1AC

Contention 1 – Conventional prompt global strike

1. CPGS (Conventional prompt global strike) development

inevitable and coming now.
Menon, PhD, 10-1
(Rajan, IllinoisUrbana, ProfPoliSci@CUNY, 19, https://www.thenation.com/article/hypersonic-weapons-arms-race/)

Today, the Army, Navy, and Air Force are moving ahead with major hypersonic weapons
programs. For instance, the Air Force test-launched its ARRW from a B-52 bomber as part of its
Hypersonic Conventional Strike Weapon (HCSW) this June; the Navy tested an HGV in 2017
to further its Conventional Prompt Strike (CPS) initiative; and the Army tested its own
version of such a weapon in 2011 and 2014 to move its Advanced Hypersonic Weapon
(AHW) program forward. The depth of the Pentagon’s commitment to hypersonic
weapons became evident in 2018 when it decided to combine the Navy’s CPS, the Air Force’s
HCSW, and the Army’s AHW to advance the Conventional Prompt Global Strike Program
(CPGS), which seeks to build the capability to hit targets worldwide in under 60 minutes.
That’s not all. The Center for Public Integrity’s R. Jeffrey Smith reports that Congress passed a bill last year
requiring the United States to have operational hypersonic weapons by late 2022.
President’s Trump’s 2020 Pentagon budget request included $2.6 billion to support their
development. Smith expects the annual investment to reach $5 billion by the mid-2020s .

2. But those will serve as a ‘niche’ capability.

CRS 19
(Congressional Research Service, 6-14, https://fas.org/sgp/crs/nuke/R41464.pdf)

As a result, most of the supporters of the prompt strike mission came to view these
weapons as a “niche” capability that would expand U.S. conventional options and reduce the likelihood
that the President might need to use a nuclear weapon in the absence of a conventional alternative. With this
rationale, the United States might only need a very small number of these weapons, for
use against critical, high-value targets or as the “leading edge” of a broader military campaign. Moreover,
the United States could plan for their use independent of its nuclear deterrent. The programs’ advocates noted that, in the
absence of such a capability, in a circumstance when the United States believed it needed to strike promptly at long ranges
at the beginning of a conflict, the President might have no choice other than to use a missile armed with a nuclear
warhead. The CPGS capability would provide that choice. In the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review, the Obama Administration
extended this logic to regional deterrence and the assurance of U.S. allies. If the United States had a wider range of
credible conventional weapons that it could turn to when defending its allies and forces overseas, there could be fewer
circumstances in which the United States might feel compelled to resort to nuclear weapons for regional deterrence. This
would not only reduce the role of nuclear weapons in regional deterrence, it might also increase the credibility of the U.S.
deterrent.

3. Squo CPGS is unusable and causes nuclear war due to

warhead ambiguity.
Oguz, PhD, 17
(Şafak, 11-15, https://dergipark.org.tr/en/download/article-file/391828)

Potential misunderstanding
and miscalculation by other nuclear states has been one of the
most crucial arguments against the effectiveness of the project. Many analysts argue that the launch
of the CPGS would be detected by states that have satellite detection capabilities such as
Russia and China, and those states could not be certain if the missile had nuclear
or conventional warheads (termed “warhead ambiguity” or “payload ambiguity,” or if these countries
themselves were targeted by the missile. It is undeniable that “ nuclear- only missiles capable of delivering
conventional warheads are fraught with the prospect of serious unintended
consequences.”46 The risk of CPGS ambiguity triggering a Russian nuclear strike
was central to Congressional opposition in the 2008 Budget.47 Cooperation and confidence
building measures with Russia and China, such as establishing a political consultation mechanism, data
exchange, prior notification before launch, a hotline communication system, and on- site inspections, are methods to
mitigate possible risks. But many scholars argue that these measures will not be enough to mitigate
the risk. Russian officials, meanwhile, have warned that CPGS might trigger nuclear retaliation. Russian Foreign
Minister, Sergei Lavrov, for example, has argued that the development of “conventionally armed long-range missile
systems will lead to a significant decrease in the ‘threshold’ for strategic missiles use.”48

4. U.S. global primacy is key to stop every existential risk –

reject old defense that doesn’t assume new threats, tech, and
tactics.
Edelman, PhD, and Roughead et al. 18
(Co-chairs: Eric, USDiplomaticHistory@Yale, FormerUSAmbassador, Gary, FormerUSAdmiral/ChiefOFNavalOperations
Fellow@Hoover, Authors: Christine Fox, FormerDeuptySecrataryOfDefense, Kathleen Hicks, PhD PoliSci@MIT,
DirectorInternationalSecurity@CSIS, Jack Keane, Retired-4StarGeneral, FormerViceCheifOfStaff-Army, HonPhD
PublicService@EasternKentucky, Andrew Krepinevich, PhD Harvard,
President@CenterForStrategicAndBidgetaryAssesments, RetiredArmyLt.Col., Jon Kyl, FormerArizonaSenator,
JD@UArizona, Thomas Mahnken, PhD InternationalAffairs@JohnsHopkins, ProfStrategicStudies@JohnsHopkins, MA
PublicPolicy@Penn, FormerDOD-UndersecrataryOfDefense+CFO, Michael Morell, FormerDirectorOfTheCIA, MA
Econ@Gtown, Anne Patterson, FormerUSAmbassador, FormerAssistSecrataryOfState-NearEasternAffairs, Roger
Zakheim, MPhil IR@Cambridge, FormerDepAssistSecrataryOfDefense, FormerDeputyStaffDirector-
USHouseArmedServicesCommitee, Providing for the Common Defense: The Assessment and Recommendations of the
National Defense Strategy Commission, United States Institute of Peace)

Our specific findings are outlined in the text. But at the outset, we wish to underscore the central theme of this report:
There is a need for extraordinary urgency in addressing the crisis of
national defense. We believe that the NDS is a broadly constructive document that identifies most of the right
objectives and challenges. Yet we are deeply concerned that the Department of Defense and the nation as a whole have not
yet addressed crucial issues such as force sizing, developing innovative op- erational concepts, readiness, and resources
with the degree of urgency, persistence, and analytic depth that an increasingly dangerous world demands. Put bluntly,
the American people and their elected representatives must understand that U.S.
military superiority is not
guaranteed, that many global trends are adverse and threatening, and that the
nation has reached a pivotal moment regarding its ability to defend its vital interests
and preserve a world in which the United States and other like-minded nations can thrive.
The choices we make today and in the immediate future will have profound and potentially
lasting consequences for American security and influence. If we do not square
up to the challenge now, we will surely regret it.1 Chapter 1 The Purpose of American Military Power and
the Crisis of National Defense Any defense strategy must protect the fundamental interests of the United States. Since the
inception of the Republic, America’s
most vital interests have remained constant. They include the
physical security of the United States and its citizens; the promotion of a strong , innovative, and
growing U.S. economy; and the protection of the nation’s democratic freedoms and domestic
institutions. These interests were enshrined in the Declaration of Independence as “life, liberty, and the pursuit of
happiness,” and collectively, they represent the pole star toward which any American strategy must be oriented. Since the
mid-20th century, there has been a bipartisan consensus that America
should take an international
leadership role to secure these interests. The events of the 1930s and 1940s showed that
the United States could not remain prosperous in a world ravaged by global depression, nor
could it remain safe in a world convulsed by instability and war. Moreover, these events illustrated to Americans
the danger that their own free institutions might not survive in a world ruled by hostile autocracies. As a result, Americans
and their elected leaders concluded that the
United States must use its unmatched power to foster a
larger global environment in which America could thrive. This endeavor has often been referred to as
building the “liberal international order,” but it simply reflects the common-sense idea that America will be
most secure, prosperous, and free in a world that is itself secure, prosperous, and free. This straightforward judgment has
America has
underpinned the sustained global leadership the United States has exercised since the 1940s.
anchored an open global economy in which trade and investment flow freely and Americans
can see their creative energies rewarded. It has built international institutions that facilitate problem-
solving and cooperation on important global issues. It has defended democratic values
and human rights abroad in order to enhance U.S. influence and safeguard democratic
values and human rights at home. It has sought to uphold favorable balances of power in
key regions and concluded military alliances and security partnerships with dozens of
like-minded countries— not as a matter of charity, but as a way of deterring aggression and
preventing conflicts that could pose a serious threat to U.S. national security and prosperity.
These have not been Republican policies or Democratic policies; they have been American policies, meant to create a
world conducive to American interests and values. The role of alliances and partnerships deserves special emphasis here.
U.S. alliances and partnerships are sometimes mischaracterized as arrangements that
squander American resources on behalf of free-riding foreign countries. In reality, U.S.
alliances and partnerships have been deeply rooted in American self-interest. They have
served as force-multipliers for U.S. influence, by promoting institutionalized cooperation
between America and like-minded nations. They have allowed America to call on the aid of its
friends in every major conflict it has waged since World War II. They have buttressed the concept
of international order that the United States seeks to preserve, by enlisting other nations in the promotion of a world
favorable to American interests. They have provided intelligence support, regional expertise, and
other critical assistance. In short, alliances and partnerships rooted in shared interests and
mutual respect have reduced the price America pays for global leadership and enhanced
the advantages America enjoys over any geopolitical rival. And although these alliances and
partnerships—like all of America’s postwar policies— have required the persistent use of diplomacy ,
economic power, and other tools of statecraft, they have ultimately rested on a foundation of
military strength. Since World War II, America has had a military second to none.
After the Cold War, it possessed military power far greater than that of any rival or group of rivals. This position of
unmatched strength has provided for the defense and security of the United States, American
citizens overseas, and American allies and partners. It has been crucial to deterring and, if
necessary, defeating aggression by hostile powers, whether the Soviet Union and its
allies during the Cold War or al-Qaeda and Islamic State in Iraq and al-Sham (ISIS) more recently. It has
preserved stability in key regions from Europe to East Asia and beyond, and ensured the
freedom of the global commons on which U.S. and international prosperity depends. It has prevented America
from being coerced or intimidated, or once again finding itself the situation of the early
1940s, when democracy itself was endangered because aggressive authoritarian
powers were on the verge of dominating the globe. It has given the United States
unrivaled influence on a wide range of global issues. America’s leadership role has never been
inexpensive or easy to play, and today many Americans are questioning whether it is worth the cost. But by any
reasonable standard, U.S. global engagement has been a great investment. U.S. leadership has
prevented a recurrence of the devastating world wars that marked the first half
of the 20th century and required repeated U.S. interventions at a cost of hundreds of thousands of
American lives. That leadership has also fostered an unprecedented growth in human
freedom, with the number of democracies rising from roughly a dozen during World
War II to 120 in the early 21st century. And as democracies displaced dictatorships,
America itself became more secure and influential. The growth of prosperity has been even more
astounding. According to World Bank data, inflation-adjusted U.S. gross domestic product has increased nearly
six-fold since 1960. Both U.S. and global per capita income have also increased roughly three-fold (also in
inflation-adjusted terms) over the same period. To be clear, the evolution of the economy in recent decades has left too
both
many of our citizens behind, and it is essential that all benefit from our national prosperity. On the whole, however,
the United States and the world are far richer than they would have been absent the open
international economy America has fostered. Here, too, American policy has been
successful in what it has avoided as well as what it has achieved: the world has not suffered another global
depression that would cause rampant poverty, political radicalism, and international
aggression, and that would surely lead to catastrophic effects for the United States. Decades of experience
have taught that American leadership is not a fool’s errand or a matter of
altruism, but a pragmatic approach to advancing American security and
wellbeing. There is little reason to think the situation has changed today . The
fundamental lesson of the 1930s and 1940s—that no country is an island— remains as relevant as
ever. If anything, as the world becomes increasingly interdependent, the security and
prosperity of the United States are becoming ever more closely linked to the health of the
larger international environment. And although the United States has many powerful allies,
none of them can fill the singular role America has played in providing the
international peace, stability, and prosperity in which the United States itself has flourished.
U.S. leadership of a stable and open international environment remains as profoundly in
the country’s own national interests as it was more than seven decades ago. Unfortunately, in recent years
changes at home and abroad have eroded American military advantages and threatening U.S. interests. The Changing
Strategic Environment After the Cold War, the United States faced a relatively benign security environment. There
remained dangerous challenges to U.S. interests and—as shown by the terrorist attacks of September 11, 2001—the
American homeland. Yet tensions between the world’s major powers were historically low, and the actors that threatened
the United States, from so-called rogue states to jihadist terror organizations, were compar- atively weak. Today,
however, the international landscape is more ominous. The United States confronts
the most challenging security environment in decades. Six trends are particularly worthy
of note. First, and most important, is the rise of major-power competition and conflict. The
world America shaped has brought great security and prosperity to many countries. Yet today, powerful
authoritarian rivals— China and Russia—see U.S. leadership as a barrier to their
ambitions. These countries seek to overturn existing regional balances of power and re-
create spheres of influence in which they can dominate their neighbors’ economic, diplomatic, and
security choices. They are also seeking to project power and exert influence beyond their
peripheries. They are pursuing their agendas, moreover, through the use of coercion,
intimidation, and in some cases outright aggression, all backed by major military
buildups that specifically target U.S. military advantages and alliance
commitments and relationships. The challenge China presents is particularly daunting. It is natural for China to
exert greater influence as its power grows, and the rise of China would present challenges for America and the world even
if Beijing pursued its interests through entirely legitimate means. Unfortunately, China
is increasingly exerting
influence in illegitimate and destabilizing ways. China is using military, paramilitary,
and diplomatic measures to coerce U.S. allies and partners from Japan to India ; contest
international law and freedom of navigation in crucial waterways such as the South China Sea;
undermine the U.S. position in East and Southeast Asia; and other- wise seek a position
of geopolitical dominance. It is using predatory economic statecraft to weaken its rivals ,
including the United States, and give it decisive strategic leverage over its neighbors. Meanwhile, China is reaping
the fruits of a multi-decade military buildup. Beijing has invested in systems designed to counter
American power-projection and thereby prevent the United States from protecting its allies,
partners, and
economic interests. China is also modernizing its nuclear forces, developing
sophisticated power-projection capabilities, and undertaking the most thoroughgoing military reforms
since the founding of the People’s Republic. China already presents a severe test of U.S. interests in the Indo-Pacific and
beyond and is on a path to become, by mid-century, a military challenger the likes of which America has not encountered
since the Cold War-era Soviet Union. Russia, too, is pursuing regional hegemony and global
influence in destabilizing ways. Moscow has invaded and dismembered neighboring
states, used cyberwarfare and other tactics to attack democratic nations’ political systems, and employed
measures from military intimidation to information warfare to undermine and weaken
NATO and the European Union. Russia has intervened militarily in Syria to bolster Bashar al-Assad’s
brutal regime and restore lost influence in the Middle East, while supporting many other authoritarian
governments. Across these in- itiatives, the Putin regime has demonstrated a propensity for risk-
taking backed up by enhanced military power. Moscow has developed ad- vanced conventional
capabilities meant to prevent America from project- ing power and aiding its allies along Russia’s periphery and to project
its own power farther afield. Russia is also conducting a comprehensive nuclear
modernization, including sustainment and modernization of a large number of non-strategic nuclear weapons
and the development of a ground-launched cruise missile that violates the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces
Treaty. These developments are accompanied by Russian doctrinal writings that emphasize
the prospect of using limited nuclear escalation to control the trajectory of a
potential conflict against the United States and NATO. Russia is seeking to create situations of
military strength vis-à-vis America and its allies, and despite its limited resource base, it is having
considerable success. Second, aggressive regional challengers —notably North Korea and
Iran—are expanding their military capabilities consistent with their geopolitical
ambitions. The United States and its allies have faced threats from a brutal, erratic, and aggressive North Korea for
decades, but never before has Pyongyang possessed such destructive power. North Korea may already have the
capability to detonate a nuclear weapon over a major American city; the regime
also continues to develop biological, chemical, and conventional capabilities as a way of
guaranteeing its sur- vival and coercing adversaries. Today, Kim Jong Un’s military can threaten America
more directly than his father or grandfather. He can also exert great pressure on U.S. alliances with
South Korea and Japan, sowing doubt about whether America would defend those allies in a cri- sis. This
Commission hopes that ongoing negotiations will lead to the complete, verifiable, and irreversible denuclearization of
North Korea, but the history of U.S.-North Korean negotiations give little cause for optimism. Even successful
negotiations would leave America facing sig- nificant security challenges on the Korean Peninsula and in East Asia, most
The threat from
significantly the robust ballistic missile threat posed to our allies, Japan and the Republic of Korea.
Iran, another longtime U.S. adversary and the world’s foremost state sponsor of terrorism, has also worsened.
Iran has skillfully utilized asymmetric tactics including terrorism, the weaponization of
sectarianism, support for insurgent groups, and a reliance on proxy and special operations
forces to weaken U.S. influence and pursue hegemony in the Middle East. Iranian
military capabilities are growing in areas such as unmanned aerial vehicles and explosive boats, advanced
naval mines and submarines, more sophisticated cyber forces, and anti-ship and land- attack cruise missiles. Iran is also
expanding what is already the largest ballistic missile force in the region . In a conflict with the
United States, Iran could use these capabilities to obstruct freedom of navigation in regional
waterways, target U.S. military facilities and critical infrastructure in the Persian Gulf, and
otherwise inflict substantial costs on America and its partners. The challenges of
major power conflict and aggressive regional challengers are linked by a third , which is the
growing prevalence of aggression and conflict in the gray zone—the space between
war and peace. The means of gray-zone conflict include everything from strong-arm diplomacy and
economic coercion, to media manipulation and cyber- attacks, to use of paramilitaries and proxy
forces. Singly or in combination, such tactics confound or gradually weaken an adversary’s
positions or resolve without provoking a military response. Gray-zone conflict is often shrouded in
 coercive
deception or misinformation, making attribution diffi-ult and discouraging a strong response. Although
challenges of this sort are not new, they have become the tool of choice for those who do not
wish to confront U.S. military power directly. China’s island-building and maritime
coercion in the South China Sea, Iran’s sponsorship of Hezbollah and other militias as tools of influence
and subversion in the Middle East, Russia’s use of unacknowledged military and proxy forces in
Ukraine, and Moscow’s information warfare campaigns meant to inflame social tensions and in- fluence
political processes in the United States and Europe all represent examples of gray-zone aggression today. Because gray-
zone challenges combine military and paramilitary measures with economic statecraft, political warfare, information
operations, and other tools, they often occur in the “seams” between DOD and other U.S. departments and agencies,
making them all the more difficult to address. Fourth, the
threat from radical jihadist groups has
evolved and intensified. Groups such as ISIS, al-Qaeda, and their affiliates pose ongoing
threats to the United States and its allies and partners, from Western Africa to the Philippines. That threat is
not new, but it is expanding. There are more jihadists in more countries today than at
any time since the birth of the modern jihadist movement in 1979, and there are more groups capable of
mounting major attacks. The most sophisticated groups have developed state-like military
capabilities, conquered (how- ever briefly) large swaths of territory, shown continued interest
in acquiring weapons of mass destruction , and commanded or inspired deadly
attacks around the globe. Assisted by poor governance, sectarian con- flict, and regional instability, these
groups—or their successors—will threaten U.S. and international security for generations to
come. Fifth, and compounding these challenges, the proliferation of advanced technology is
eroding U.S. advantages and creating new vulnerabilities . The spread of weapons of
mass destruction, ballistic and cruise missiles, precision-strike assets, advanced air defenses,
antisatellite and cyberwarfare capabilities, and unmanned systems has given weaker
actors the ability to threaten America and its allies in more dangerous ways. In some cases, we are behind,
or falling behind, in critical technologies . U.S. competitors are making enormous investments in hypersonic
delivery vehicles, artificial intelligence (AI), and other advanced technol- ogies. With respect to hypersonics in particular,
America
the United States finds itself trailing China and perhaps Russia as well. All this raises the possi- bility that
may find itself at a technological disadvantage in future conflicts . Because the American way of
war has long relied on technological supremacy, this could have profoundly negative implica- tions for U.S. military
effectiveness. The
United States thus confronts more numerous—and more severe— threats
than at any time in decades. America must address the threats posed by major-power
rivals, dangerous regional challengers, and terrorists simultaneously; it must
deal with geopolitical conflict, gray-zone aggression, and instability from one
end of Eurasia to the other. It must also prepare for the prospect that the U.S. military might be called into
action in a country, region, or contingency that is not currently envisioned. The dangers posed by these and other
troubling trends have been compounded by a final problem, of America’s own making: budgetary insta- bility and
disinvestment in defense. Because of decisions made by both major parties—especially the enactment of the Budget
Control Act (BCA) of 2011—constant-dollar defense spending (in estimated 2018 dollars) fell from $794 billion in Fiscal
Year (FY) 2010 to $586 billion in FY2015, according to U.S. government statistics. In percentage terms, this constituted
the fastest drawdown since the years following the Korean War. Excluding overseas contingency operations accounts—
funding for wars in Iraq and Afghanistan—the inflation-adjusted decline was from $612 billion to $541 billion. This
defense austerity was exacer- bated by political gridlock, which forced the Pentagon to operate on short-term continuing
resolutions, and which triggered the crippling, across-the-board cuts associated with the sequester mechanism in 2013.
The effects of these resource challenges have been devastating. By 2017, all of the military services were at or near post-
World War II lows in terms of end-strength, and all were confronting severe readiness crises and enormous deferred
modernization costs (see Figure 1). A series of temporary budget increases provided for by the Bipartisan Budget Acts of
2013, 2015, and 2018 provided welcome but insufficient relief. As the world has become more threatening, America has
these trends
weakened its own defense. The Crisis of American Military Power and Its Consequences Collectively,
add up to a perilous situation. In 2010, the Quadrennial Defense Review Independent Panel warned
of a coming “train wreck” if America did not retain adequate military
capabilities in an increasingly competitive world. In 2014, the National Defense Panel warned that
the U.S. military had become “inadequate given the future strategic and operational environment.” In 2018, this
Commission believes that America has reached the point of a full-blown national security crisis .
The U.S. military remains the strongest in the world, but the number and geographic
diversity of security challenges, the technical so- phistication of U.S. rivals and adversaries, and other
factors mean that America’s military capabilities are insufficient to address the growing dangers
the country faces. America is courting unacceptable risk to its own national security, and to the stability and prosperity of
the global en- vironment from which it has benefitted so much. Across multiple regions, adverse military trends and gray-
zone aggres- sion are undermining U.S. influence and damaging U.S. interests. In the Western Pacific, the regional
military balance has shifted dramatically because of China’s ongoing buildup and coercive activities. In Eastern Europe,
Russian military modernization has left U.S. and NATO forces with severe vulnerabilities on the alliance’s eastern frontier.
In the Mid- dle East, Tehran’s arsenal of asymmetric and anti-access/area denial ca- pabilities, along with its network of
proxy forces, can create significant challenges for U.S. forces and influence, as Russia’s renewed regional military presence
further inhibits American freedom of action. Looking beyond these regions, U.S. competitors and adversaries—
particularly Russia and China—are increasingly contesting American control of the maritime, space, and cyber commons
and improving their ability to strike the U.S. homeland (see Figure 2). The consequences of these shifts
are profound. Because the military balance casts its shadow over international
diplomacy, the erosion of U.S. military advantage is weakening the norms and principles
for which America has traditionally stood. It is no coincidence that threats to freedom of
navigation in the South China Sea—through which one-third of global shipping transits—have increased as the
military balance has dete- riorated. Similarly, the credibility of American alliances—the bedrock of
geopolitical stability in key areas—will be weakened as allies question whether the
United States can defend them; American rivals and adversaries will be emboldened
to push harder. From the Taiwan Strait to the Baltic region, peace and deterrence have long rested
on the perception that the United States can decisively defeat military challenges. As that
perception fades, deterrence weakens and war becomes more likely. Should war
occur, American forces will face harder fights and greater losses than at any time in
decades. It is worth recalling that during the Falklands War, a decidedly inferior opponent—Argentina—crippled and
sank a major British warship by striking it with a single guided missile. The amount of destruction a major
state adversary could inflict on U.S. forces today might be orders of magnitude higher . A
war on the Korean Peninsula, for instance, would expose U.S. and allied citizens and forces
in the region to intense conventional warfare and likely chemical and biological warfare. There
would be a real possibility of North Korean nuclear strikes against allied countries in Northeast
Asia and perhaps even against U.S. territory. If the United States had to fight Russia in a Baltic
contingency or China in a war over Taiwan (see Vignette 1), Americans could face a decisive military
defeat. These two nations possess precision-strike capabilities, integrated air defenses, cruise and ballistic missiles,
advanced cyberwarfare and anti-satellite capabilities, significant air and naval forces, and nuclear weapons—a suite of
advanced capabilities heretofore possessed only by the United States. The U.S. military would face daunting challenges in
establishing air superiority or sea control and retaking territory lost early in a conflict. Against an enemy equipped with
ad- vanced anti-access/area denial capabilities, attrition of U.S. capital assets—ships, planes, tanks—could be enormous.
The prolonged, delib- erate buildup of overwhelming force in theater that has traditionally been the hallmark of American
expeditionary warfare would be vastly more difficult and costly, if it were possible at all. Put bluntly, the U.S.
military could lose the next state-versus-state war it fights.

5. Prolif causes war – best research.

Brooks and Wohlforth, PhDs, 16
(Stephen, William, both PoliSci@Yale, ProfGov@Dartmouth, America Abroad, 107-110, Oxford University Press)

General empirical findings thus lend support to the proposition that security alliances impede nuclear
proliferation. But is this a net contributor to global security? Most practitioners and policy
analysts would probably not even bring this up as a question and would automatically answer yes if it were
raised. Yet a small but very prominent group of theorists within the academy reach a different answer: some of the same
realist precepts that generate the theoretical prediction that retrenchment would increase demand for nuclear weapons
also suggest that proliferation might increase security such that the net effect of retrenchment could be neutral. Most
notably, “nuclear optimists” like Kenneth Waltz contend that deterrence essentially solves the security problem for all
nuclear- armed states, largely eliminating the direct use of force among them.21 It follows that US retrenchment might
generate an initial decrease in security followed by an increase as insecure states acquire nuclear capabilities, ultimately
leaving no net effect on international security. This perspective is countered by “nuclear pessimists” such as Scott Sagan.
Reaching outside realism to organization theory and other bodies of social science research,
they see major security downsides from new nuclear states. Copious research produced by
Sagan and others casts doubt on the expectation that governments can be relied upon to
create secure and controlled nuclear forces.22 The more nuclear states there are, the
higher the probability that the organizational, psychological, and civil- military
pathologies Sagan identifies will turn an episode like one of the numerous “near misses”
he uncovers into actual nuclear use. As Campbell Craig warns, “One day a warning
system will fail, or an official will panic, or a terrorist attack will be
misconstrued, and the missiles will fly.”23 Looking beyond these kinds of factors, it is notable that
powerful reasons to question the assessment of proliferation optimists also emerge even
if one assumes, as they do, that states are rational and seek only to maximize their security .
First, nuclear deterrence can only work by raising the risk of nuclear war. For deterrence to be credible, there
has to be a nonzero chance of nuclear use.24 If nuclear use is impossible, deterrence
cannot be credible. It follows that every nuclear deterrence relationship depends on some
probability of nuclear use. The more such relationships there are, the greater the risk of
nuclear war.i Proliferation therefore increases the chances of nuclear war even in
a perfectly rationalist world. Proliferation optimists cannot logically deny that nuclear
spread increases the risk of nuclear war. Their argument must be that the security gains of nuclear spread
outweigh this enhanced risk. Estimating that risk is not simply a matter of pondering the conditions under which leaders
will choose to unleash nuclear war. Rather, as Schelling established, the question is whether states will run the risk of
using nuclear weapons. Nuclear crisis bargaining is about a “competition in risk taking .”25
Kroenig counts some twenty cases in which states—including prominently the United
States—ran real risks of nuclear war in order to prevail in crises. 26 As Kroenig notes, “By asking
whether states can be deterred or not … proliferation optimists are asking the wrong
question. The right question to ask is: what risk of nuclear war is a specific state willing to
run against a particular opponent in a given crisis?”27 The more nuclear- armed states
there are, the more the opportunities for such risk- taking and the greater the
probability of nuclear use. It is also the case that for nuclear weapons to deter a given level of conflict,
there must be a real probability of their use at that level of conflict . For nuclear weapons to deter
conventional attack, they must be configured in such a way as to make their use credible
in response to a conventional attack. Highly controlled and reliable assured- retaliation postures might well be credible in
response to a conventional attack that threatens a state’s existence. But as newer
research shows, the farther
the issue in question is from a state’s existential security, the harder it is to make nuclear
threats credible with the type of ideally stable nuclear posture whose existence proliferation optimism
presupposes.28 If a state wishes, for example, to deter a conventionally stronger neighbor from seizing a disputed piece of
territory, it may face great challenges fashioning a nuclear force that is credible. Following Schelling’s logic about the
“threat that leaves something to chance ,” it may face incentives to create a quasi- doomsday
nuclear posture that virtually locks in escalation in response to its rival’s attempt to
seize the territory conventionally. Key here is that nuclear spread cannot be treated as binary: “You have ‘em
or you don’t.” States can choose the kind of nuclear postures they build. Some states may choose to build
dangerous and vulnerable nuclear postures. And because they lack the money or the
technological capacity or both, many states may not be able to create truly survivable forces (that is, forces that can survive
a nuclear first strike by a rival power) even if they wanted to. The links between nuclear possession and conflict are hard to
assess empirically. Still, there are relevant findings that are probative for this debate: • Nuclear
weapons are most credible at deterring the kind of conflict— threats to a state’s core territorial security— that is least
relevant to the actual security concerns of most states most of the time. Both quantitative and case study research
validates the claim that territorial conquest is rarely an issue in armed conflicts in the present era. Yet states that are
bullish on their prospects for territorial survival as sovereign units still have plenty of security concerns and also often find
plenty of reasons to use force and plenty of ways to use force other than by conquering other states.29 • Robust,
secure nuclear postures do not stop states from engaging in intense security
competition. Though the United States and Soviet Union did not fight each other during the Cold War, their
nuclear arsenals did not prevent them from engaging in one of history’s most costly
rivalries, complete with intense arms racing and dangerous crises that raised the specter
of nuclear war. • Though they built massive arsenals, at various junctures the two superpowers adopted dangerously
escalatory postures to attempt to deter various levels of conflict.30 • The mere possession of nuclear
weapons does not deter conventional attack, as both India and Israel discovered. •
In both statistical and case study tests, Vipin Narang finds that the only nuclear
posture that has any effect on conventional conflict initiation and escalation is
a destabilizing “asymmetrical escalatory” force, a doomsday posture designed
to create intense incentives for early use, such as that constructed by Pakistan in the 1990s.31 In short,
nuclear spread is a Hobson’s choice: it will inevitably increase the chances of nuclear
use, and it will either not deter conventional war or will do so only by
raising the risks of nuclear war even more. Add to this the risk that states in the real
world may not behave in ways consistent with the assumptions underlying proliferation
optimism. That is, some subset of new nuclear- armed states may not be led by rational leaders,
may not prove able to overcome organizational problems and resist the temptation to
preempt before feared neighbors nuclearize, may not pursue security as the only major
state preference, and may not be risk- averse. The scale of these risks rises as the world
moves from nine to twenty, thirty, or forty nuclear states . In addition, many of the other
dangers noted by analysts who are concerned about the destabilizing effects of nuclear proliferation—
including the risk of accidents and the prospects that some new nuclear powers will not
have truly survivable forces (making them susceptible to a first- strike attack and thus
creating incentives for early first use)— are prone to go up as the number of nuclear
powers grows. Moreover, the risk of unforeseen crisis dynamics that could spin out
of control is also higher as the number of nuclear powers increases. Finally, add to these
concerns the enhanced danger of nuclear leakage to dangerous, undeterrable
nonstate actors, and a world with overall higher levels of security
competition becomes yet more worrisome. And all of these concerns emerge independently of
other reasons the United States is generally better off in a world with fewer nuclear states, notably increased US freedom
of action.
 Contention 2 – Accidents
1. ICBMs make accidental nuke war inevitable – conventional
shift solves.
Wilson, MA, and Williams 16
(Geoff, CompGov@American, Noah, BS IR@Tufts, 9-15, https://warisboring.com/op-ed-its-time-to-ditch-the-icbm-
americas-thermonuclear-dinosaur/)

The Cold War has been over for 25 years now, but the United States still maintains a massive arsenal of nuclear weapons
and delivery systems — and they don’t come cheap. For example, we still spend
$2 billion a year just in
operations and support costs for the U.S. ICBM force. And we are about to spend a whole lot more. As part of
the Pentagon’s planned trillion-dollar nuclear spending spree, America’s inventory of Minuteman III land-
based nuclear missiles are set to be replaced by a shiny new fleet of ICBMs dubbed the Ground-based Strategic Deterrent,
which are supposed to enter service by 2028. But even before the new missiles enter production ,
cost estimates
are soaring. Bloomberg recently reported that the planned overhaul of America’s ICBMs is now projected
to cost at least $85 billion. That’s 36-percent more expensive than the Air Force’s original estimate of $62
billion. Even this figure, “is a placeholder number that’s at the low end of potential costs,” according to an Aug. 23 memo
from Pentagon weapons-buyer Frank Kendall to Air Force Secretary Deborah James. In the face of an uncertain and
ballooning program cost, the real question we should be asking is — why aren’t we just retiring the
ICBM part of the arsenal? ICBMs are an anachronism, a thermonuclear dinosaur, and have been
for a long time. The strategy for their use is a relic of the Cold War, they do nothing to
counter the real threats we face today and they can easily stand to be eliminated from
the U.S. nuclear arsenal. To Russia with love With the fall of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War,
the ICBM mission has been relegated to theory. Designed as a deterrent against Russian nuclear
forces in the 1970s, the Minuteman III can only really hit targets inside of Russia. While
they could technically reach targets outside of Russia, say North Korea, China or Iran, missiles
fired at those targets would still have to overfly Russia. In that scenario the Russians would,
understandably, think a salvo of nuclear warheads was coming their way and launch a counterattack. To hold
targets inside and outside of Russia at risk, the United States also maintains an even larger fleet of
submarine-launched ballistic missiles. The Ohio-class submarines carry roughly 1,150 warheads split
between the Pacific and Atlantic Oceans. That’s more than double the 440 warheads in the ICBM force,
and because they are deployed on silent and stealthy nuclear submarines, they are virtually invisible. ICBM
silos by contrast, can be seen by Russian satellites and are vulnerable to a first strike.
SLBMs guarantee a second strike capability in the event of a nuclear attack, making
ICBMs redundant. My Journey at the Nuclear Brink According to former secretary of defense
William J. Perry, “between our submarine forces, as they are modernized in particular, and our
strategic bomber forces, [ICBMs are] not needed. Any reasonable definition of
deterrence will not require them.” So if ICBMs can be cut without weakening U.S.
deterrence, why waste money on them? ICBMs remain a part of the U.S. arsenal due to some pretty
draconian Cold War logic. Cold War theorists, who were faced with rapidly proliferating arsenals thought that
ICBMs and their silos could be useful as a target, a warhead sponge, that would force an enemy to waste
hundreds of missiles destroying U.S. silos in sparsely-populated areas instead of hitting our cities and industrial bases.
This “great sponge” of U.S. targets would absorb the Soviet warheads, and make “a surprise attack look
futile to the Kremlin.” Unfortunately, this callous thinking persists today . Certainly, if you are a resident of
North Dakota, Montana, Wyoming, Nebraska or Colorado, the five states that still base U.S. ICBM silos, soaking up
warheads may not sound like a great use of your hometown. What’s more, it seems like a stupid way to spend
nearly $2 billion a year. Use it or lose it Beyond the faulty logic of this “sponge theory,” the presence of
hundreds of land-based ICBMs reduces the president’s reaction time in the event of an
apparent nuclear strike. Faced with the prospect of an all out attack on the United States, be it legitimate or
phony, the commander-in-chief would be forced into a “use it or lose it” scenario — either
launch every ICBM at Russian targets, or risk them all being wiped out. The real problem here is
that false alarms happen more often than you would like to think, and the immense pressure put on
commanders to launch could cause a nuclear war through a simple technical glitch.
“The Department of Defense admitted 1,152 ‘moderately serious’ false alarms between 1977
and 1984 — roughly three a week.,” according to Jeffrey Lewis, director of the East Asia Nonproliferation
Program at the James Martin Center for Nonproliferation Studies. One such false alarm occurred in 1979 when the North
American Aerospace Defense Command mistook a training tape for a real Soviet attack. “NORAD issued warnings that
went out to the entire intercontinental ballistic missile force and put the president’s airborne command post in the air.” In
his recent book My Journey at the Nuclear Brink, Perry remembers being woken by the warning call from the watch officer
at NORAD. “The general got right to the point: his warning computer was showing two hundred ICBM missiles in flight
from the Soviet Union to targets in the United States. For one heart-stopping second I thought my worst nuclear
nightmare had come true. But the general quickly explained that he had concluded this was a false alarm … It was a
human error. A catastrophic nuclear war could have started by accident, a frightening lesson that I have never forgotten.”
Similarly, in 1983 Soviet duty officer Stanislav Petrov received a satellite signal warning of five incoming nuclear missiles
launched from the United States. Petrov chose not to report the attack despite the apparent certainty of the computer
system and instead called in a system malfunction. “When people start a war, they don’t start it with only five missiles,”
Petrov said. Once again, only quick thinking averted tragedy. The mere existence of ICBMs
complicates the already nightmarish decision-making process of a nuclear
launch. With thermonuclear annihilation as the ultimate consequence, there is no room to
rely on luck. Silo fever ICBMs are relics of the Cold War, and the men and women tasked with maintaining them seem
to feel left behind. In a series of exposés for the Associated Press, Robert Burns reported on an institutional culture
rampant with misconduct among members of the Air Force assigned to the ICBM fleet,
including drug abuse and cheating on technical and readiness tests. In 2014, then-secretary of
defense Chuck Hagel ordered a major review of the ICBM force in an effort to correct the various failures and improve
morale in the missileer crews, but little progress has been made. The missileer corps today remains
undervalued, under-promoted and largely irrelevant in combating the very real threats we face around the globe every
day. Why? According to former missileer John Noonan, “being a missileer means that your worst enemy is boredom. No
battlefield heroism, no medals to be won. The duty is seen today as a dull anachronism.” 15 Minutes: General Curtis
LeMay and the Countdown to Nuclear Annihilation Likewise Brian Weeden, a former launch officer at Malmstrom Air
Force Base, recalled his experience after the 9/11 terrorist attacks. “We couldn’t do anything,” he said. “The mantra had
always been that the nuclear deterrent would keep America safe. But it didn’t. So I felt, not only did we fail to deter those
attacks, but we couldn’t do anything about it after.” U.S.
ICBMs did nothing to deter the 9/11 attacks,
just as they have played no part in the War on Terror , the longest conflict in U.S. history. That realization
takes a toll on the men and women who are asked to control our nation’s deadliest weapons. But no matter the reason,
drunk, high and bored human beings are not who you want controlling nuclear missiles
that can be launched at a moment’s notice. It is time to retire America’s arsenals of ICBMs . They are
costly, dangerous and serve no real purpose in today’s modern military. “The one thing that I
convinced myself after all these years of exposure to the use of nuclear weapons is that they were useless. They could not
be used,” former chairman of the joint chiefs of staff Colin Powell said in 2010. So why should we spend $85 billion on a
whole new fleet of these nuclear money pits? The answer is, we shouldn’t. The
ICBM mission is easily
handled today by our fleets of sub-launched missiles and bombers. If they
were to be cut, the billions of dollars being spent on ICBMs could instead be invested in
America’s conventional forces that are deployed around the world every day fighting
ISIS, providing disaster relief, keeping international sea lanes open and
advancing America’s interests abroad. For example, for the annual cost of maintaining the
Minuteman III, the United States could field the active component of a U.S. Army brigade combat team, or six Marine
infantry regiments. The dinosaurs died out a long time ago. It’s about time this one followed suit.

2. Only ICBMs can cause accidents.

Paltrow, MSc, 17
(Scot, Econ+PoliSci@LSE, 11-22, https://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-nuclear-icbm-specialreport/special-report-
nuclear-strategists-call-for-bold-move-scrap-icbm-arsenal-idUSKBN1DM1D2)
Of all weapons in the U.S. nuclear arsenal, the ICBM is the one most likely to
cause accidental nuclear war, arms-control specialists say. It is for this reason that a
growing number of former defense officials, scholars of military strategy and some members of
Congress have begun calling for the elimination of ICBMs. They say that in the event of an
apparent enemy attack, a president’s decision to launch must be made so fast that there
would not be time to verify the threat. False warnings could arise from human error,
malfunctioning early warning satellites or hacking by third parties. Once
launched, America’s current generation of ICBM missiles, the Minuteman III, cannot be recalled:
They have no communication equipment because the United States fears on-board gear would be
vulnerable to electronic interference by an enemy. These critics recommend relying instead on the other
two legs of the U.S. nuclear “triad”: submarine-launched ballistic missiles, and heavy bombers armed with
hydrogen bombs or nuclear-warhead cruise missiles. The president would have more time to
decide whether to use subs or bombers. Bombers take longer to reach their targets than
ICBMs and can be recalled if a threat turns out to be a false alarm . Nuclear missile subs can
be stationed closer to their targets, and are undetectable, so their locations are unknown
to U.S. adversaries. There is virtually no danger the subs could be knocked out
before launching their missiles. “ANTIQUATED” ARSENAL Among the advocates of dismantling the
ICBM force is William Perry, defense secretary under President Bill Clinton. In a recent interview, Perry said the U.S.
should get rid of its ICBMs because “responding
to a false alarm is only too easy.” An erroneous
decision would be apocalyptic, he said. “I don’t think any person should have to make that decision in
seven or eight minutes.” Leon Panetta, who served as defense secretary during the Barack Obama administration,
out of
defended the triad while in office. But in a recent interview he said he has reconsidered. “There is no question that
the three elements of the triad, the Minuteman missiles are at a stage now where they’re probably
the most antiquated of the triad,” he said. The risk of launch error is even greater in Russia, several arms control
experts said. The United States has about 30 minutes from the time of warning to assess the threat and launch its ICBMs.
Russia for now has less, by some estimates only 15 minutes. That is because after the Cold War, Russia didn’t replace its
early warning satellites, which by 2014 had worn out. Moscow now is only beginning to replace them. Meanwhile it relies
mainly on ground-based radar, which can detect missiles only once they appear over the horizon. In contrast, the United
States has a comprehensive, fully functioning fleet of early warning satellites. These orbiters can detect a Russian missile
from the moment of launch. The doubts about the ICBM force are circulating as the world faces its most serious nuclear
standoff in years: the heated war of words over Pyongyang’s growing atomic weapons program between Trump and North
Korean leader Kim Jong-Un. U.S.-Russian nuclear tensions have increased as well. The questioning of the missile fleet
also comes as the United States pursues a massive, multi-year modernization of its nuclear arsenal that
is making its weapons more accurate and deadly. Some strategists decry the U.S. upgrade - and similar moves by Moscow
- as dangerously destabilizing . Skeptics of the modernization program also have cited the new U.S.
president’s impulsiveness as further reason for opposing the hair-trigger ICBM fleet. The enormously consequential
decision to launch, said Perry, requires a president with a cool and rational personality. “I’m particularly concerned if the
person lacks experience, background, knowledge and temperament” to make the decision, he said. This month, the Senate
Foreign Relations Committee held a hearing to discuss the president’s authority to launch a first-strike nuclear attack.
Democratic Sen. Ed Markey of Massachusetts has called for that authority to be curbed, though such a break with decades
of practice doesn’t have broad support. “Donald Trump can launch nuclear codes just as easily as he
can use his Twitter account,” said Markey. “I don’t think we should be trusting the generals to be a check on the
president.”

3. ICBMs create incentives for pre-emptive nuclear strikes on

U.S. soil.
Snyder, PhD, 18
(Ryan, NuclearPhysics@UVA, Fellow@ArmsControlAssociation, March, The Future of the ICBM Force: Should the Least
Valuable Leg of the Triad Be Replaced?,
https://armscontrol.org/sites/default/files/files/PolicyPapers/PolicyPaper_RS_2018_0319.pdf)
Eliminate the ICBM force. The Congressional Budget Office (CBO) estimates that $149 billion could
be saved between 2017–2046 if the ICBM force was eliminated immediately, and that $120 billion
could be saved over this period if the ICBMs were eliminated at the end of the Minutemen IIIs service life.44 In the
unlikely event that future SSBN vulnerabilities arise and it is determined by national decision-makers that a backup to the
SSBN force is required, a more survivable ICBM basing option could be developed and deployed. However, it is important
to note that this would likely involve a mobile ICBM, which would likely cost more to acquire than the GBSD. Conclusions
Without a technically valid explanation for how an adversary could imagine it is possible to
destroy the U.S. SSBN force, the land-based ICBMs are redundant for deterring nuclear
attacks on the United States. Their location and vulnerability also hold at risk millions of
American lives that no adversary would be required to threaten if the ICBMs did not
exist. And because they require a “launch under attack” alert posture to be survivable ,
should be considered an unacceptable backup to SSBN vulnerability . ICBMs are also unnecessary
for time- sensitive targets and counterforce targeting requirements must be satisfied without them in the event of a
nuclear war. Perhaps most importantly, ICBM vulnerability may attract a preemptive
nuclear attack in an escalating conflict that U.S. opponents believe will inevitably
escalate to the nuclear level or that threatens their lives, regimes, or other vital interests. These
motivations are consistent with both U.S. and Russian nuclear counterforce doctrines which
posit that it is better to be attacked with fewer weapons rather than more . Growing
confidence in counterforce capabilities against fixed silo-based ICBMs only heighten this
risk. Lastly, a new ICBM with enhanced capabilities officially supported for the purpose of penetrating the
modernizing missile defense systems of U.S. opponents and improving counterforce kill probabilities is unnecessary
and potentially destabilizing. The range of countermeasures that can overwhelm missile
defense systems are extensive and already accessible for inclusion on current weapons, and steps that
indicate the United States may be motivated to develop disarming first-strike capabilities
could accelerate a technological arms race that increases the chances of
nuclear use. The public debate over the new Nuclear Posture Review and start of the GBSD program provide an
opportunity to reevaluate the least valuable leg of the U.S. nuclear triad. Given the confluence of growing budget
pressures, unnecessary risks, and diminishing benefits of maintaining the ICBMs
outlined here, U.S. interests would best be served by deciding to significantly reduce or
eliminate them.

4. Even a limited nuclear war would cause extinction – best

science.
Cribb 17
(Julian, BA Classics@WesternAusstralia, FoundingEditor@ScienceAlert, Surviving the 21st Century, Springer)

The most publicised horrors of nuclear war, over the past half-century, were blast damage, fi reball burns and radiation
sickness, as they were in Hiroshima and Nagasaki, leading to a perception that those well away from target areas might be
spared. Scientists however demur, arguingthat the biggest killer of all is likely to be a ‘ nuclear
winter ’ , triggered by the immense quantities of dust and smoke from burning cities and forests
lofted into the upper atmosphere, and the simultaneous stripping of the Earth’s
protective ozone layer: “In the aftermath… vast areas of the earth could be subjected to
prolonged darkness, abnormally low temperatures, violent windstorms, toxic smog and
persistent radioactive fallout.” This would be compounded by the collapse of farming and
food production, transport, energy grids, healthcare, sanitation and central government .
Even in regions remote from the actual blasts people would starve, die from freezing temperatures as much as 30 °C below
normal, from radiation sickness and a pandemic of skin cancers, pollution and loss of immunity to ordinary diseases. The
nuclear winter is in effect the antithesis of global warming, a shock cooling of the entire planet, but one lasting several
years only. However, “A number of biologists contend the extinction of many species … - including
the human species— is a real possibility,” they say (Turco et al. 2012 ). In the 1980s a group of
courageous scientists 1 alerted the leaders of both the US and Russia to the dangers of a nuclear winter. In an atomic war,
they warned, there will be no winners. Th en-Soviet president Mikhail Gorbachev took their counsel to heart: “Models
made by Russian and American scientists showed that a nuclear war would result in a nuclear winter that would be
extremely destructive to all life on Earth; the knowledge of that was a great stimulus to us, to people of honor and
morality, to act in that situation,” he subsequently related (Hertsgard 2000 ). US President Ronald Reagan concurred: “A
nuclear war cannot be won and must never be fought,” he said in his State of the Union Address in 1984 (Reagan 1984 ).
Marking this watershed moment in history Al Gore recounted in his Nobel Prize oration in 2007 “More than two
decades ago, scientists calculated that nuclear war could throw so much debris and
smoke into the air that it would block life- giving sunlight from our atmosphere, causing
a ‘nuclear winter.’ Th eir eloquent warnings here in Oslo helped galvanize the world’s resolve to halt the nuclear
arms race.” How large a nuclear release is required to precipitate a nuclear winter is still
subject to technical debate, but with the greatly improved models developed for
climate science, recent estimates suggest as few as 50 Hiroshima-sized
bombs (15 kilotonnes each) would do it—or the use of only one weapon in every 200 from
the global nuclear arsenal (Robock 2009 ). Th is puts a very different complexion on the contemporary risks
facing humanity. First, it suggests that even a limited conflict among lesser actors in the
arms race, for example between Pakistan and India, India and China or Israel and Iran, and involving mainly the
use of “battlefi eld” nukes could still imperil the entire world. In Lights Out: how it all ends , nuclear
experts Alan Robock and Brian Toon examined the eff ects of a regional war (Robock and Toon 2012 ). To begin with, they
argue, a ‘limited nuclear war’ is highly unlikely as, with the release of a handful of
battlefi eld nukes, things will very quickly spiral out of control as communications fail
and panic spreads, mushrooming into a more general conflict involving dozens of weapons spread
over a much wider region. Firestorms in the megacities would throw up a shocking amount of smoke,
ash and dust—around 70 billion tonnes is the estimate for an India/Pakistan clash. Running this through climate
models they found it would block out sunlight, chilling the planet by an average 1.25° for up to 10 years—enough to cause
crop-killing frosts , even in midsummer. Th is would sharply reduce and in some regions eliminate farm production for
several years. Normal world grain stocks are suffi cient to feed humanity for only about 2–3 months, so one of the fi rst
round eff ects of the war would be worldwide panic and fi nancial collapse as food supplies give out and grain prices soar
astronomically. A
billion people living on the margins of hunger would probably perish
within weeks, and billions more over the ensuing months. In the early twenty-fi rst century at least
eight nations, on this calculus, have the tools to terminate civilisation, and possibly the human
species, on their own, while at least two more aspire to the power to do so. Meanwhile the shadow of possible
nuclear and chemical terrorism, and their consequences, is lengthening.
 Contention 3 is solvency
Plan: The United States ought to eliminate its nuclear arsenals
of intercontinental ballistic missiles.
1. Elimination solves escalation, miscalc, and accidents, boosts
US international prestige, and shifts to a more effective
deterrence strategy.
Marvin 11
(Taylor, BA InternationalAffairs@UCSanDiego, went on to receive MIA@UCSanDiego, 11-16,
https://smokeandstir.org/2011/11/16/why-the-us-should-unilaterally-eliminate-icbms/)

The ratification of the New START agreement was a victory for nuclear arms control advocates. It should not, however, be
the end of efforts to reduce stockpiles of nuclear arms: in addition to the 1,550 deployed strategic nuclear warhead limit
mandated by New START, both Russia and the US currently stockpile thousands of tactical nuclear
warheads – weapons designed for attacking military targets not covered by New START — and maintain thousands
more warheads in storage. Other nuclear powers field hundreds of their own warheads. Though the threat of nuclear war
has declined since the end of the Cold War, as
long as large numbers of nuclear missiles remain armed
the threat of an accident or misunderstanding escalating into a nuclear exchange that
ends human civilization remains. The United States should continue to reduce its nuclear arsenal.
Nuclear disarmament has long been a goal of progressives around the world. However, their efforts are often hampered by
an unwillingness to recognize the deep structural incentives that encourage the preservation of the nuclear status quo.
Anti-nuclear activists are too often unwilling to offer any detailed arguments about which specific weapons systems should
be cut, and often seem to feel that by recognizing that nuclear weapons have some degree of strategic value compromises
their deep moral opposition to their existence. This is unfortunate – if anti-weapons activists are unable or unwilling to
offer detailed arguments in favor of specific arms control proposals, their laudable mission won’t be successful.
Progressives in the US and Russia must continue to argue for further bilateral arms control treaties that reduce both
countries’ number of nuclear weapons. However, the United States should also take the revolutionary step
of eliminating intercontinental ballistic missiles, a nuclear delivery system that plays a key
role in America’s nuclear force. Though we should encourage Russia to do the same, US lawmakers should be
prepared to make these unprecedented cuts unilaterally. This is a rational strategy
that would increase global security, lower US defense costs and dramatically
improve international perceptions of the US, all while not compromising
American safety. The end of the Cold War is an enormous opportunity to defuse what’s still the greatest threat to
human civilization. We shouldn’t let fear prevent us from taking it. The Nuclear Triad System Both the US and Russian
nuclear arsenals are split between three distinct delivery systems in an arrangement termed the ‘nuclear triad’. At the
dawn of the nuclear age, the only vehicles available to deliver nuclear bombs into enemy territory were large aircraft. As
tensions between the USSR and its onetime Western allies began to escalate in the aftermath of World War II, the USSR,
US and UK all invested in large fleets of intercontinental range strategic bomber aircraft capable of penetrating deep into
enemy airspace in the event of a nuclear war. However, by late 1950s advances in surface-to-air missiles made it
increasingly apparent that bomber aircraft would have difficulty surviving long enough to deliver their nuclear payloads.
While this revelation led to the development of more technologically advanced and survivable strategic bomber aircraft
and autonomous nuclear cruise missiles that enabled strategic bombers to hang back from heavily defensed targets, it also
encouraged the US and USSR to develop missiles with intercontinental ranges able to carry nuclear warheads across the
planet in minutes. These ICBMs – intercontinental ballistic missiles – heralded a revolutionary shift in the Cold War
calculus of nuclear destruction. Unlike relatively slow bomber
aircraft, a mass exchange of ICMBs
kill a significant portion of humanity in minutes, and apart from the wild-eyed,
technologically infeasible missile defense schemes of the 1980s ICBMs defied all hope of being intercepted or destroyed
before they reached their targets. Paradoxically, the almost incomprehensible destructive power of these new weapons
stabilized tensions between the USSR and US, and likely prevented the Cold War from escalating into World War III.
Because it was unlikely that any side could prevent an opponent’s ICBMs from reaching their targets both adversaries
knew that any war would be unwinnable, removing any incentive for a preemptive strike. However, the first generation of
ICBMs were not entirely effective. Early ICBMs were large and delicate, limitations that forced them to be stored in fixed
silos, meaning that both the Americans and Russians knew the exact locations of their adversary’s missiles. In the early
years of the Cold War this was not a fatal deficiency, because early ICBMs were not accurate enough to target enemy
missiles. However, rapid advances in ICBM guidance systems soon made targeting and destroying enemy missiles on the
ground a realistic possibility. Both the US and USSR assigned large numbers of their ICBMs to the counterforce mission –
destroying enemy nuclear forces and their command and control infrastructure – rather than the more traditional
countervalue mission – destroying an enemy’s cities. A country capable of destroying the bulk of its opponent’s nuclear
weapons on the ground possessed what was referred to as ‘first strike capability’: the ability to launch a surprise attack
without suffering retaliation. The advent of counterforce capabilities was destabilizing because it created a tempting
incentive for a preemptive strike – because the side that launched their missiles first in a crisis had the advantage, both
sides had an incentive to escalate any crisis to Armageddon. Because the flight time of these missiles is measured in
minutes, by the time one side detected the enemy’s missiles launching they would have only minutes before their own
missiles were destroyed on the ground. In a crisis this meant that both sides had the incentive to strike first, rather than
risk their enemy making the decisive first move. Though the advent of counterforce capabilities did destabilize the Cold
War, it also introduced the possibility of limited nuclear war. While early nuclear war planners had assumed that any
nuclear war would immediately escalate to targeting cities, a purely counterforce exchange would spare population
centers, dramatically lowering casualties and potentially allowing for human civilization to survive a nuclear war.
However, it’s worth remembering that even a pure counterforce strike would be unimaginably destructive: a US strike
against a single group of Chinese ICBM silos would cause upwards of 20 million casualties [1]. A less restricted
counterforce exchange – for example, one between the US and Russia – could kill millions more. The high civilian
casualties inherent to even limited counterforce strike makes it hard to believe that a counterforce exchange would not
escalate to a full scale war. Russians and American engineers worked furiously to reduce the vulnerability of their
countries’ nuclear forces. Early efforts to reduce vulnerability to a devastating counterforce first strike ranged from the
practical step of hardening ICBM silos against anything but a direct nuclear strike to more dangerous schemes, like the US
1960s effort to keep B-52 bombers armed with live nuclear bombs in the air at all times to prevent a surprise Russian
attack from destroying them on the ground (this scheme was abandoned after a series of accidental crashes terrifyingly
resulted in the temporary loss of live nuclear bombs). However, other technological advancements more effectively
reduced missile vulnerability. By the end of the 1960s ICBMs were smaller and powered by stable solid fuel rockets,
meaning they could be stored fueled in very heavily armored underground silos and launched at literally minutes warning.
Similarly, in the early 1960s the US and later USSR successfully deployed ballistic missiles that could be launched from a
submerged submarine. While early submarine launched ballistic missiles – SLBMs – lacked the range to strike targets
deep within the US or USSR, by the 1970s SLBMs were capable of the full countervalue mission. The value of a submarine
launched ballistic missile were obvious – unlike land based missiles, submarines were mobile and, with the advent in the
1950s of nuclear propulsion that allowed submarines to remain deep underwater for months, increasingly undetectable.
Nuclear powered submarines capable of carrying dozens of SLBMs could lurk off enemy coastlines with impunity,
allowing them to launch their nuclear weapons at close range and with little warning. Unlike land-based ICBMs, a
preemptive first strike had no possibility of destroying SLBMs before a reprisal could be launched. With the introduction
of SLBMs, the possibility of a survivable nuclear war largely vanished. While the USSR and US were the first to introduce
nuclear SLBMs, the UK, France, and China soon introduced their own missile systems, and India is expected to field one
by 2015. Additionally, the Israeli Navy is believed to possess a submarine nuclear deterrence in the form of shorter range
submarine-launched nuclear cruise missiles. However, unlike land-based ICBMs smaller SLBMs were never accurate
enough for the counterforce mission. Both the US and USSR reserved their SLBMs for the ‘second strike’ mission that
would annihilate the cities of any opponent foolish enough to launch a nuclear attack, while a large portion of ICBM forces
were tasked with destroying their opponents own ICBMs. The total destruction SLBMs guaranteed to inflict on any
nuclear aggressor was referred to as ‘mutually assured destruction’ – or, fittingly, MAD. The introduction of SLBMs
capable of guaranteeing MAD stabilized the Cold War by definitively removing any incentive to launch a nuclear attack no
matter the circumstances – for both the US and USSR, war was the worst case scenario. These three classes of weapons –
nuclear bombs and cruise missiles carried by strategic aircraft, land-based ICBMs, and SLBMs – make up the nuclear
deterrence ‘triad’. Not all nuclear powers maintain a full triad. Because of the high cost of developing sophisticated SLBMs
and the dedicated submarines to carry them, Israel only fields a short range cruise missile-born submarine based
deterrent to complement its Jericho III land-based ballistic missile. Smaller, densely settle countries like France and the
UK do not choose to field ICBMs due to the land requirements and cost of large ICBM bases (the US and Russia all base
their ICBM forces in the sparsely settled open prairie and steppe), preferring to base their nuclear deterrent completely on
SLBMs. Similarly, the high costs and limited everyday utility of long-range strategic bomber aircraft make them
unpractical for smaller nuclear powers, many which only field tactical aircraft (in common usage, fighter aircraft) capable
of delivering nuclear weapons over short distances rather than dedicated strategic bombers. Because of its high cost and
the limited utility of nuclear triad redundancy, today only three countries maintain a full nuclear triad: the US, Russia, and
China, though the People’s Liberation Army Air Force lacks the in-air refueling infrastructure to give their Xian H-6
strategic bombers true intercontinental capability. The nuclear triad’s massive redundancy was its key advantage during
the Cold War – while both the US and USSR had some incentive to strike first and destroy their rival, the triad system’s
redundancy, varied delivery platforms and large number of individual weapons guaranteed that even if hit by a
devastating first strike, a nuclear power would still retain the capability to retaliate. This redundancy was a key part of US
nuclear doctrine: US nuclear planners required that each leg of the triad be capable of destroying the USSR independently
of the other two. In this way the triad system was an important moderating influence on Cold War rivalry. However, the
triad system also owed its existence to less defensible rationales. In the United States, after the development of the atomic
bomb the Air Force had a monopoly on the strategic bombers needed to deliver early nuclear weapons, and later on
ICBMs – a monopoly that marginalized other services. To counter this perceived deficiency, the US Navy lobbied for its
own nuclear forces. In the late 1940s, before the invention of workable intercontinental ballistic missiles, US admirals
vehemently argued for the construction of an extremely large class of aircraft carriers capable of launching the large
strategic bombers required to carry early nuclear weapons. Air Force officials rightly perceived this as an explicit effort to
end the Air Force’s monopoly on nuclear weapons, and bitterly opposed the construction of the USS United States
supercarrier, which was canceled in 1949. Despite this setback, the shrinking size of nuclear weapons soon allowed the
Navy to fly nuclear-armed aircraft off conventional aircraft carriers, and the Navy was later allowed to obtain its own
SLBM deterrence force. While the nuclear triad’s redundancy did have its strategic advantages, its emergence was partially
due to interservice bureaucratic rivalries. Competition between the US and USSR also contributed to the supremacy of the
triad system. Unlike the smaller nuclear powers, both US and USSR held rival positions of leadership in the
internationally community. Maintaining these bipolar leadership positions made keeping up appearances extremely
important, and both the US and USSR made great efforts to match each other’s technological and social developments.
When the Soviets launched the successful Sputnik satellite in 1957, the US launched a crash program to launch their own
spacecraft as quickly as possible. Similarly, despite the dubious economics of building a supersonic passenger airliner,
when the British and French began the high profile Concorde program (which never became anywhere near profitable) the
Soviets immediately began work on their own supersonic airliner, the similarly unsuccessful Tu-144. Of course, the Cold
War balance of power wasn’t altered by prestige projects like civilian space programs or glamorous supersonic airliners –
the civilian technological arms race between the superpowers was only a proxy for their more serious military arms race.
Just as the US and USSR strove to match each other’s civilian prestige projects, they faced an even more urgent need to
counter their opponent’s military advancements. This continuous one-upmanship extended to the nuclear arms race, and
contributed to the proliferation of a bewildering variety of nuclear weapons and delivery systems. While the triad system
was not strictly necessary to mounting an effective nuclear deterrent, for the superpowers – unlike smaller nuclear-armed
states – it was a necessity to maintaining their prestige and international image. Modern Nuclear Forces In the
aftermath of the Cold War the risk of nuclear war has declined considerable. That doesn’t mean that the US
nuclear arsenal is worthless – the American nuclear force still provides the deterrence that is the ultimate guarantee of US
safety. However, it is hard to argue that the size and variety of US nuclear forces is strictly
necessary in today’s world. To its credit, the United States has aggressively reduced its nuclear forces since the end of
the Cold War: today the US fields roughly 1,800deployed warheads out of a total inventory of 8,500, down from a 1960
high of over 30,000. However, despite these reductions
the US and Russia still maintain large
numbers of nuclear weapons deployed across their triad systems. China, the only other major power to
maintain a full triad, also deploys a large number of weapons, though much less than Russia or the US. US Deployed
Nuclear Forces: Under the terms of the New START Treaty, this number is required to drop to 1,550by 2017. Currently,
deployed US strategic nuclear weapons are distributed among the following delivery systems: – 1,152 warheads are
deployed on 288 SLBMs. The US Navy’s current SLBM, the UGM-133 Trident II, carries 4 independently targeted
warheads, explaining the discrepancy between the number of warheads and launch vehicles. Importantly, the Trident II’s
4 warheads is a treaty-imposed (SORT) limitation – the UGM-113 is physically capable of carrying up to 14 reentry
vehicles. The US SLBM force is currently deployed on 14 Ohio class submarines. – 500 warheads on 450 LGM-30G
Minuteman ICBMs. Unlike its SLBMs, the US largely refrains from fielding ICBMs carrying multiple warheads, despite
the fact that the START II treaty banning MIVR missiles never entered force. The US ICBM force is currently deployed in
three clusters in North Dakota, Montana, and one split between Wyoming, Colorado, and Nebraska. – Less than 150
aircraft-delivered warheads. While the US possessed roughly 300 nuclear bombs, most are in storage. Only about 60
aircraft are currently tasked with carrying these weapons, making US aircraft-delivered weapons of negligible importance
in an actual full-scale nuclear war. It is important to remember that despite the limited size of the American strategic
bomber fleet the US’s aircraft-delivered nuclear arsenal is still capable of killing most of humanity. Russian Deployed
Nuclear Forces: Despite the disclosure requirements in the New START Treaty, determining the exact composition of
deployed Russian nuclear forces is difficult. New START documentation lists 1,537 strategic offensive arms, likely
comprised of: – Roughly 160 SLMBs mounting roughly 576 warheads [2]. All Russian SLBMs are modern and highly
capable, and are capable of hitting targets in the continental US from Russian territorial waters. Russian SLBMs typically
carry more warheads than their American counterparts: the RSM-54 Sineva (NATO reporting name SS-N-23 Skiff) carries
10 MIRVed warheads, and the RSM-56 Bulava (NATO reporting name SS-NX-32), currently under development, will
carry up to 10 warheads. – Roughly 295 ICBMs mounting roughly 1,007 warheads. Russian ICBMs are advanced and
capable of immediate launch in a crisis. Unlike US LGM-30 Minutemans, Russia fields mobile ICBMs capable of being
transported throughout the country, making a counterforce strike against Russian ICBMs extremely difficult. Russia
continues to mount the maximum number of warheads possible on their ICBMs. -At most 844 airborne nuclear weapons
on roughly 76 strategic bombers. Because Russia’s currently deployed weapons fall under New START’s 1,550 limit, Russia
is not treaty bound to reduce its deployed forces by 2017. Chinese Deployed Nuclear Forces: Four decades of arms control
treaties have forced the US and Russian governments to be reasonably transparent about their nuclear forces. Chinese
nuclear forces are much more secretive, meaning that estimates attempting to quantify the Chinese nuclear triad are very
inexact: -China currently fields 10 to 14 SLBMs [3]. However, the current weapon, the JL-1, is short ranged and is not
capable of reaching the continental United States from the western Pacific Ocean [4]. A more capable SLBM, the JL-2, is
close to entering service. -54 to 62 DF-3, Df-4, DF-5 ballistic missiles [5] that are nearing obsolesce. All of these missiles
are liquid fueled, making them unable to be launched with little warning. Only the DF-5 is capable of striking targets in the
continental United States.[6] China also fields fewer than 30 modern DF-31 and longer range DF-31A missiles [7]. -China
is estimated to currently possess roughly 150 nuclear gravity bombs [8]. People’s Liberation Army Air Force strategic
aircraft are much less capable than their US or Russian counterparts, and are incapable of intercontinental operations.
While the US and Russia are no longer at each other’s throats, every additional
nuclear missile deployed increases the risk of a misunderstanding or accident leading
to an unintended holocaust. This risk is real, and the costs of even a limited nuclear war
would be truly unimaginable. While the US and Russia’s efforts to diplomatically reduce
their deployed nuclear weapons are laudable, they aren’t enough. The US should take further steps to
reduce its nuclear forces. Eliminating ICBMs Despite its troubled road through the US Senate, the New START treaty did
demonstrate that there is still enthusiasm for arms reduction in the US and Russia. However, this isn’t enough. While still
valuable, strategic arms treaties are an extremely conservative way to reduce the ever present threat of excessive nuclear
arms. The United States should take the more dramatic step of eliminating one leg of its
nuclear triad. This would be an unprecedented advance in arms control, and
would uproot the stasis of gradual treaty arms reduction. In addition to reducing the
size of the US nuclear arsenal, such a dramatic action would win the United States enormous
international goodwill and respect. This would also fit into the US government’s idealistic aspirations
– only two years ago President Obama proclaimed that “I state clearly and with conviction America’s commitment to seek
the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons.” Eliminating a leg of the US nuclear triad is a laudable
contribution to this worthy and attainable goal. But which leg should the US eliminate? At Slate, defense reporter Fred
Kaplan has convincingly argued that Russia and the US should begin phasing out ICBMs: “Is anybody thinking about the
idea of phasing out the ICBMs? These are the weapons that, over the decades, have
spurred first-strike
temptations to begin with. They are at once the most accurate and the most vulnerable nuclear
weapons. That is, they are capable of destroying, and being destroyed by, the other side’s
ICBMs. In other words, their very existence creates temptations of pre-emptive
strike in the event of a crisis. They are the weapons, in fact, that generated the nuclear arms race of the
1960s to 1980s. Now that the Cold War is kaput and the notion of first-strike scenarios more improbable than ever, let’s
get rid of them—rather than plan to build more of them—while the climate is clear.” This argument makes sense. ICBMs
are destabilizing, the counterforce mission’s dubious deterrence value makes them
irrelevant to US security, and no one believes in first strike scenarios anymore
anyway. Giving up American ICBMs would not decrease the US’s second strike
capabilities, and would preserve America’s ability to credibly deter potential
adversaries. But why limit our aspirations to only one leg of the nuclear triad? SLBMs are the
obvious choice to preserve: their invulnerability and second strike capability is the
basis of MAD and the nuclear peace. However, unfortunately for nuclear idealists there are also good
reasons for preserving US airborne nuclear weapons . Nuclear warheads carried by strategic bomber
aircraft make up only a small fraction of the US nuclear arsenal – under New START, the US fields less than 300 aircraft-
launched nuclear bombs, most in storage. However, aircraft-delivered nuclear weapons offer flexibility
unavailable to other delivery systems. Unlike ballistic missiles, manned bomber aircraft can be
recalled or redirected, giving policymakers an extra margin of safety in a crisis.
Similarly, bomber aircraft can be deployed without inadvertently starting a nuclear war .
Arguably the greatest nuclear threat of the 21st century comes from small rouge nations
possessing a handful of warheads like North Korea or potentially Iran, rather than great powers
like Russia or China. US deterrence strategy towards these states relies on the threat of
massive nuclear retaliation for destructive actions. However, ICBMs or SLBMs are not suited
for this mission, because when a ballistic missile is launched it is not immediately obvious
where it’s being targeted (while a missile’s target can be determined by its ballistic trajectory, this trajectory is
not apparent until several minutes into the missile’s flight. A nervous observer a credible incentive to launch a retaliatory
strike as soon as a potential enemy launch is detected, before the target is apparent). Even
a justifiable US
nuclear launch against a rouge state in a crisis (laying aside the arguable morality of any retaliatory
nuclear strike) could easily be misinterpreted by China, Russia, or any other nuclear
power as a preliminary strike against them, giving them enormous incentive to
launch their own missiles against the US before they could be destroyed on the ground. While this
scenario is unlikely, the inherent panic and confusion of any crisis scenario where the US is seriously
deliberating a nuclear strike against a rogue state makes it much more likely. However, aircraft-launched
weapons have much less room for misinterpretation – an aircraft’s destination is visible to anyone with
the technological resources to detect it, and
an nuclear airstrike’s slow speed compared to a ballistic missile
make a panicked misunderstanding less likely. Given that the technology required to manufacture
nuclear weapons is likely to become available to more and more small states in the next century,
deterring rouge states like North Korea and Iran, rather than superpowers, is likely to be
the primary mission of the US nuclear deterrence in the future. This justifies the preservation
of US air-delivered nuclear weapons and strategic bombers. Just as the US will continue to rely
on its SLBM force to deter advanced powers like Russia and China, the strategic nuclear
bomber force will deter small nuclear-armed states. As Fred Kaplan points out, eliminating US
ICBMs would not meaningfully compromise the American nuclear
deterrent: while eliminating ICBMs would sacrifice much of the counterforce mission, the
US would retain an iron-clad second-strike capability in the form of SLBMs and flexible
nuclear response capability in deployed strategic and tactical bomber aircraft. However, as New START’s
tumultuous road through the US Senate illustrates, even mild nuclear disarmament in not popular in some circles of
American government. The USAF shares this opposition to nuclear cuts, especially to its ICBMs.Air Force
Secretary Michael Donley emphasized this point in a recent speech before the Air Force Association, strenuously
arguing against nearly all potential cuts to Air Force funding and mission and reiterating “as the U.S. nuclear
arsenal gets smaller and the number and diversity of nuclear-armed powers increases, the flexibility inherent in
our nuclear triad becomes even more important . We must maintain the nuclear triad.” However,
like most criticism of cutting or eliminating entirely US ICBMs , this isn’t a compelling
argument. Yes, the nuclear triad is more flexible than a nuclear force based on only two legs.
However, unless proponents of the triad can explain how much marginal safety ICMBs
contribute to the US nuclear deterrence and whether this marginal gains outweighs
their costs, this isn’t a serious argument.

2. Eliminating ICBMs is key to a 21st-century deterrence strategy

– that solves nuclear war from revisionist prolif and boosts the
credibility of American deterrence.
Talbot, PhD, 18
(Brent, InternationalPolitics@UniversityOfDenver, ProfStrategicStudies@USAFAcademy, Eliminating ICBMs—as part of
a 21st-century deterrence strategy, Bulletin of Atomic Scientists, 74:1, 52-59)

The last review, released in 2010, left the door open to further reductions in the nuclear arsenal. But such reductions
would require the cooperation of the Russians, and such cooperation has not been forthcoming. Meanwhile, the Defense
Department faces funding limitations, compounded by current sequestration law, that leave it short of the funds needed to
operate conventional forces, let alone modernize all three legs of the nuclear triad. How
then is the triad to be
recapitalized? The short answer is: Reframe the current triad arrangement by eliminating
one leg – ICBMs – and beefing up non-nuclear forces that are capable of rapid, strategic
response. The old cold war Successful deterrence is a situation in which nations do not use or threaten to use nuclear
weapons; as such, it is a sought-for end. (Preventing major-power wars is another measure of deterrence.) Means to that
end might include steps such as modernizing the legs of a nuclear triad. But first, a proper strategy must be employed as a
way to ensure deterrence. In other words, the United States should formulate its deterrence strategy
before constructing the means to provide deterrence – why renew all three legs of the triad before
deciding what is to be accomplished? Advocates of triad renewal say all three legs are needed because the
triad has prevented Armageddon in the past. The triad has worked and will continue to work, so let us
keep it in its current form. But the triad was born in the bipolar world of the Cold War – and
though nuclear deterrence surely contributed to preventing a third world war, one cannot
conclude that the triad is the main reason that nuclear war was averted. Indeed, as late foreign
policy expert Robert Osgood asserted (Osgood 1979), “ strategy that has emerged over the years
represents logical speculation and inference, shaped more by politics and
psychology than by science and evidence.” To illustrate, consider that Air Force leadership casts
ICBMs (James 2017) as the “reliable and responsive” leg of the triad – while submarines are labeled “survivable” and
bombers “flexible.” But why can’t the submarines or bombers also be considered reliable and
responsive? B-2 bombers have flown conventional missions halfway around the world and delivered bombs on
target. Certainly they would prove equally reliable delivering nuclear weapons, albeit on a multiple-hour
timescale, rather than the half-hour timescale of ICBMs. And the new Columbia-class submarines will not only
match or reduce the halfhour flight times of ICBMs to targets, but will also be dual-capable – able to
launch conventional cruise missiles, adding responsiveness in non-nuclear scenarios (Greenert 2017). In contrast, the new
ICBM envisioned under modernization will simply be an updated replacement for the old. The new missiles, placed into
Due to the missiles’
existing (though refurbished) silos, can only feasibly be aimed at one potential adversary: Russia.
northern-tier basing, their ballistic trajectories require polar flight paths; retaliation via
ICBM against a North Korean or Iranian attack would require overflight of the Russian Federation.
In sum, the missiles are only reliable and responsive against Russia – which is only
one of several nuclear capable states of concern. Moreover, the late military strategist Herman Kahn
observed that the Cold War was a “50-year problem.” Today, in the 21st century, strategy should still be formulated on
such a timescale. It is also crucial to remember, despite many people’s desire to reach “nuclear zero,” Osgood’s view that
“coercion is an indispensable feature of all human relations … security cannot be guaranteed by the reasonableness and
morality of men” (Osgood 1957). Nuclear modernization efforts, and modernization efforts for strategic conventional
weapons as well, need to provide a means of managing the rivalries that are arising today, in what Yale scholar Paul
Bracken (Bracken 2012) has called the “second nuclear age.” Today there are nine nuclear powers, and in 50 years there
will likely be more than nine – at least several more, but perhaps many more. According to Bracken, the multipolar
nuclear world will manage us if we do not manage it. In the bipolar era, it was important not only that deterrence be
credible, but that the means of deterrence be proportionate to the objectives at stake (Freedman 2003). The US triad was
thus developed as a means of ensuring the survival of a second-strike force. At a time when the arms race spiraled out of
control, this was the only means of countering the existential threat of a devastating first strike by the Soviet Union. Now,
arms control agreements negotiated between Russia and the United States have limited each side to 700 strategic
launchers and 1550 warheads. But even these numbers remain excessive when one considers that the Chinese are
comfortable with 194 launchers, and that only 180 of their warheads can target North America (Kaplan 2016). The Chinese
refer to their inventory as a “lean and effective nuclear strike force” (Chase and Chan 2016). Past US and Russian
negotiations have hinted at further reductions, perhaps to a thousand warheads or so, but due to worsening relations over
the Ukraine conflict and Russian objections to US missile defenses in Europe, neither state is likely to agree to further
reductions as long as Vladimir Putin remains in power. New era, new threats When
crafting a deterrence
strategy, the United States must consider all nuclear powers (particularly those that are not allies).
Rogue states such as North Korea need to be deterred; indeed, new nuclear-armed states are
particularly worrisome. Such states may not follow the logic assumed in deterrence theory.
As Columbia University political scientist Robert Jervis warns, it is strange that most analyses of deterrence are based
upon deductive logic rather than on the emotions, perceptions, and culture-based calculations made by the types of
leaders more likely to rule in rogue states (Jervis 1976). Should such
leaders attempt the limited use of
nuclear weapons, a non-nuclear means must be available to deny them their
objectives and stop their aggression. As a means of non-nuclear deterrence by denial, the United States has
deployed to Alaska and California a missile defense system known as the Ground-based Midcourse Deterrent. It is
intended to intercept missiles fired toward North America by North Korea’s Kim regime. The United States has also
deployed the Terminal High Altitude Air Defense (THAAD) system to South Korea, along with shorter-range Patriot
systems, to protect the South from ballistic missile attack. The Pacific fleet also includes Aegis cruisers, armed with missile
Conventional
defense systems similar to THAAD, to protect South Korea, Japan, and US bases in the region.
military capabilities are key to strategic deterrence in the 21st century, but so
too are alliances, partnerships, and institutions at all levels, which can expand the influence of coalitions and establish the
legitimacy of US policies and actions. Appropriate strategies for deterrence in the 21st century
might include containment, as well as preserving and tightening compliance with the
Nuclear Non- Proliferation Treaty. The 2015 Joint Comprehensive Plan of Action regarding Iran’s nuclear activities
provides an example of such an effort. The most recent guidance for US nuclear doctrine is a 2014 report by the National
Defense Panel (Perry and Abizaid 2014), which suggested that the US “nuclear arsenal play[s] an essential role in
deterring potential adversaries and reassuring US allies and partners around the world.” The panel added that nuclear
weapons provide a “unique and crucial role” and act as a “credible guarantor” of US and allied sovereignty, and are the
“cornerstone” of “broader US defense strategy.” Interestingly, the report also advocated maintaining the nuclear triad
instituted during the Cold War, though at “lower warhead and delivery levels,” in accordance with arms control
agreements (including New START, which the United States and Russia signed in 2010). The panel’s report also pointed
to a glaring quandary when it stated that the Defense Department “is committed to a recapitalization of the triad, which
under current budget constraints is unaffordable.” Several years before, the 2010 Nuclear Posture Review had added non-
nuclear capabilities such as missile defense and conventional long-range strike to the deterrence
construct. A 21st-century deterrence posture that includes such capabilities would orient the
United States away from simply replacing costly Cold War infrastructure, especially ICBMs – which,
according to recent estimates, will cost $100 billion or more to accomplish (Reif 2017). Instead, the
US deterrence posture should focus on deterring nuclear war as well as conventional
aggression against US allies and interests. As General James E. Cartwright, then vice chairman of the Joint
Chiefs of Staff, asserted in 2010 (Whitlock 2010), “Deterrence can no longer just be nuclear weapons. It has to be
broader.” When deterrence fails, particularly in the case(s) of new nuclear states, the United
States needs the capability to deny such states the option of nuclear use. The intent of such an
approach would be to meet another stipulation of the panel’s report: “ The US strategic force should… be
structured and operated in such a way as to promote both regional stability and aid in efforts to stem
the proliferation of nuclear weapons.” Conditions for deterrence Before delving into the details of how US strategic
forces should be structured, it is instructive to consider the growing threats that drive the need for a
mixed nuclear and conventional force . In a 2013 commentary published in The Wall Street Journal,
former Secretaries of State George Shultz and Henry Kissinger, along with former Defense Secretary William Perry and
former Senator Sam Nunn, expressed the following concerns about 21st-century threats: “[ W]hen a large and
growing number of nuclear adversaries confront multiple perceived threats, the relative
restraint of the Cold War will be difficult to sustain. The risk that deterrence will fail and
that nuclear weapons will be used increases dramatically .” The four authors went on to explain that
nuclear bomb-building materials were stored at hundreds of sites in 28 countries around the world and that many of these
sites were not secure (Shultz, et al. 2013). Consequently, the possibility has increased in recent years that more
states
– and perhaps even non-state actors – will acquire nuclear weapons. Thus we cannot count
on treaties such as the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty or US-Russian nuclear agreements to
prevent nuclear proliferation and conflict. Nuclear strategy expertMichael S. Gerson advises that concerns
over Iran and North Korea’s nuclear programs, along with military modernization in China,
suggest the need for “adversary-specific deterrence strategies…in an increasingly
multipolar world.” He describes a need not just for nuclear weapons but also for advanced
conventional weapons, which can be used to deny an adversary the use of its
nuclear arsenal (Gerson 2009). A key part of Gerson’s argument is that conventional deterrence
is the only way to prevent non-nuclear aggression by a nuclear armed
regime. When one considers recent, bold actions by Pyongyang – its escalated missile testing and continued nuclear
testing – North Korea appears to believe that its possession of nuclear warheads and missiles capable of
delivering them to US targets has deterred US retaliation. Undeterred by sanctions and by the condemnation of
most world powers – by all efforts to pressure North Korea into giving up its nuclear aspirations – Kim Jongun
continues his reckless behavior in spite of Washington’s nuclear triad. So, according to Gerson, it
is only through “the deployment of conventional power in the region, combined with
significant nuclear capabilities and escalation dominance” that Washington can prevent Kim from
believing that his possession of nuclear weapons provides the opportunity for conventional
aggression and coercion against South Korea, Japan, or the United States. To back up his claim, Gerson
examines the literature on conventional deterrence and identifies three main arguments that run through it (these may be
thought of as conditions for successful deterrence). The first argument suggests that states (such as North Korea)
“contemplating conventional aggression typically seek relatively quick, inexpensive
victories,” and therefore may be deterred if they do not believe they can win such victories.
“Second,” Gerson continues, “conventional deterrence is primarily based on denial , the ability to
prevent an adversary from achieving its objectives through conflict. … Third …, the ‘local’ balance of military
power – the balance between the conventional forces of the attacker and those of a defender in the area of conflict –
often plays a critical role in conventional deterrence.” Gerson’s argument suggests the need for
significant US conventional forces situated in or near regions of concern (or readily able to get
there), or forces with the advanced capabilities needed to engage a particular enemy rapidly
from the US homeland. For years the United States and South Korea, as a means of providing deterrence against
conventional attack by North Korea, have conducted major annual military exercises. The latest exercise,Ulchi Freedom
Guardian, involves 25,000 personnel, including allies from nine countries representing both regional and global partners.
The Kim regime can have no doubts about US and allied resolve to protect South Korea from northern aggression and thus
Kim cannot hope to achieve a “quick victory” land grab on the southern Peninsula in order to reunite the Korean states. So
the first condition of conventional deterrence is met. Kim is also denied victory, knowing that South Korean and US
airpower will stop any attempt by his army to move south. This meets the second condition. And despite North Korea’s
excessive military manpower, Kim is more than outmatched by the superior technology of US and South Korean tanks,
aircraft, and most importantly, the integrated systems that provide real-time battlefield analysis as well as significant
logistical advantages. Kim could not hope to get far if he were to attack conventionally, despite his superior numbers, and
so the military balance on the Peninsula favors the South Korea-US alliance – particularly when one considers that Kim’s
recent actions have done much to alienate his one and only ally, China. Thus the third condition is met, and one can
conclude that the US-led alliance, which entails US troops and air forces stationed in South Korea, multiple annual
exercises, and weapons sales to the South Korean military, has done much to keep the Korean Peninsula stable and deter
northern aggression against the US ally in the south. This is a pattern that also covers other regions of the world, such as
Europe, but the US military cannot be present everywhere. The downsizing of US forces
since the end of the Cold War has resulted in fewer, rather than more, overseas bases – which once
allowed the forward positioning of forces called for by conventional deterrence theory. So how can the United
States conventionally deter new nuclear powers, rogue states, and non-state
actors with fewer forward-positioned troops? Gerson’s discussion of adversary-specific
deterrence is very similar to what nuclear dissuasion expert Jonathan Hagood calls regional dissuasion, whereby the
United States focuses on basing and on providing assistance to partners and allies to both assure their defense and
dissuade adversaries from aggression. Hagood suggests that there are five components of regional dissuasion: (1)
recognition of a geopolitical rival (such as Iran, in the case of the Gulf); (2) identification of potential adversary activities
that increase risks to security (nuclear proliferation is of particular interest in this regard); (3) recruiting regional allies
(such as the Gulf Cooperation Council, or its constituent states); (4) stationing US forces in the region; and finally, (5)
developing diplomatic, economic, and military policies that will dissuade the adversary from acting against the interests of
the United States, its partners, or its allies (Hagood 2005). As readers will see, a number of US activities in the Persian
Gulf – maintaining military bases, engaging in significant cooperation with Gulf states, and maintaining theater missile
defenses and a continuous naval presence – are designed to dissuade Iran and other potential actors from acting against
the best
the interests of the United States and its allies. Ships, intelligence, and missile defense In the short term, then,
way for the United States to deter adversaries is to ensure that necessary forces are in place in
regions of concern and that defense cooperation arrangements with partners and allies have
been reached. But in the future, as additional adversaries pursue nuclear weapons, the United States may risk
spreading its assets too thin. Therefore, in light of a potentially negative future proliferation environment, the United
States should take the following steps – which take into account existing deterrence constructs and would also provide
deterrence in those regions where the United States has not been able to employ forces in accordance with Hagood’s
guidelines for regional dissuasion. First, the United States must avoid any further reductions in naval forces. US Navy
aircraft carriers project conventional power more effectively than any other weaponry currently in the US inventory,
providing long-range strike capability in the vicinity of any carrier strike force. Nearly half the world’s population and a
majority of national capitals are near coasts and are reachable by naval power. The US Navy provides security to the global
commons, deterring piracy and ensuring the free movement of goods on the high seas. Naval aircraft in the vicinity of a
rogue-state actor involved in a regional war can use conventional weapons to quickly strike nuclear targets and prevent
nuclear escalation – as long as US intelligence is available to identify appropriate targets. Second (and correspondingly),
an essential priority for deterrence is to maintain intelligence assets that can provide the information needed for targeting
emerging nuclear powers’ weapons. Retired Air Force Lieutenant General David Deptula has advocated developing what
he terms the “‘combat cloud’ – an operating paradigm where information, data management, connectivity, and command
and control … are core mission priorities. The combat cloud treats every platform as a sensor, as well as an ‘effector,’ and
will require a [command-and-control] paradigm that enables automatic linking [and] seamless data transfer capabilities,
while being reliable, secure, and jam proof” (Deptula 2016). While this vision extends beyond intelligence, taking steps
toward achieving Deptula’s combat cloud should be a key priority in ensuring US information dominance in any
battlespace – particularly if an adversary is a new nuclear state that exhibits rogue behaviors. In that case, to prevent the
use of nuclear weapons, the strongest deterrence efforts are necessary. In the meantime, to prevent surprises and
minimize opportunities for nuclear proliferators or non-state actors to use nuclear weapons, use of today’s intelligence
capabilities should be prioritized. Third, missile defenses have become key to deterring missile attacks, whether nuclear or
conventional, by North Korea against the United States or by Iran against Europe. The United States has deployed its
THAAD system in Northeast Asia and the Persian Gulf. In Romania and Poland, the United States is building land
versions of its ship-based Aegis system – with capabilities similar to THAAD, but designed to guide Navy SM-3 missiles
against high-altitude targets. Additionally, the United States has built the Groundbased Midcourse Defense system in
Alaska and California to defend the US homeland from North Korean missile attack. US bases in both Asia and Europe are
also home to Patriot missile defense systems to protect against missile attack. These systems act as a layered missile-
defense shield. Ground-based Midcourse Defense provides the first layer, intended to intercept warheads in space, prior to
reentry; THAAD and SM-3 provide a second layer, whether land- or seabased, to perform high-altitude intercepts; and
Patriot missiles provide point defense against attacks on bases by theater ballistic missiles. Continued refinement of
missile defenses should continue, as should development of energy systems (lasers) to augment or eventually replace
them, so the United States can defend itself and its allies against attack when and where deterrence fails. Rogue powers
considering strikes against the United States or its allies will be reluctant to attack if their weapons are less likely to reach
their targets and if they know that retaliation will almost certainly follow. Therefore, the mere existence of missile defenses
has a deterrence-by-denial effect. Forward-deployed joint and coalition conventional forces, particularly
those with the right intelligence and missile-defense assets, provide
both deterrence and the capability to
compel actions when deterrence fails. But a need still exists to quickly respond to rogue
attacks, whether nuclear or conventional, when theater forces are not immediately available. For that
purpose, the United States should strongly consider further development of Conventional
Prompt Global Strike weapons – which, like ICBMs, will have very quick flight times
to targets. But they are also maneuverable, not limited to northern-tier basing, and much more
survivable than aging ICBMs. Such weapons may be armed using only kinetic energy, or employed with conventional
warheads. Conventional Prompt Global Strike systems consisting of hypersonic kill vehicles (now in the research and
development phase) could be launched, and maneuvered in flight to avoid the airspace of
major powers such as Russia and China, to strike targets anywhere in the world in
less than an hour. Such systems would provide the necessary firepower to defeat
nuclear rogue states contemplating nuclear use – or to curtail regional nuclear
exchanges that may have already begun, without escalating the conflict via
nuclear retaliation. Standing on two legs The US defense budget needs to focus on the
methods of conventional deterrence discussed above – but at the same time, the nuclear deterrent must be
modernized. The report by the National Defense Panel discussed earlier proposed modernizing all legs of the
existing triad – but also argued that such spending was unaffordable. In light of this discrepancy, I
propose, first of all, cancellation of the Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent , which is
designed to replace aging Minuteman III ICBMs with a new missile. Cancellation of this program will save the
Defense Department the projected replacement cost of at least $100 billion , and will also eliminate the annual
operating costs of the Minuteman fleet. Those who argue in favor of keeping land-based ICBMs focus
on the Cold War–inspired “sponge” argument, which suggested the need for keeping ICBMs in the triad
in order to absorb Russian ICBMs launched in a massive first strike, thus reducing the number of enemy missiles that
might strike US cities. But
such logic requires an assumption that Russia would launch a
deliberate, massive nuclear attack on the United States in order to disarm its ICBM force. Such
arguments were first advanced during an era of escalating warhead counts. Those counts no
longer apply because of the implementation of New START, which is reducing the numbers of launchers and
warheads in both Russian and US inventories. As mentioned previously, New START limits each side to 700 strategic
launchers. It
is actually puzzling that the United States, in order to conform to the 700-launcher
limit, has chosen to keep 400 Minuteman missiles while reducing numbers of ballistic missile
submarines and launch tubes. The Trident D5 missiles aboard the current inventory of Ohio-class nuclear submarines
are both more modern and accurate than their land-based counterparts, and more importantly, their location is usually
unknown to adversaries. The
submarine fleet moves stealthily in the depths of the sea, where it
cannot be targeted in a firststrike effort. On any given day, four or more submarines are operating, carrying
an average of 80 to 100 warheads each, in line with New START limitations (though the Ohio-class submarines currently
have the capacity for up to 160 warheads each). Elimination
of the Minuteman and its replacement
would allow the submarines to carry more warheads – or alternately, the United
States could field a larger force of nuclear bombers. In times of crisis, the bombers could be
placed on alert status, either on the ground or airborne, reducing their vulnerability to a first strike. Even more puzzling is
the fact that the Minuteman force (and its replacement) can only feasibly be aimed at one potential
adversary: Russia. As mentioned before, in order to strike any other existing or emerging nuclear power, the ICBMs
would need to overfly Russia due to their northern-tier basing in Montana, Wyoming, and North Dakota. When launched
from that region of the United States, the ballistic trajectories of the missiles require polar flight paths to reach most
destinations around the globe. Thus, if the United States were to retaliate against a North Korean or
Iranian attack, use of ICBMs would require overflight of Russian airspace en route to their targets,
perhaps causing the Russians to think that the U nited States had initiated an attack against
them. Preserving 400 of 700 launchers to strike only one adversary is, once again,
evidence of Cold War logic. With more than half of the current US nuclear inventory unavailable to deter
prospective nuclear rogue actors, the United States should refocus its efforts on a plan that enables
all 700 launchers to be available to target any emerging nuclear power. After all, Russia is only one
of nine states in the nuclear club, and several aspiring nuclear powers are already working toward
achieving the know-how and technological capabilities to build nuclear weapons of their own. By
the time upgrades to the US triad are in place, several more nations might have joined the nuclear club – so replacing
a Cold War triad with another Cold War triad is out of touch with future threats.
General James Cartwright, mentioned earlier, proposed the same idea in testimony before the Senate while serving as vice
chairman of the Joint Chiefs of Staff (Collina 2012). Cartwright, a former chief of US Strategic Command, agreed that
ICBMs deter only one potential adversary and that they tie up 400 of 700 launchers . And
while Russia remains the major nuclear power of most concern to the United States, the long
ago Cold War rivalry does not increase the likelihood of a Russian nuclear attack upon the
United States today. Even former Defense Secretary Perry has stated (Wilson and Williams 2016) that
“between our submarine forces, as they are modernized in particular, and our strategic bomber
forces, [ICBMs are] not needed. Any reasonable definition of deterrence will not
require them.” Modernizing bombers and submarines is expensive too, but makes more
sense – bombers and submarines can carry out conventional as well as nuclear roles .
Either can be used to launch non-nuclear cruise missiles. The bombers not only can carry heavy loads
of conventional weapons but can also be used to signal intent with forward deployments to
overseas bases in times of crisis. Recent flights of US bombers over South Korea are a signal to the Kim regime that
the United States is serious about defending the South and that it has the capability to remove North Korea’s nuclear
infrastructure by either nuclear or conventional means. Current Air
Force plans call for building 100 new
B-21 Raider bombers, which will replace aging B-52s and B-1s and augment the small B-2 force; the Navy
plans to build 12 new Columbia-class ballistic missile submarines. The submarines are the
hardest to- target leg of the triad and thus the most survivable. So replacing them makes
the most sense in a world where achieving nuclear zero is not currently possible, and where
major adversaries must still be deterred with a survivable nuclear retaliatory force.
(Bombers too become more survivable when airborne or dispersed in times of crisis.) The Minuteman missiles are now
being refurbished to remain operational until 2030. They can be phased out of the inventory at that time – or sooner, as
the nuclear deterrence construct is adjusted and as new bombers and submarines are built over the next decade. The
moral self A
major reason to include conventional weapons in the deterrence equation is to
counter any potential perception by an adversary that the United States, in order to avoid
crossing the nuclear threshold itself, may not be willing to retaliate against
nuclear use with US nuclear weapons. A conventional capability to rapidly respond to a
limited nuclear exchange – a conventional capability to remove an adversary’s remaining nuclear
forces – increases the complexity of an enemy’s decision-making equation. Though a rogue
state such as North Korea may doubt US resolve to use nuclear weapons, it must also be
made to doubt that it can succeed by engaging in nuclear coercion . That is, it must doubt it can
achieve successes via conventional means while depending on its own nuclear forces to deter nuclear or conventional
counteractions. Adversaries
must perceive grave reason to doubt their own ability to achieve
success through any conventional military action – let alone nuclear use. Still, a successful
US deterrence strategy needs to be backed up by resolve. If a nuclear-capable adversary
believes that gaps in US capabilities or an aversion to casualties in the United States may weaken
resolve, or if it doubts Washington’s commitments to allies and partners, it may be emboldened to act. As
argued in a 2001 report for the Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DFI International 2001), adversaries’
possession of nuclear weapons or other weapons of mass destruction “exacerbates the challenge of
conveying credible deterrence… . [S]ince credibility is the key to deterrence , the
emphasis must be on demonstrating improved capability and employing a
declaratory policy that produces clear commitment.” So the United States must accompany its
construct for conventional and nuclear deterrence with a declaratory policy. Such a policy would act as a red line letting
potential adversaries know, beyond any reasonable doubt, that the United States would act exactly as stated to defeat the
threat. A continuous forward presence of US forces – particularly aviation with precision-strike capabilities and excellent
intelligence capabilities regarding enemy nuclear weapon locations – is key to removing doubts. Carrier movements or
aircraft deployments – into regions where tensions are rising and the potential for nuclear use is elevated – can also
strengthen signaling and foreshadow further action. Moreover, if a new nuclear adversary poses a threat and US forces are
not within immediate striking distance, the threat of using Conventional Prompt Global Strike capabilities
against the adversary’s weapons (as well as against other critical targets important to a regime
contemplating nuclear use) could fill the gap. Thus Washington would be assured that it could
deny an adversary the ability to use nuclear weapons. The United States would
not need to resort to using nuclear weapons itself.

3. Only eliminating ICBMs can prevent prolif, accidents, nuclear

aggression, nuke terror, and boost US prestige – 400 billion in
savings solves every existential threat.
Doyle, PhD, 16
(James, InternationalSecurityStudies@UVA, FormerNonProlifSpecialist@LosAlamos, Better Ways to Modernise the US
Nuclear Arsenal, Survival, 58:4, 27-50)

The planned modernisation of the United States’ nuclear forces raises a number of national-
security dilemmas that demand the nation’s full attention. Nuclear weapons can deter potential
adversaries, but they also create the risk of a nuclear war that would destroy everything
the United States seeks to protect. Maintaining too few nuclear weapons could create
vulnerabilities, but building too many may lead to war by creating misperceptions of
American intentions or consuming defence resources that are needed to
address other urgent threats. Effective strategy therefore requires a balance of forces
that can survive enemy attack and deliver devastating retaliation while promoting peaceful,
stable relationships among states and minimising the chances of nuclear war, nuclear
terrorism and further nuclear proliferation. Even if the United States can achieve this strategic
balance in the short term, changes will still be required in the long run. Nuclear weapons cannot
remain the ‘foundation’ of US national security indefinitely .1 As long as
Washington declares them to be so, other states will continue to seek them,
complicating and destabilising delicate global deterrence relationships, possibly to the
point of failure. There are no small mistakes with nuclear weapons. Constantly expanding nuclear
arsenals carry with them a similarly expanding threat of nuclear proliferation and
nuclear terrorism that could kill or harm millions of innocent people and poison an urban area
for centuries. It is clear that the United States requires a careful, forward-looking nuclear strategy to achieve both its own
security goals and those of its partners and allies. Successive administrations have laid the groundwork for such a strategy,
but the Pentagon, political leaders clinging to false notions of ‘nuclear victory’ and
powerful special interests that profit lavishly from the nuclear-weapons
business have blocked the implementation of a prudent nuclear strategy. Proof of this failure
can be seen in the way the issue of nuclear modernisation has been handled. Plans are in motion to spend at
least $1 trillion2 to completely replace all three legs of the US nuclear triad – the country’s fleet of
nuclear bombers, its ballistic-missile submarines, and its land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) and their
nuclear warheads – with a new generation of weapons that will remain in service until 2080 or beyond. This will include
the acquisition of 100 new B-21 strategic stealth bombers, 12 new Ohio-class replacement (ORP) missile submarines, 400
new ICBMs, and at least 1,000 new nuclear-armed cruise missiles. This flawed plan has placed the United States on a path
towards recreating Cold War nuclear overkill that will squander defence resources on the wrong threats and imperil the
country’s national security. Strategic disconnect The
first obvious problem with the United States’ grandiose
nuclear modernisation plans is that no
one knows how they will be paid for without short-
changing essential conventional military capabilities. On 27 April 2016, Secretary of
Defense Ash Carter affirmed to Congress that current plans requiring the US Navy to support the cost of new nuclear-
missile submarines out of expected funds will decimate the nation’s 30-year conventional military shipbuilding
programme.3 Referring to the massive ‘bow wave’ of nuclear spending set to peak in the 2020s and 2030s,4 Pentagon
Comptroller Mike McCord said, ‘I don’t know of a good way for us to solve this issue’.5 It is hard to see how spending
$1trn on replacement nuclear forces at the expense of weakened conventional military
forces and declining readiness – outcomes that would undercut America’s
influence in world affairs and erode vital alliances – constitutes an effective
national-security strategy. In addition to threatening US national-defence accounts with bankruptcy, current
nuclear-modernisation plans undermine major elements of a sound nuclear strategy. The United States’ nuclear strategy is
articulated by official government documents that describe why the country has nuclear weapons, what force levels are
desirable and what roles these forces play in the country’s overall national-security strategy. Congress and the Pentagon
appear to have rejected this strategy without forging consensus around a new strategic direction. An urgent task for the
next president will be to undertake a careful review of the country’s nuclear programmes to better align them with security
priorities established in official guidance. One possibility would be to conduct a new Nuclear Posture Review. The last one,
completed in 2010, provided a sound basis for policy. Whatever form this assessment actually takes, it will be too
important to leave to the Pentagon alone. Instead, it should be a broad, multi-agency process within the US government
that includes close consultation with American allies and partners. The White House should establish the overall criteria
that are used to evaluate policy and force-structure options. Several key criteria from existing guidance – specifically the
2010 Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), the 2012 Department of Defense document ‘Sustaining U.S. Global Leadership:
Priorities for 21st Century Defense’, the 2013 Nuclear Employment Guidance, the 2014 Quadrennial Defense Review and
the 2015 National Security Strategy of the United States6 – should be carried forward and strengthened during such a
reassessment. These include a range of objectives and considerations for US nuclear forces, including
deterring attacks on the US homeland and US allies, maintaining strategic stability with
Russia, supporting nuclear counter-terrorist and non-proliferation policies, and continuing to
reduce the role of nuclear weapons in US national-security strategy in general, and in deterring
nonnuclear attacks against the United States or its allies more specifically. The United States should also
continue to strive for a policy in which the sole purpose of its nuclear weapons is to deter a
nuclear attack against either itself or its military allies. Unfortunately, major elements of the current
plan for a like-for-like replacement of the entire nuclear triad do not satisfy these
criteria, and even undermine them in some cases. For example, the continued basing of upgraded
US nuclear weapons in Turkey and Belgium seems unwise considering the escalating terrorist activity in these nations.
Doing so could only heighten, rather than diminish, the risk of nuclear terrorism. Yet current plans call for the forward
deployment in 2022 of the upgraded US B61-12 guided nuclear bomb to NATO bases in Europe, to replace older versions
of this bomb as they are retired, despite concerns about the levels of security these bases provide.7 Similar concerns, along
with changes in the regional security environment, led to the withdrawal of US nuclear weapons from Greece in 2001, one
of two bases in Germany in 2005 and the UK in 2006.8 In 2008, an internal US Air Force investigation determined that
‘most sites’ currently used for deploying nuclear weapons in Europe do not meet Department of Defense security
requirements.9 In 2010, a group of activists managed to enter the Kleine Brogel Air Base in Belgium, where the US Air
Force currently deploys 10–20 nuclear bombs.10 Acknowledging that security at the United States’ two largest overseas
nuclear-weapons bases, Incirlik Air Base in Turkey and Aviano Air Base in Italy, is no longer adequate to counter the
threat posed by terrorism, the US is in the process of upgrading security at these bases. Upgrades are also planned for
bases in Belgium, the Netherlands and Germany.11 Yet even with these upgrades, it is unclear that security at NATO
nuclear bases will be able to keep pace with increases in the terrorist threat. Meanwhile, US nuclear weapons in Europe
are militarily useless. They serve as a political symbol of Alliance cohesion and a reminder that military conflict with a
NATO member carries catastrophic risks, but the nuclear forces of France and the United Kingdom could send the same
message, with US nuclear forces based at sea or even confined to the United States. The US government must ask itself
whether the marginal political contribution that forwardbased NATO nuclear weapons make to deterrence remains
justifiable at a time when terrorists are conducting deadly attacks in NATO states that host nuclear weapons. A nuclear
strategy that truly seeks to minimise the chances of nuclear terrorism must review current plans to send the new B61-12 to
Europe. These weapons could be produced as planned, but kept in storage in the United States and deployed to NATO
only as required in a crisis. Trade-offs must also be made between spending on nuclear-forces modernisation and other
national-security capabilities. Nuclear-security programmes such as counter-nuclear-smuggling efforts, nuclear-material
detection, nuclear-weapons protection and accounting, nuclear search teams, emergency response and foreign aid for
nuclear security are intended to directly reduce the nuclear-terrorist threat. If funding for these programmes is cut
because comprehensive nuclear modernisation has been given higher priority, the threat of nuclear terrorism may
increase. Unfortunately, the president’s FY17 budget, which supports full triad modernisation, promises to continue a
trend in evidence since 2014 of short-changing nuclear-security programmes.12 For example, funds for the Department of
Energy’s global nuclear-material security programme were reduced from $426.8 million in FY16 to $337.1m in FY17.13
Funds made available by trimming current nuclear-modernisation plans could be shifted to these programmes, which
directly address the threat of nuclear terrorism. Rethinking the LRSO Another example of the disconnect between official
strategic guidance and the current modernisation plan can be found in the decision to develop and deploy a new nuclear-
armed cruise missile – currently designated the longrange stand-off (LRSO) weapon – to replace the existing AGM-86B
nuclear air-launched cruise missile.14 Plans call for the acquisition of 1,000–1,100 missiles at a projected cost of $9
billion. The new missiles are to enter service in 2025 and remain operational for at least 30 years. This missile also
requires a new nuclear warhead, bringing total programme costs to an estimated $30bn. Advocates say the LRSO, which
can be used to produce a low-yield nuclear explosion, is required to make US nuclear threats ‘more credible’.15 But this
category of nuclear weapons has long been controversial for its potential to destabilise the nuclear balance. The US and
Russia banned ground-launched nuclear cruise missiles in 1987, and the US Navy retired its sea-based versions in 2011. In
2013, then-UK defence secretary Philip Hammond stated that ‘a cruise (missile)-based deterrent would carry significant
risk of miscalculation and unintended escalation’.16 Thus, the United Kingdom decided that same year not to pursue sea-
launched cruise missiles, restricting its nuclear forces to ballistic missiles. Nuclear cruise missiles can be launched without
warning, and it is impossible for a targeted state, or a state that believes it has been targeted, to distinguish between cruise
missiles that carry a nuclear warhead and cruise missiles that carry a conventional warhead. This may lead to the
particular risk of misidentification and thus to retaliation with nuclear arms, with all the associated catastrophic
consequences. Once launched, cruise missiles are hard to detect, leaving only limited time for a state under attack to
evaluate the threat and decide on a response. This further increases the risk of a nuclear-weapons exchange.17 There are
no targets for the LRSO that cannot be covered by other weapons systems, both nuclear and conventional. Nuclear-armed
ballistic missiles fired from the United States or its submarines at sea could penetrate any existing air defences and
retaliate for a nuclear strike against the US homeland or a US ally. Moreover, the US possesses rapidly expanding
capabilities to strike targets with existing and planned conventional cruise missiles launched from multiple aircraft types.
In fact, the US Air Force is fielding thousands of new conventional cruise missiles that provide all the stand-off capability
needed to keep bombers out of harm’s way, puncture enemy air defences, and destroy fixed and mobile soft, medium and
hard targets with high accuracy – the same missions defence officials say the LRSO is needed for. All this suggests that the
questionable advantage to deterrence from US nuclear-armed cruise missiles is not worth the risk. The decision to acquire
a nuclear-armed LRSO in addition to these capabilities implies that current US strategy is to retain options for tactical
nuclear strikes early in a conflict. Yet maintaining concepts and capabilities for nuclear employment intended to
accomplish tactical warfighting purposes that could just as effectively be accomplished by conventional weapons runs
contrary to guidance contained in the 2010 NPR and the 2013 Nuclear Employment Guidance. For example, the 2010
NPR states that one of the five purposes of US nuclear strategy is to ‘reduce the role of U.S. nuclear weapons in U.S.
national security strategy’.18 The moment at which advocates claim a nuclear-armed cruise missile would be necessary
lies at the threshold between conventional and nuclear war. This is precisely the phase of conflict at which official US
guidance calls for a reduction in the role of nuclear weapons. Development and deployment of the LRSO contradicts this
guidance. Proliferation concerns Current nuclear-modernisation plans also undermine US nuclear
nonproliferation policy. Ultimately, there is an unsustainable political tension between
the willingness of states to refrain indefinitely from acquiring nuclear weapons and the
prolonged unwillingness of the nuclear-weapons states to eliminate their arsenals.19
Without unambiguous commitments and concrete actions on the part of weapons-possessing
states to reduce the role and size of their nuclear arsenals, other states will inevitably
leave the Non- Proliferation Treaty (NPT) and acquire these weapons. The 2010 US NPR acknowledges
this, stating: By working to reduce the salience of nuclear weapons in international affairs and
moving step-by-step toward eliminating them, we can reverse the growing expectation that we are destined to live in a
world with more nuclear-armed states, and decrease incentives for additional countries to hedge
against an uncertain future by pursuing nuclear options of their own .20 Certainly, excessive US
nuclear-modernisation plans create incentives for countries such as China to
expand their nuclear arsenals and place their forces on alert. Former US defense secretary
William Perry has gone so far as to warn that ‘we’re now at … the brink of a new nuclear arms
race’.21 When a country possessing nuclear weapons significantly expands its arsenal, this is referred to as vertical
proliferation, a phenomenon that can produce a chain reaction among other nuclear-
weapons-possessing nations. For example, the size and posture of China’s nuclear arsenal bears directly
on India’s nuclear-acquisition decisions, just as the size of India’s arsenal influences Pakistan’s nuclear force structure.
Current US plans could easily trigger vertical proliferation in other countries, an
outcome that directly contradicts the intention expressed in the 2010 NPR. The United States must also consider its
obligations under the NPT. According to Article VI of the treaty, all member states are obligated ‘to pursue negotiations in
good faith on effective measures relating to cessation of the nuclear arms race at an early date and to nuclear
disarmament, and on a treaty on general and complete disarmament under strict and effective international control’. In
addition, the final documents from the 2000 and 2010 NPT Review Conferences affirmed ‘the unequivocal undertaking of
the nuclear-weapon States to accomplish the total elimination of their nuclear arsenals leading to nuclear disarmament, to
which all States parties are committed under article VI’.22 Clearly, the United States’ long-term nuclear modernisation
plan, as currently articulated, is inconsistent with the NPT’s core objective of banning the use of nuclear energy for
military purposes. The next opportunity to demonstrate progress on the non-proliferation commitments contained within
the United States and
the NPT will come at the treaty-review conference scheduled for 2020. Over the past 25 years,
Russia have made dramatic reductions in the size of their nuclear arsenals. This progress
is in danger of coming to a halt due to a lack of national plans to reduce arsenals below
New START levels, or to negotiate additional nuclear-arms-control agreements. If the United States does
not reduce or curtail any of its current modernisation programmes, its credibility on non-
proliferation issues will be further undermined. This will have negative
consequences for its ability to persuade other countries to join efforts to deny
technology and materials to potential nuclear proliferators. A final element of the current nuclear-
modernisation programme that undermines official guidance is the plan to maintain approximately 2,000 deployed
nuclear warheads beyond the expiration of the 2010 New START treaty. This treaty limits both the United States and
Russia to no more than 1,550 accountable, operationally deployed nuclear warheads. The actual size of deployed nuclear
arsenals is somewhat higher, at perhaps 2,000 warheads, because strategic aircraft will have more warheads available to
them than the single one ascribed by New START counting rules.23 Both countries will retain several thousand reserve
nuclear warheads and non-strategic warheads as well.24 The New START treaty expires in February 2021 unless extended
for five years by agreement of both parties. Current US nuclear-modernisation plans call for rebuilding nuclear forces with
more than 2,000 deployed warheads during the years 2025–35 and beyond. However, the official 2013 Nuclear
Employment Guidance report concluded that the US can meet its nuclear-deterrence needs and those of its allies with a
force of 1,000–1,100 accountable nuclear weapons regardless of the nuclear forces Russia and China retain over the next
several decades. The report further states that ‘U.S. policy is to achieve a credible deterrent, with the lowest possible
number of nuclear weapons, consistent with our current and future security requirements and those of our Allies and
partners.’25 Again, current modernisation plans as reflected in statements by Pentagon officials and in the president’s
2017 budget are inconsistent with existing guidance. The administration’s preference would be to negotiate another formal
treaty with Russia establishing verifiable lower warhead totals, but the 2013 guidance indicates that US
security
would not be weakened if Washington made such reductions to its nuclear arsenal
without corresponding moves by Russia. China’s nuclear arsenal, at approximately 260 warheads, remains
much smaller than both America’s and Russia’s. The strategic logic of possessing 2,000 deployed
warheads when 1,100 provide sufficient deterrence has not been articulated. Rightsizing US
nuclear forces In seeking to make US nuclear strategy more consistent with both existing guidance and
long-term US national-security objectives, one of the first tasks should be to carry out a fundamental
review of the need for maintaining three independent means of delivering nuclear
weapons. Military officials often make the claim that each leg of the US nuclear triad offers unique
and essential capabilities, all of which are required for effective deterrence. But a balanced approach
that includes consideration of the potentially negative implications of maintaining the triad
highlights the need to evaluate a more flexible range of policy choices. The triad was conceived
during the Cold War. Advances in military technology, particularly in low-observable or ‘stealth’
technology, and dramatic improvements in the accuracy of nuclear weapons have provided capabilities to
bombers and submarines that were previously the sole preserve of ICBMs. For example, both
submarines and stealth aircraft can penetrate advanced air defences and deliver nuclear
weapons with the accuracy needed to destroy even hardened Russian missile silos or command
centres. These platforms are also mobile, and are far less vulnerable to a pre-emptive strike
than are fixed ICBM silos. Some analysts outside government have called for reductions in, or even the
elimination of, the US ICBM force for both fiscal and strategic reasons. For
example, the Global Zero Commission, in a study led by former commander of the US Joint Chiefs of Staff James
Cartwright, has argued for the elimination of the ICBMforce as excessive for deterrence and
inherently destabilising and risk-prone. Because ICBMs are based in fixed silos that are vulnerable to
destruction in an attack, they are heavily dependent upon ‘launch on warning’ to survive and
retaliate in some scenarios. As a result, according to the report, ICBMs exacerbate the risk that the
United States might launch its weapons on false warning.26 Former US secretary of defense William
Perry also advocates the phased retirement of ICBMs, which he claims are simply too easy to launch on
bad information and would be the most likely source of an accidental nuclear war .
He has referred to the ICBM as ‘destabilising’ in that it invites an attack from another
power.27 The ICBM force has also been plagued by poor leadership performance and human-
reliability problems in recent years, an apparently ongoing trend with alarming implications for the
safety and security of this leg of the triad. For example, in April 2013, 19 launch officers with the 91st
Missile Wing at Minot Air Force Base, North Dakota, were taken off duty and given weeks of remedial training after being
found unfit to perform. The officer in charge of crew training and proficiency was fired. Meanwhile, an internal Air Force
review of security problems at Malmstrom Air Force Base, Montana, obtained under the Freedom of Information Act,
revealed that the base had failed an inspection in 2013 because security forces did not respond adequately to a simulated
hostile takeover of a silo housing a nuclear missile.28 In October 2013, the Air Force removed Major-General Michael
Carey from command of the 20th Air Force, which is responsible for the entire Minuteman III missile force, for
embarrassing, drunken behaviour in Russia. In January 2014, dozens of missile-launch officers were implicated in a
cheating scandal at Malmstrom and were stripped of their certification in what the Air Force called the largest such breach
of integrity in the nuclear force. The cheating involved the monthly test of their knowledge of how to operate the missiles.
That scandal was revealed as part of a drug-use investigation that involved three ICBM launch officers. On 22 January
2016, the Air Force disclosed that errors by three airmen dealing with problems on a Minuteman III missile in its launch
silo caused an undisclosed accident that damaged the missile. On 18 March 2016, the Air Force admitted that 14 security-
force airmen at the Francis E. Warren nuclear-missile base in Wyoming were under investigation for alleged illegal drug
activity.29 Considering that this is the part
of the triad that is kept on the highest level of alert,
comprising powerful nuclear warheads that cannot be recalled or destroyed in flight ,
persistent evidence of poor safety and an inadequate security culture within the ICBM force
is another reason to consider the elimination of this leg of the triad. In addition, the
decommissioning of the US ICBM arsenal, currently the country’s most automated prompt-use nuclear-
weapons system, would eliminate the chance that it could be the object of a cyber
attack. Such an attack could sabotage the system, cause a serious accident, initiate an
unauthorised launch or masquerade as an attack from a potential adversary such as Russia
or China in order to catalyse a conflict. At a hearing of the Senate Armed Services Committee on 12 March
2013, General C. Robert Kehler, then head of US Strategic Command (STRATCOM), said he was ‘very
concerned with the potential of a cyber-related attack on our nuclear command and
control and on the weapons systems themselves’.30 Alternative force structures As already discussed,
current US plans call for rebuilding the entire nuclear triad. Yet any review of US nuclear modernisation should consider a
broader range of force-structure options and apply additional evaluation criteria to the nation’s nuclear strategy. At least
three alternatives to current plans are worth considering.31 These are summarised in Table 1, along with current plans.
Option 1 would involve the retention of a triad of nuclear delivery vehicles comprising eight Ohio-class replacement
ballistic-missile submarines (SSBNs) instead of 12, 300 replacement ICBMs instead of 400, and a new strategic bomber
and cruise missile. This alternative force structure would support 1,100–1,500 operationally deployed strategic warheads
according to counting rules used by the New START treaty. Also included is the forward deployment of B61-12 US nuclear
bombs to NATO members in Europe. Option 2 calls for the elimination of the ICBM element of the
triad and the procurement of ten next-generation SSBNs and 80 (instead of 100) new strategic bombers, but without a
nuclear cruise missile. This force could field 1,100 or fewer operationally deployed strategic warheads depending on
submarine-launched ballistic-missile (SLBM) warhead loading. Option 2 includes the production of the B61-12 nuclear
bomb, but not its forward deployment to NATO. Option 3 would create a force structure that
eliminates the ICBM portion of the triad and establish a combined sea-based ballistic-missile force based
on eight Virginia-class submarines and six Ohio-class replacement SSBNs. This force would include 80 new B-21 aircraft
without a nuclear-armed cruise missile and field 750 operationally deployed strategic warheads. All three of these force-
structure options would take 30 years to implement. They all include a new fleet of strategic bomber aircraft, but options 2
and 3 would not include a new nuclear-armed cruise missile for this aircraft as currently envisaged by current plans and
option 1. Significant
fiscal advantages could be realised from all three options, but specifically
from options 2 and 3. In addition to the savings generated by the cancellation of the
Minuteman III replacement programme and the LRSO cruise missile, the costs associated
with the warheads for these systems would also be eliminated. Expensive life-extension programmes
for the W78 and W87 ICBM warheads, and the W80 cruise-missile warhead, could be cancelled and the warheads retired.
These options could provide significant cost savings over the life cycle of the nuclear stockpile and its production
infrastructure, as indicated by cost estimates for the current modernisation plan as described in Table 2. For example,
options 2 and 3 could generate savings of close to $200bn over 30 years by
cutting the LRSO programme (worth $20–30bn), the W80-4 warhead ($7.1–9.7bn), interoperable warheads (IW 1-3, at
$48.4–71.2bn), and the replacement of ground-based strategic deterrent Minuteman III ($62bn). By reducing the number
of new missile submarines to ten, eight or six from the current plan to build 12, the US would also save at least $5bn per
submarine. All of the postulated
nuclear-force-structure options, including the current plan, would
provide a large, diverse, flexible and responsive nuclear arsenal encompassing multiple
options for the employment of nuclear weapons. Hundreds of nuclear warheads of varying destructive yields
(from a fraction of a kiloton to over 400 kilotons) would be available for use even after an attack from Russia, the United
States’ strongest potential adversary. All of the options provide the means for limited and discriminate nuclear strikes in
any region of the globe. In addition, the United States retains – and indeed is dramatically expanding – its ability to strike
effectively and limit damage with non-nuclear weapons and missile defences in response to low-level nuclear employment
(1–3 nuclear weapons of less than 10 kilotons) by adversaries. Finally, all proposed modernisation options allow the US to
rapidly expand its arsenal of deliverable warheads if called for by changes in the security environment. This could be done
by adding additional warheads to intercontinental missiles (to SLBMs in options 2 and 3) and deploying reserve warheads
currently in storage. As mentioned, all four of the modernisation options presented here will take at least 30 years to
implement. Given the rapidly
evolving security environment, it is unlikely that nuclear forces
based on the current triad will remain an optimal force structure over this time horizon. Yet this is
what current modernisation plans, and to a large degree option 1, envision. Former US defense secretary William Perry
has asserted that
a triad of independent means of delivering nuclear weapons is not essential for a credible
and reliable deterrent.32 Strategic stability only requires that US nuclear forces
are able to survive any attempt to destroy them and still inflict unacceptable
damage on the attacker. US nuclear forces have this capability today, and recent Pentagon analysis confirms that
even the complete fulfilment of Russia’s and China’s nuclear-modernisation plans over the
next 10–15 years will not negate this capability .33 This is largely because of the US fleet of
Ohio-class ballistic-missile submarines and their planned replacement beginning in 2030. All of the
modernisation options posited here include maintaining this submarine force. Comparing options When evaluating
nuclear-force-structure options, the key factors of deterrent capability, survivability, consistency with declared strategy,
compliance with existing treaties, safety, security and effectiveness will remain paramount. However, strategic advantages
could be gained by applying additional criteria. For example, nuclear forces should represent a prudent investment of
finite defence resources given the full spectrum of likely security threats, including non-nuclear threats. Defence budgets
are not limitless, and nuclear weapons cannot address all the threats Americans face. Moreover, nuclear forces and
strategy should support new initiatives for nuclear arms-control agreements. Nuclear forces that are inherently dual-use,
such as strategic aircraft and some submarine operations, should be capable of making a maximal contribution to
conventional deterrence and military operations. Finally, because of the rapidly changing nature of military technology,
nuclear strategy should have the flexibility to support future innovation in strategic forces. While providing an adequate,
even excessive, capability to deter a range of plausible nuclear threats, current
modernisation plans and
option 1 are not fully consistent with the United States’ articulated nuclear posture and
employment guidance. Specifically, certain elements of these modernisation options undermine
strategic stability with Russia and China, offer weak support for non-
proliferation and efforts to reduce the risk of nuclear terrorism, and fail either
to clearly reduce the roles of nuclear weapons in US strategy or to allow the country to
maintain deterrence at the lowest possible level of nuclear forces. Nor do they effectively meet the supplemental criteria.
In particular, current
plans do not represent a prudent investment of finite defence
resources given the full spectrum of likely security threats to the United States and its allies,
including non-nuclear threats such as terrorism, cyber attacks, pandemics,
environmental degradation and mass migration. Options 1–3 each require progressively
smaller budgets for nuclear-forces modernisation over the next 30 years, and would result in smaller forces that cost less
to maintain and operate. They are therefore preferable to current plans that are simply not executable without cutting
important conventional forces in the fiscally constrained environment forecast by most experts. In fact, according
to
cost models created by the Center for American Progress, options 2 and 3, which save an
estimated $432bn and $443bn respectively compared to current plans over 30 years, would
eliminate the need for most trade-offs between nuclear and conventional forces if overall defence budgets remain at
current levels.34 They
would also allow some of these savings to be directed towards other
national-security priorities. Options 2 and 3 also have features that are more consistent with
official statements of the posture and purposes of US nuclear forces. For example, several features
of options 2 and 3 would clearly demonstrate that it is not Washington’s
intent to negate Russia’s strategic nuclear deterrent , and that the US seeks a
mutual deterrent relationship at the lowest possible level of nuclear forces. In particular, a
decision to forgo deployment of the LRSO nuclear cruise missile as called for by options 2 and 3 would reduce Russian
concerns that the US seeks to negate its deterrent or destabilise the strategic military relationship. This is because the
LRSO is designed for surprise nuclear attacks early in a conflict against targets that could be defeated with conventional
weapons. Ideally, a US offer to cancel the LRSO could be part of a new arms-control initiative seeking an agreement
sometime after 2017 to ban all nuclear-armed cruise missiles. Sweden and Switzerland have already proposed such an
initiative at the United Nations.35 In addition, retirement
of the Minuteman III force, as called for by
options 2 and 3, would largely remove Russian concerns that its land-based missile
force, which carries most of its nuclear warheads, could be destroyed in a US surprise attack.
Without the 400 powerful warheads on the Minuteman III, the US could not expect to attack
Russia’s strategic forces and retain enough reserve weapons to deter or defeat a Russian
retaliation with its surviving forces. Elimination of the ICBM leg of the US triad would also
reduce incentives for Russia to complete development and deployment of
the ten-warhead Sarmat ICBM. This could create an opportunity to extend New
START after 2020, and to negotiate a new round of reductions to strategic delivery vehicles
and deployed warheads. One objective of such negotiations could be to formalise limits of approximately 1,000
START-accountable warheads on 600 or fewer strategic delivery vehicles, and to limit ICBMs mounted with multiple
independently targeted re-entry vehicles (MIRVs). This would require Russia to limit to a small number the mobile and
silo-based ICBMs that carry MIRVs and to limit the number of warheads on each missile, a move that would significantly
reduce its arsenal of prompt-use warheads. Implementation of option 2 or 3 could create other arms-
control opportunities. Russia has recently stated that it would be interested in further arms reductions if
they included NATO nuclear forces.36 Options 2 and 3 call for the eventual removal of NATO nuclear forces from
Belgium, Germany, Turkey, Italy and the Netherlands. If NATO indicated a willingness to adopt these plans, Russia
might be willing to agree to cancel its new nuclear ground-launched cruise
missile, pull its tactical nuclear weapons back from European borders and
pledge never to deploy nuclear weapons in Crimea or Kaliningrad . In the case of
the LRSO, development of a conventionally armed missile could go forward if required, but the W80-4 warhead could be
delayed, and only developed if Russia refused to negotiate a new, cooperative nuclear posture with NATO that de-
emphasised the role of nuclear weapons. Options
2 and 3 are also preferable in terms of decreasing
the risk of nuclear terrorism, for several reasons. Firstly, they would reduce the number of locations for US and
NATO nuclear weapons, thus reducing the number of facilities that terrorists might target to acquire or sabotage a nuclear
weapon. Secondly, they would reduce incentives for Russia and China to forward
deploy non-strategic nuclear weapons, or to place more weapons on alert or in a
launch-on-warning posture, outcomes that could create more opportunities for nuclear
terrorism in those countries. Finally, funds made available by reduced spending on
nuclear forces could be shifted to programmes that directly address the threat of
nuclear terrorism by, for example, directly countering terrorist activities and increasing security for nuclear
weapons and materials globally. With respect to supporting innovation in nuclear strategy and force posture, current
modernisation plans will lock the US into replicating the basic structure of its Cold War nuclear arsenal. Yet uncertainty
and potential technological shifts during the lengthy period that will be needed to deploy the next generation of US
strategic forces suggest that new design philosophies should be considered. One such philosophy could be to maximise the
contribution that expensive nuclear-weapon platforms with long service lives can make to non-nuclear military
operations. This approach would attach less value to single-purpose delivery systems such as nuclear-armed ICBMs and
more value to multi-purpose assets such as strategic aircraft, dual-capable naval platforms, and intelligence, surveillance
and reconnaissance (ISR) capabilities that are designed to support both nuclear and non-nuclear missions. In terms of
weapon-system construction, this design approach would seek to optimise the ability of major dual-capable platforms not
just to contribute to non-nuclear missions but to be easily converted to solely non-nuclear use as developments in the
security environment or new armscontrol agreements allowed. It would also attempt to anticipate or offset trends in
defence technology that could increase the vulnerability of US nuclear-delivery systems or prevent them from executing
missions in disputed battlespaces. A second design philosophy could be called ‘designing for
denuclearisation’. This would be based on the assumption that the goals of nuclear non-
proliferation, reducing the threat of nuclear terrorism and the eventual elimination of nuclear weapons
will remain key objectives of US and allied national-security strategy, and possibly even increase in
importance in the decades ahead. The philosophy would have broad implications for procurement decisions across the full
range of nuclear-weapons infrastructure, including nuclear-warhead production and dismantlement facilities, strategic
nuclear-delivery platforms, arms-control-verification and monitoring technology, and dual-purpose systems such as
aircraft and cruise missiles. Adoption of this approach would depend on the evolution of the security
environment, but would also signal a desire on the part of the US to lead and shape that
evolution. In essence, designing for denuclearization would be similar to a hedging strategy, because it would seek to
provide US nuclear-weapons infrastructure and operational forces with characteristics that could facilitate verified arms-
control agreements, increase transparency, improve strategic stability and simplify conversion to non-nuclear missions.
Options 2 and 3 are more consistent with this approach as compared to existing plans and option 1.
For example, the removal of ICBMs from silos could be easily verified using satellite or other
airborne imagery. Under option 3, nuclear missiles could be easily removed from Virginia-class attack submarines –
the boats would require only minor modification to be certified as conventional-only platforms. In addition, if the security
environment improved, it would be less costly to complete the construction of unfinished Virginia-class boats as non-
nuclear-weapon platforms.

4. The plan shifts the U.S. to a ‘deterrence only’ strategy that

saves billions and prevents accidental nuclear war – all other
measures fall short.
Sleight, MA, and Hartung 19
(Jessica, Director@GlobalZero, Asia-PacificPolicysStudies@UniversitySanFransisco, William,
Arms+SecurityProjectDirector@CenterForInternationalPolicy, 8-6, https://www.defenseone.com/ideas/2019/08/who-
needs-icbms/158957/)

The GlobalZero plan would shift U.S. nuclear strategy from one that engages in planning for
elaborate and dangerous nuclear
warfighting to one that establishes the nuclear arsenal as a
second-strike force meant to deter nuclear attacks against the U.S. and its allies – a
“deterrence-only” strategy. This could be achieved with five new ballistic missile
submarines and a backup force of 40 nuclear-capable bombers – a total of 640 deployed
nuclear weapons and 450 in reserve. The new approach would be grounded in a policy of no first use of
nuclear weapons, which would provide a critical margin of safety against the rash or accidental launch of nuclear weapons
in a crisis. An estimate by the Center for International Policy’s Sustainable Defense Task Force suggests that an
approach along the lines proposed by Global Zero could save over $100 billion over
the next decade – money that could be used for other urgent national needs. Part of the
savings could be used to improve the nation’s vulnerable nuclear command, control and
communication systems, elements critical to a survivable and credible deterrent. Based on analysis of credible
estimates of Pentagon nuclear planning, Global Zero found that a no-first-use policy would improve global
stability and U.S. security, reducing the risk of nuclear war without diminishing the United States’ ability to
in order to show commitment
deter nuclear threats to or attacks on itself or its allies. But

to such a policy, the U.S. would need to go beyond words; it

would need also to change to the U.S. nuclear force structure and move
away from a first-strike posture. Taking ICBMs off high alert and phasing them out over
the next ten years would not only improve no-first-use credibility and transparency , it would
increase presidential launch decision time – which could now be as short as six minutes – thereby
reducing the risk of nuclear use. The U.S. Air Force has 400 ICBMs sitting in silos in the
middle of the country on high alert, readyto launch within minutes of receiving the order, vulnerable
to an incoming nuclear first strike. U.S. officials, who are still working from the Cold
War playbook, argue that they provide an opportunity cost for an adversary who would
need to “waste” nuclear weapons on ICBMs so the U.S. can’t use them to retaliate. Not
only is each silo a target for a potential enemy, it’s also an incentive for the U.S.to use
these weapons before they lose them, encouraging preemptive use in a
conflict or launch on warning of an incoming attack. There is already a record of instances
of false alarms, from a flock of geese to a computer chip malfunction to the exercise mistaken for a real alert in
Hawaii last year. The dangers presented by “use or lose” ICBMs are compounded by
their redundancy. Ballistic missile submarines – the most survivable leg of the nuclear
arsenal, virtually undetectable at sea with no known credible threat – can provide a credible
deterrent force. As a hedge against future advances in anti-submarine capabilities, the United States would keep a
reserve force of bombers. ICBMs are simply unnecessary . Moreover, U.S. planners can look for
more non-nuclear options as they forge their war plans. Conventional and cyber options are better
suited to hit certain targets traditionally reserved for nuclear weapons, and encourage
de-escalation of a conflict before it crosses the nuclear threshold. Any military
value ICBMs may have held in the past is now outweighed by the inherent
risk of use – by accident, miscalculation or on false warning of an incoming
attack.

5. Only the plan makes CPGS effective.

Shull, MA, 5
(Todd C., SecurityStudies@NavalPostgraduateSchool, USAF major, StrategyCheif@AirForceSpaceCommand,
MS@UNorthDakota, September, https://apps.dtic.mil/dtic/tr/fulltext/u2/a439830.pdf)

5. Nuclear ICBM Divestiture An opportunity was missed in 1994 for the Air Force to divest itself from
land- based nuclear ICBMs which resulted in the estimated $5.5 billion programs to refurbish various
components of the Minuteman III.439 In the near future, the Air Force will be face a similar decision, this
time on whether to proceed with the Land Based Strategic Deterrent (LBSD). The Air Force should
take this opportunity to pursue land-based conventional PGS capabilities in
accordance with the New Triad. Funding for LBSD should be reprogrammed into providing a
responsive space launch capability for that supports PGS and launch-on-demand. Nuclear
deterrence is best performed by the virtually invulnerable ballistic missile submarine and the Trident
II (D-5). It has the survivability and the accuracy to strike any desired target . The Air Force
can then focus on providing responsive conventional deterrence and strike against the
new threats of the twenty first century instead of perpetuating the shadows
of the twentieth century. 6. De-Alerting In order to fully exploit the potential of conventional PGS capabilities,
the United States must pursue an end to the Cold war nuclear force postures maintained by itself
and Russia. Procedural and technical mitigation measures may work adequately against the threat of an inadvertent
nuclear exchange for a small, “silver bullet” conventional PGS system, but in
order to provide meaningful
support to major theater contingency operations, a more reliable solution is required.
Force postures of both the United States and Russia must be altered so that the launch of nuclear
weapons “on warning” is no longer possible or necessary. D. CONCLUSION The most significant finding
of this thesis is that conventional PGS weapons are not in and of themselves
destabilizing, but when they are combined with the enduring Cold War
postures of American and Russian nuclear forces they become a valid cause for
concern. The possible implications of conventional PGS capabilities simply highlight the danger we quietly face
everyday. The continuedpresence of American and Russian nuclear forces on “hair trigger” alert
poses a risk to our nations inconsistent with the other aspects of our relationship. To not deploy
conventional PGS capabilities because of perceptions of a renewed nuclear arms race or
inadvertent nuclear war, allows us to dodge the tough decision. We must finally clear away
the last vestiges of the Cold War in order to be able to deploy capabilities necessary to
protect American security interests in the post-Cold War world.

6. The plan ensures PGS advances well beyond a ‘niche

capability’.
Butterworth, PhD, 15
(Robert, PoliSci@Berkeley, President@AriesAnalytics, FormerProfPoliSci@PennState, Minuteman for the Joint Fight,
Strategic Studies Quarterly , Vol. 9, No. 1, SPRING, pp. 3-16, Air University Press)

Sometimes defense programs need to find ways to do more with less; in this case, it is a question
of having more but still not enough, and there are no easy options. In matters of force development, of course, “fiscal
pressures” are effectively gauges registering consensus on a pro- gram’s anticipated strategic or military importance, and
there is no doubt that a safe, secure, survivable, and reliable strategic nuclear force will
be essential into the future. The practical effectiveness of that force, the delivery systems,
and the warheads they deliver will depend on how well the force suits the challenges of the future
strategic environment. Perhaps that environment will call for capabilities other than
version 2.0 of the triad. In particular, the nuclear portfolio could be focused more
tightly on two different delivery systems: airplanes and submarine- launched missiles, each of which
offers unique capabilities for meeting potential challenges. For several decades the ICBM force
provided great capability, but it no longer makes a unique contribution. Today, the
sub- marine force matches or exceeds the ICBM force in lethality, survivability, and
responsiveness.9 Moreover, the ICBMs will no longer provide a completely independent
hedge against a surprise technical failure in the sea-launched missiles.10 Once removed
from their nuclear mission, the ICBMs would still provide an important strategic
capability if they were repurposed—a mission change similar to that made with four Ohio-class submarines
during the early 2000s.11 All Minuteman III missiles could be refitted with non- nuclear
warheads, then providing a unique and valuable capability for responding to a
wide range of national security challenges . Quite unlike the “conventional prompt global strike”
(CPGS) concepts debated in re- cent years, conversion of the ICBM force would go well

beyond a limited niche capability to provide a strategic strike force useful

in fighting wars large and small, as well as enhancing core strategic and extended
deterrence postures. The path forward seems likely to prove energizing and free of sharp dislocations to the
USAF, the communities surrounding its missile fields, and American national security policy. Taking that path can also
help avoid a repeat of what Gen Maxwell Taylor found in 1959: “The determination of US strategy has become a more or
less incidental by-product of the administrative process of the defense budget.”12

7. That solves warhead ambiguity and boosts US heg.

Butterworth, PhD, 15
(Robert, PoliSci@Berkeley, President@AriesAnalytics, FormerProfPoliSci@PennState, Minuteman for the Joint Fight,
Strategic Studies Quarterly , Vol. 9, No. 1, SPRING, pp. 3-16, Air University Press)

If the United States were to arm all its ICBMs only with conventional weapons, there would
be much less about which to worry. The ambiguity problem would not disappear, but its seriousness
could be greatly reduced, because the United States simply would not have any nuclear-
armed ICBMs deployed, no matter from where they were launched or the
trajectory they followed. The record of military responses to po- tentially escalatory incidents among the
United States and Russia and China suggests that history, together with the immediate circumstances of a launch event,
will affect the likelihood of its being misinterpreted and the actions that might then be taken: e.g., US-Soviet incidents at
sea, a Norwegian missile launch, Russian bombers and fighter aircraft penetrating the air defense identification zone of
the United States and Canada, and Chinese fighter aircraft forcing down a US intelligence airplane. As the National
Academy concluded, the “significance [of the ambiguity] depends not primarily on the technical characteristics of the
CPGS system but on the context, scale, and target of the attack and on the degree to which transparency and confidence-
building measures have been employed.”25 The 2007 Defense Science Board study also found that concerns about
ambiguity were overstated.26 Whatever worries might remain about warhead ambiguity might be assuaged by public
declarations, private notifications, and on-site inspections. Further, a “bolt from the blue” US attack against Russia or
China would be most unlikely to use only a few missiles or to launch them on indirect azimuths. Both Russia and China
understand strategic intercontinental targeting quite well. Russia is credited with the techni- cal ability to track ballistic
missile launches from the United States and, thereby, is able to discriminate between those that are targeted against
Russia from those aimed elsewhere.27 To date, China has taken a differ- ent approach, showing no public interest in
deploying systems to detect and track launches of foreign long-range missiles. Both these countries have recently been
redeploying strategic forces in ways that increase their survivability, and neither their past behaviors nor strategic cultures
support the likelihood that warhead ambiguity would trigger either to launch attacks against the United States.28 Russian
leaders may even start developing their own conventional ICBMs.29 An all-conventional ICBM force
offers substantial further benefits that go far beyond reducing warhead
ambiguity. They provide a significant warfighting capability.30 Essentially artillery with
intercontinental range, the conventional Minuteman force would provide extra-theater
options for conducting a strategic strike, “a military operation under- taken by the United States that is
designed to alter decisively an adversary’s course of action in a relatively
compact period of time,” either in isolation or as part of a broader political-military campaign.31 It could
help US forces in regional wars gain access; clear landing zones; destroy launch
sites, ports, airfields, and communication centers; penetrate sophisticated
air defenses; deny sanctuaries; and kill enemy troop formations. It provides
military options for responding to armed aggression when an attack is first underway . It
provides additional assurance to allies and partners that the United States can
provide timely assistance without being self-deterred. It can ensure
dominance under the nuclear threshold, helping control escalation, because no
militarily compelling defense against ICBMs is in the offing . It enriches the menu of options available
for adaptive planning in crises or even in nuclear warfare.32 This repurposing of the ICBM force would
provide a new means to achieve timely, needed effects on the battlefield, a means that offers
economy of force without a lengthy logistics train , that can be used before an
adversary has time to prepare defenses or take hostages as a crisis builds, and that,
unlike close engagement or stealth options, puts no American lives at risk.