global_zero_commission_on_nuclear_risk_reduction_report

GLOBAL ZERO COMMISSION ON NUCLEAR RISK REDUCTION REPORTDE-ALERTING AND STABILIZING THE WORLD’S NUCLEAR FORCE POSTURESAccordingly, this report outlines a U.S.-Russia de-alertingregime, taking into account pertinent national and internationalsecurity interests. De-alerting proposals, such as removingwarheads from delivery vehicles and putting themin storage, must be compatible with the basic security interestsof the parties to an agreement or else they will be rejected.Proposals must not be designed and considered in avacuum, solely in narrow technical terms set apart from thecontext of sound national strategy and doctrine, employmentpolicy, force structure, and nuclear command-controlsystems. This wider context and nations’ fundamental securitypriorities, which obviously vary and often diverge fromnation to nation, should shape the contours of de-alertingproposals to ensure that they are useful. To a certain extentthis means that consensus gets built on the lowest commondenominator, but one must begin by considering de-alertingon a case-by-case basis.In the U.S. case, proposals for de-alerting U.S. nuclear forcesare set forth in a fictitious 21st century Nuclear Strategy,Force Posture, and Employment Guidance of the UnitedStates, presented in the form of a forward-looking Presidentialnuclear directive as it might be crafted by the WhiteHouse. This model guidance outlines the elements of anuclear strategy redesigned for the 21st century. The overhaulreduces U.S. reliance on nuclear weapons, eliminatesprompt launch (“launch-on-warning”), downsizes the strategicand tactical arsenal, removes the U.S. threat of a counterforcefirst strike against Russia, and otherwise strengthensstrategic stability. De-alerting is a key component ofthe overhaul. The model guidance also frees up resourcesfor the (non-nuclear) tools actually needed by the U.S. militaryand by the decision-makers responsible for managingcrises, and relieves the unaffordable burden of modernizingall three components of the U.S. strategic arsenal. The currentlyplanned nuclear modernization program would costfar more than the Pentagon can afford, produce a force thatexceeds reasonable requirements of deterrence, and shortchangethe non-nuclear programs that the United Statesneeds far more.This model presidential directive takes into account the nationalsecurity priorities of the United States and the otherkey nuclear weapons countries, as well as their positions onde-alerting, as viewed by this report’s experts from China,France, Germany, India, Israel, Italy, Japan, Pakistan, Russia,the United Kingdom and the United States. It seeks tostrengthen security cooperation among them, instead ofdefaulting to the anachronistic organizing principle of mutualdeterrence that governed Cold War relationships. Atthe same time it recognizes that the transition from legacyconstructs like mutual assured destruction to more suitableconstructs like cooperative security is far from complete.In fact it is still in its adolescence. The directive is thereforedriven by “realism” and waxes hard-nosed and conservativein approach. After all, the central purpose of such presidentialdirection is to guide U.S. nuclear planners in preparingfor peacetime, crisis, and wartime operations. It is not everyone’scup of tea.De-alerting would be facilitated by shedding vulnerable silo-basedforces and deploying only survivable weapons. Theoption exists for both Russia and the United States to shiftto a more survivable and de-alerted force – primarily a missilesubmarine force for the United States and a road-mobilemissile force for Russia. U.S.-Russian cooperation couldgreatly facilitate the re-structuring of their nuclear postures,however. The model U.S. presidential directive thus calls forreciprocal Russian de-alerting steps, which are elaboratedalongside the U.S. steps in the appendix. In the initial stageof this de-alerting cooperation between the two nuclearsuperpowers, the overriding and urgent goal is to removelaunch-on-warning from their nuclear operational plans.The <strong>commission</strong> also concludes that coordinated multilateralefforts could prove instrumental in minimizing the<strong>global</strong> risks of nuclear weapons use. This report thereforerecommends that the nuclear weapons countries negotiate averifiable agreement that constrains the attack readiness oftheir nuclear forces, ensuring that they remain off high alertstatus, restricting the scale and schedule of any force generationrequired in the event of a national security emergency,and stipulating protocols for notifying the other signatorieswhenever such generation is undertaken.A multinational de-alerting agreement regulating the nuclearforce postures could greatly mitigate the myriad risks ofnuclear weapons use that currently exist and, as importantly,14