global_zero_commission_on_nuclear_risk_reduction_report

GLOBAL ZERO COMMISSION ON NUCLEAR RISK REDUCTION REPORTDE-ALERTING AND STABILIZING THE WORLD’S NUCLEAR FORCE POSTURESThese estimates may be optimistic; actual re-alertingrates may be twice as long. The underlying assumptionof the chart is that the re-alerting process takes placeduring a national security emergency that warrantsaround-the-clock effort to bring the forces back online.However, various factors may moderate the pace of reconstitution.First, it is important to remember the initial conditionsat the start of re-alerting. Nearly 700 strategic weaponson each side are already on high alert, while morethan more than two-thirds of their arsenals in additionto the 170 de-alerted weapons were already off of alertin peacetime. The urgency of re-alerting the additional170 warheads, and the priority of their re-alerting overgenerating the other off-alert forces, can both be questioned.Deterrence is already robustly provided for (seediscussion below under “stability”). On the other hand,a national security emergency could well motivate bothsides to re-alert all of their off-alert forces, in which casethe line-up in the re-alerting queue may be quite differentfrom the line-up for just the 170 weapons. New bottlenecksand backlogs may also form.Second, the purpose of re-alerting in a national emergencyis less to build up nuclear strength in preparationfor war than it is to send a signal to the opponent thatan escalatory updraft has commenced and the time forbargaining and concessions, tacit or overt, has arrived.During the Arab-Israeli (Yom Kippur) war in 1973, theUnited States raised the alert level of its strategic nuclearforces for precisely this purpose – to pressure the Sovietsto refrain from military intervention on Egypt’s side, asthey had threatened to do. The U.S. alert lasted for littlemore than 24 hours and generated more light than heat.U.S. leaders were reluctant to incur monetary costs togenerate forces any further, and the signaling (abettedby front page headlines) had accomplished its purpose.The timelines for re-alerting a more deeply de-alertedforce in future were not calculated. For some components,such as the silo-based strategic forces, re-alertingactivities could be undertaken simultaneously at severalbases, and thus the timelines should remain fairly constant.In other words, if it is possible to re-alert an SS-19regiment by restoring its flight batteries in 4 days, it maybe possible to replicate the activity at the same time inthe other five regiments within the division, and at otherdivisions, other things being equal. But of course thingsare never equal. There are bound to be some shortagesof trained people and equipment and therefore queuingmay be necessary, extending the re-alerting times.If two Trident submarines instead of just one had beende-alerted, the re-alerting time for the pair would beidentical if they were home based at different ports.Re-alerting could proceed in parallel on each coast. Butif additional subs were de-alerted, a queuing issue wouldarise. There is usually only one explosive handling pier ateach submarine base in Russia and the United States, andso de-alerted strategic submarines needing to be uploadedin port with missiles and/or warheads from centralstorage would have to wait turns. Thus, if the entire fleetof U.S. strategic submarines had been de-alerted and hadto wait in line to receive their nuclear arms, the re-alertingtimeline would increase by multiples of the threedays required for re-loading a single Trident submarine.Calculating these timelines for deeply de-alerted arsenalsis beyond the scope of this report and will requirefurther in-depth analysis.B. IMPACT ON STRATEGIC STABILITYThis menu of de-alerting options could bolster strategicstability by providing the means of reducing, and ultimatelyremoving (at a later stage of the de-alerting schedule)the capacity of either U.S. or Russian strategic forcesto initiate a bolt-from-the-blue surprise attack, and of ensuringthat significant re-alerting could not escape detectionnor confer advantage in a re-alerting contest. However,survivable forces and command systems are bothnecessary and sufficient to ensure stability in peacetimeand crisis circumstances.A serious U.S. de-alerting initiative would establish thenation’s clear intention not to pose a first-strike threat toRussia while preserving ample capacity to satisfy reason-59