with the <strong>global</strong> economic, environmental,and security problems of the 21st century and theycannot expect to solve these collective challenges while at thesame time maintaining nuclear policies rooted in threats toannihilate one another. Preserving mutual assured destructionas the central organizing principle of their relationshipobstructs the ability to achieve the level of mutual securitythat each side seeks, and the trust and cooperation needed toaddress effectively the real threats that they and the rest of theworld face.In this spirit of cooperative security we must persist in ourefforts to join the United States, Russia, China, and others toset the world’s course toward the total elimination of nuclearweapons. The path forward is clear: a revamping of U.S. andRussian nuclear postures to reduce nuclear risk and increasestability, progressive reductions in the U.S. and Russian nuclearstockpiles, the elimination of their hair-trigger attack readiness,bilateral and multilateral agreements among the nuclearweapons countries that prohibit placing nuclear forceson high alert status, and the convening of the first-in-historymultilateral nuclear weapons summit to consider proposals2
GLOBAL ZERO COMMISSION ON NUCLEAR RISK REDUCTION REPORTDE-ALERTING AND STABILIZING THE WORLD’S NUCLEAR FORCE POSTURESfor achieving a world free of nuclear weapons.A new opportunity has emerged to revamp their nuclear policiesand postures as the United States and Russia continuethe historic drawdown of their nuclear stockpiles. Guided bya desire to shrink their oversized and costly arsenals followingthe end of the Cold War and driven by the emergence of newthreats such as nuclear terrorism and proliferation that largearsenals do not address, the two sides reduced the size of theircollective stockpile from a peak of nearly 70,000 total nuclearweapons in the mid-1980s to today’s level of 16,000 totalweapons, of which about 6,000 are slated for dismantling.Under the current nuclear arms treaty that regulates these arsenals,the two sides are each allowed a maximum of 1,550operationally deployed strategic weapons. The United Statesseeks further reductions to 1,000.Cuts below this level would put the United States and possiblyRussia on the cusp of a policy transformation entailing ashift from a Triad to Dyad of strategic nuclear forces, drivenin no small measure by the exorbitant cost of re-capitalizingall three legs of the strategic forces. This financial crunch presentsan unusual opportunity to overhaul the entire system andshift to a new strategy that combines nuclear and non-nuclearcapabilities.From a U.S. perspective, the ideal paradigm shift would enablethe United States to rebalance its security strategy awayfrom a predominantly nuclear strategy featuring three nuclearlegs and toward one in which the pillars of a “total forcetriad” include key non-nuclear elements as well: (i) conventionaland nuclear offense – the latter mainly composed ofa Dyad of survivable strategic submarines and bombers, (ii)active and passive defense, encompassing a wide range ofcomponents from ballistic missile defense to protective sheltering,and (iii) command and control, providing survivableinformation processing, the ability to identify the source ofaggression (nuclear, conventional, or cyber), and the meansto flexibly direct this “total force triad” to coherent nationalpurposes at all times.This shift in operational concept and strategy would allowthe United States to make a host of important adjustments.The United States could substantially reduce the number oftotal nuclear weapons, delivery systems, and weapons onalert; eliminate launch on warning tactics; increase decisiontime and reduce pressure to “use or lose” forces; focus onincreasing the survivability of forces and command-controlnetworks; de-mate weapons from delivery platforms and centrallystore the weapons in high security storage facilities; introduceadvanced security technologies throughout the weaponscomplex; and augment nuclear systems with a broader setof non-nuclear capabilities that increase operational flexibilityand the perceived credibility of the extended deterrenceguarantee to allies. As a consequence of these steps, the risksof accidental, unauthorized, and mistaken launch on warningwould decrease drastically.The revamped architecture could also optimize nuclear securityagainst terrorist theft, and build more nearly foolproofcommand-control networks against cyber warfare. Such architecturewould mitigate a plethora of risks while preservingbasic deterrence and operational cohesion.If Russia would move in the same strategic direction, and Chinaand other nuclear weapons countries followed suit, then agenuine shift that ensures the sovereignty of the world’s majorpowers at much lower levels of nuclear stockpiles could bepossible. In the real world, disparities in resources and otherfactors work against a smooth collective transition. A shift inU.S. strategy may have destabilizing effects on other countries’security. It is vital to take such externalities into accountand devise ways to mitigate the untoward consequences.A fundamental shift in strategy could be undertaken as a projectof the executive branch of the U.S. government, and wouldnot necessarily require perfectly symmetrical U.S.-Russiannuclear arms reductions. While negotiated reductions are almostalways preferable, progress in this arena has stalled andmay not resume anytime soon. Therefore, until their relationsreturn to normal, bilateral reductions may proceed in parallelin a manner similar to the past reductions in which the twosides independently culled their over-stocked arsenals. Today,it makes strategic sense for both the United States and Russiato shed vulnerable forces and depend upon leaner, smaller buthighly survivable nuclear forces (mainly U.S. missile submarinesand Russian road-mobile missiles) while strengtheningthe non-nuclear pillars of their military strategies.3
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