Abolishing the U.S. Nuclear War Plan

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Abolishing the U.S. Nuclear War Plan
Presentation by Robert S. Norris and the NRDC
Nuclear Program Carnegie International
Non-Proliferation Conference Washington DC June
18-19, 2001
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Deterrence

• Historically deterrence has been a highly elastic
  concept.
• Nuclear weapons have been assigned the role of
  deterring a wide variety of potential threats.
• Recent doctrinal assertions claim that U.S.
  readiness to preempt or retaliate with nuclear
  weapons deter, nuclear, chemical and biological
  attacks.

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Recent apologia I

• The current post-Cold war period is one of great
  political and military dynamism.
• Nuclear weapons deter WMD use by regional powers.
• New or modified types may be needed to target
  underground bunkers or perform other missions.
• Source National Institute for Public Policy,
  Rationale and Requirements for U.S. Nuclear
  Forces and Arms Control (January 2001)

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Recent apologia II

• I recently began to worry that . . . far too
  many people were beginning to believe that
  perhaps nuclear weapons no longer had value.
• Central Deterrence Russia (Capability One)
• Deter wider threats (Capability Two)
• Source Paul Robinson, SNL White Paper, Pursuing
  a New Nuclear Weapons Policy for the 21st Century
  (April 2001)

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Targets and War Planning

• The act of targeting a nation-state or a group
  with nuclear weapons defines it as an enemy.
• This first step sets in motion activities to
  locate targets, assign weapons to destroy them,
  and calculate damage expectancies.
• The result is a permanent, in-place operational
  plan (e.g. SIOP) with extensive forces and
  demanding requirements.

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Estimated Targets in the SIOP

• 2,260 targets in Russia
• 1,100 Nuclear weapons facilities
• 500 Conventional military
• 500 War Supporting Industry
• 160 Leadership and command and control
• China, Iran, Iraq, North Korea - 100s of targets.

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Targeting Requirements Drive Nuclear Forces

• U.S. Strategic Nuclear Forces on Alert
• Day-to-Day 2,600 warheads
• Generated 3,600 warheads
• All available 6,200 warheads
• Total forces (7,200 warheads)
• ICBMs (2,000)
• SLBMs (3,450)
• Bombers (1,750)
• As of June 2001

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PD-59 and NSDD-13 Endure

• Phoenix Study (1991)
• STRATCOM Briefing to Cheney, Powell (1992)
• Sun City (1993)
• Sun City Extended (1994)
• STRATCOM White Paper (1996)
• STRATCOM Warfighter Assessment (1996)
• Source Hans M. Kristensen, The Matrix of
  Deterrence U.S. Strategic Command Force
  Structure Studies (May 2001), The Nautilus
  Institute

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Dominance of the SIOP

• If we were to come down below START III levels
  it would require us to change our strategic plan.
• President Bill Clinton, June 4, 2000
• Our overall nuclear employment policy states
  that the United States forces must be capable of
  and be seen to be capable of holding at risk
  those critical assets and capabilities that a
  potential adversary most values.
• Walter Slocombe, Department of Defense, May 23,
  2000
• Our force structure needs to be robust, flexible
  and credible enough to meet the worst threats we
  can reasonably postulate. Our nation must always
  maintain the ability to convince potential
  aggressors to choose peace rather than war,
  restraint rather than escalation, and termination
  rather than conflict continuation.
• Adm. Richard Mies, US Strategic Command, May 23,
  2000

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The Need for Change

• Current START III proposals for smaller forces
  (between 2,500 and 1,500 warheads) that remain
  grounded in the basic SIOP assumptions are not
  fruitful avenues to pursue.
• The needs of the war plan now dictate the
  possibilities and limitations of arms control and
  force reductions.
• Force requirements must be decoupled from the
  current plans.
• For real change something more fundamental must
  occur.

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Todays Russia is not our enemy

• Clarify the U.S. relationship with Russia and
  reconcile declaratory and employment policy.
• A permanent, in-place war plan is a recipe for
  unceasing arms requirements.

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A Paradigm Shift is Needed

• The U.S. should abolish the SIOP as it is
  currently understood, implemented and practiced.
• Restrict the roles and missions assigned to
  nuclear weapons. The sole reason for U.S.
  possession of nuclear weapons is to deter the use
  of nuclear weapons by another state.
• Reduce the geo-political value of nuclear
  weapons, by word and action.

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Replace the SIOP with a Contingency Model

• The U.S. should not target nuclear weapons
  against any nuclear weapon state in peacetime.
• The current SIOP process should be replaced with
  a contingency war planning capability.
• A new paradigm will alleviate the need for large
  numbers of weapons.
• A new paradigm will defuse the negative political
  and psychological implications that go with
  targeting.

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Openness and Honesty

• Abandon much of the secrecy that surrounds the
  SIOP.
• Demand explanations of the reasoning behind the
  war plan and be told would happen if it were
  executed.
• The nuclear war planning function carried out in
  Omaha should be brought to Washington to be done
  by a joint civilian-military staff with
  Congressional involvement.

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Unilateral Deep Cuts

• Unilaterally reduce U.S. nuclear forces and
  challenge the Russians to do the same.
• Deep cuts on the road to the cessation of the
  nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear
  disarmament (to quote the U.S. NPT obligation)
  can only occur with revised presidential
  guidance.

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Dont Make Things Worse

• Reject the integration of national missile
  defense with offensive nuclear deterrent forces.
• MAD (mutual assured destruction) is neither a
  policy choice nor a doctrine. It is rather a
  condition, a situation that two nations find
  themselves in when they have nuclear weapons
  aimed at one another.
• Nuclear vulnerability cannot be overcome through
  missile defense sufficiently to alter the
  fundamental calculus of nuclear deterrence. The
  only effective way to alter MAD is to stop
  targeting one another.

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False Promises

• Any plan by the Bush administration for lower
  numbers of strategic warheads that does not
  abandon counterforce as the ruling assumptionthe
  core strategy of the war planis flawed and
  dangerous.
• Such proposals merely perpetuate Cold War
  practices at lower levels and are not a clear
  and clean break.
• Plans to abrogate the ABM Treaty and deploy
  national missile defense systems only makes
  matters worse.

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A clear and clean break

• Something more fundamental must occur in order
  to create real change. As we have seen through
  our nuclear war simulation model, the place to
  begin is with dismantling the SIOP war planning
  process and apparatus, and the assumptions upon
  which it is built.