Russian nuclear weapons are not, however, the Nuclear Posture Review's main focus. Instead, it makes an elaborate case for a massive expansion and "modernization" of what's already the world's second largest nuclear arsenal (6,800 warheads versus 7,000 for Russia) so that an American commander-in-chief has a "diverse set of nuclear capabilities that provide" flexibility to tailor the approach to deterring one or more potential adversaries in different circumstances."
The NPR insists that future presidents must have advanced "low-yield" or "useable" nuclear weapons to wield for limited, selective strikes. The stated goal: to convince adversaries of the foolishness of threatening or, for that matter, launching their own limited strikes against the American nuclear arsenal in hopes of extracting "concessions" from us. This is where Strangelovian logic and nuclear absurdity take over. What state in its right mind would launch such an attack, leaving the bulk of the U.S. strategic nuclear force, some 1,550 deployed warheads, intact? On that, the NPR offers no enlightenment.
You don't have to be an acolyte of the Prussian military theorist Carl von Clausewitz or have heard about his concept of "friction" to know that even the best-laid plans in wartime are regularly shredded. Concepts like limited nuclear war and nuclear blackmail may be fun to kick around in war-college seminars. Trying them out in the real world, though, could produce disaster. This ought to be self-evident, but to the authors of the NPR it's not. They portray Russia and China as wild-eyed gamblers with an unbounded affinity for risk-taking.
The document gets even loopier. It seeks to provide the commander-in-chief with nuclear options for repelling non-nuclear attacks against the United States, or even its allies. Presidents, insists the document, require "a range of flexible nuclear capabilities," so that adversaries will never doubt that "we will defeat non-nuclear attacks." Here's the problem, though: were Washington to cross that nuclear Rubicon and launch a "limited" strike during a conventional war, it would enter a true terra incognita. The United States did, of course, drop two nuclear bombs on Japanese cities in August 1945, but that country lacked the means to respond in kind.
However, Russia and China, the principal adversaries the NPR has in mind (though North Korea gets mentioned as well), do have just those means at hand to strike back. So when it comes to using nuclear weapons selectively, its authors quickly find themselves splashing about in a sea of bizarre speculation. They blithely assume that other countries will behave precisely as American military strategists (or an American president) might ideally expect them to and so will interpret the nuclear "message" of a limited strike (and its thousands of casualties) exactly as intended. Even with the aid of game theory, war games, and scenario building -- tools beloved by war planners -- there's no way to know where the road marked "nuclear flexibility" actually leads. We've never been on it before. There isn't a map. All that exists are untested assumptions that already look shaky.
Yet More Nuclear Options
These aren't the only dangerous ideas that lie beneath the NPR's flexibility trope. Presidents must also, it turns out, have the leeway to reach into the nuclear arsenal if terrorists detonate a nuclear device on American soil or if conclusive proof exists that another state provided such weaponry (or materials) to the perpetrator or even "enabled" such a group to "obtain nuclear devices." The NPR also envisions the use of selective nuclear strikes to punish massive cyberattacks on the United States or its allies. To maximize the flexibility needed for initiating selective nuclear salvos in such circumstances, the document recommends that the U.S. "maintain a portion of its nuclear forces alert day-to-day, and retain the option of launching those forces promptly." Put all this together and you're looking at a future in which nuclear weapons could be used in stress-induced haste and based on erroneous intelligence and misperception.
So while the NPR's prose may be sleep inducing, you're unlikely to nod off once you realize that the Trump-era Pentagon -- no matter the NPR's protests to the contrary -- seeks to lower the nuclear threshold. "Selective," "limited," "low yield": these phrases may sound reassuring, but no one should be misled by the antiseptic terminology and soothing caveats. Even "tactical" nuclear weapons are anything but tactical in any normal sense. The bombs dropped on Hiroshima and Nagasaki might, in terms of explosive power, qualify as "tactical" by today's standards, but would be similarly devastating if used in an urban area. (We cannot know just how horrific the results would be, but the online tool NUKEMAP calculates that if a 20-kiloton nuclear bomb, comparable to Fat Man, the code name for the bomb dropped on Nagasaki, were used on the Upper West Side of Manhattan, where I live, more than 80,000 people would be killed in short order.) Not to worry, the NPR's authors say, their proposals are not meant to encourage "nuclear war fighting" and won't have that effect. On the contrary, increasing presidents' options for using nuclear weapons will only preserve peace.
The Obama-era predecessor to Trump's Nuclear Posture Review contained an entire section entitled "Reducing the Role of U.S. Nuclear Weapons." It outlined "a narrow set of contingencies in which such weaponry might still play a role in deterring a conventional or CBW [chemical or biological weapons] attack against the United States or its allies and partners." So long to that.
The Shopping List -- and the Tab
Behind the new policies to make nuclear weapons more "useable" lurks a familiar urge to spend taxpayer dollars profligately. The Nuclear Posture Review's version of a spending spree, meant to cover the next three decades and expected, in the end, to cost close to two trillion dollars, covers the works: the full nuclear "triad" -- land-based ballistic missiles, submarine-launched ones, and nuclear-armed strategic bombers. Also included are the nuclear command, control, and communication network (NC3) and the plutonium, uranium, and tritium production facilities overseen by the National Nuclear Security Administration.
The upgrade will run the gamut. The 14 Ohio-class nuclear submarines, the sea-based segment of the triad, are to be replaced by a minimum of 12 advanced Columbia-class boats. The 400 Minuteman III single-warhead, land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, or ICBMs, will be retired in favor of the "next-generation" Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent, which, its champions insist, will provide improved propulsion and accuracy -- and, needless to say, more "flexibility" and "options." The current fleet of strategic nuclear bombers, including the workhorse B-52H and the newer B-2A, will be joined and eventually succeeded by the "next-generation" B-21 Raider, a long-range stealth bomber. The B-52's air-launched cruise missile will be replaced with a new Long Range Stand-Off version of the same. A new B61-12 gravity bomb will take the place of current models by 2020. Nuclear-capable F-35 stealth fighter-bombers will be "forward deployed," supplanting the F-15E. Two new "low-yield" nuclear weapons, a submarine-launched ballistic missile, and a sea-launched cruise missile will also be added to the arsenal.
Think of it, in baseball terms, as an attempted grand slam.
The NPR's case for three decades of such expenditures rests on the claim that the "flexible and tailored" choices it deems non-negotiable don't presently exist, though the document itself concedes that they do. I'll let its authors speak for themselves: "The triad and non-strategic forces, with supporting NC3, provide diversity and flexibility as needed to tailor U.S. strategies for deterrence, assurance, achieving objectives should deterrence fail, and hedging." For good measure, the NPR then touts the lethality, range, and invulnerability of the existing stock of missiles and bombers. Buried in the review, then, appears to be an admission that the colossally expensive nuclear modernization program it deems so urgent isn't necessary.
The NPR takes great pains to demonstrate that all of the proposed new weaponry, referred to as "the replacement program to rebuild the triad," will cost relatively little. Let's consider this claim in wider perspective.
To obtain Senate ratification of the New Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty he signed with Russia in 2010, the Nobel Prize-winning antinuclear advocate Barack Obama agreed to pour $1 trillion over three decades into the "modernization" of the nuclear triad, and that pledge shaped his 2017 defense budget request. In other words, President Obama left President Trump a costly nuclear legacy, which the latest Nuclear Posture Review fleshes out and expands. There's no indication that the slightest energy went into figuring out ways to economize on it. A November 2017 Congressional Budget Office report projects that President Trump's nuclear modernization plan will cost $1.2 trillion over three decades, while other estimates put the full price at $1.7 trillion.
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