Nuclear Exchange: Does Washington Really Have (or Want) Nuclear Primacy?

Just the Facts

Peter C. W. Flory

The essay by Keir Lieber and Daryl Press ("The Rise of U.S. Nuclear Primacy, "March/April 2006) contains so many errors, on a topic of such gravity, that a Department of Defense response is required to correct the record.

Lieber and Press assert that current U.S. nuclear policy looks "like a coordinated set of programs to enhance the United States' nuclear first-strike capabilities," an erroneous inference that has already prompted harsh reactions in Russia and other countries. Lieber and Press allege that the U.S. Air Force is "significantly improving its remaining ICBMs [intercontinental ballistic missiles] by installing the MX's high-yield warheads and advanced reentry vehicles on Minuteman ICBMs, and it has upgraded the Minuteman's guidance systems to match the MX's accuracy."

In fact, the MK-21 reentry vehicles and warheads from retired Peacekeeper missiles (formerly known as "MX") are being installed on Minuteman III missiles to take advantage of the MK-21's improved safety characteristics. There is no increase in yield, and the MK-21 reentry vehicles do not increase the accuracy of Minuteman III missiles. Nor will the guidance replacement program under way for Minuteman III missiles -- which involves upgrading guidance components to extend the missiles' lives -- result in those ICBMs' reaching a level of accuracy equal to that of the Peacekeeper.

The authors go on to question why crews of the B-2 stealth bomber train in low-altitude flight unless their "mission is to penetrate a highly sophisticated air defense network such as Russia's or, perhaps in the future, China's." It is no secret that the combination of stealth technology and low-altitude flight increases the survivability of an aircraft in a hostile environment. But these attributes are valuable across the full spectrum of warfare (B-2s have been employed in the Balkans, Afghanistan, and Iraq).

Publicly available facts contradict Lieber and Press' thesis that the United States is pursuing a first-strike strategy. President George W. Bush set the nation on a path to reduce its reliance on nuclear weapons in a May 2001 speech at the National Defense University, stating, "I am committed to achieving a credible deterrent with the lowest possible number of nuclear weapons consistent with our national security needs, including our obligations to our allies. My goal is to move quickly to reduce nuclear forces."

The Department of Defense acted promptly to implement the president's directive. The result was the December 2001 Nuclear Posture Review, which declared that by 2012 the United States will have decreased the number of nuclear warheads deployed on its operational forces by two-thirds (we are already halfway to this goal). Additionally, by 2012 the United States will have cut its total stockpile of nuclear warheads nearly in half. Already, we have removed from strategic service four ballistic missile submarines, and, perhaps most relevant to the discussion at hand, we have voluntarily retired the Peacekeeper missiles, our most accurate and powerful ICBMs. Ironically, during the Cold War, some criticized these land-based missiles, which are capable of being equipped with ten MIRVs (multiple independently targetable reentry vehicles), as representing the ultimate first-strike weapon.

Further, in the recently released Quadrennial Defense Review, the Department of Defense announced plans to modify about ten percent of its submarine-launched Trident II missiles so that they will carry nonnuclear warheads and to retire ten percent of the remaining land-based Minuteman III ICBMs.

These are hardly the moves of an administration seeking, in Lieber and Press words, "to enhance the United States' nuclear first-strike capabilities."

This administration has continued the policy of previous administrations in that it does not rely on the ability to conduct a nuclear first strike to ensure the survival of the United States. The Department of Defense's force posture of dispersed ICBMs and survivable ballistic missile submarines is designed to make clear to any adversary that might contemplate a first strike against the United States that in the aftermath of such an attack the U.S. military would retain the ability to respond with such devastating force that an aggressor could not stand to gain. This is not a first-strike posture.

PETER C. W. FLORY is Assistant Secretary of Defense for International Security Policy.

A Matter of Record

Keith Payne

Lieber and Press claim that for 50 years the Pentagon has "structured the U.S. nuclear arsenal according to the goal of deterring a nuclear attack on the United States and, if necessary, winning a nuclear war by launching a preemptive strike that would destroy an enemy's nuclear forces." That is a gross mischaracterization of U.S. policy, as numerous declassified documents and authoritative public statements by government officials attest.

Throughout the 1960s, for example, Defense Secretaries Robert McNamara and Clark Clifford, as recorded in draft presidential memoranda, explicitly rejected a "credible first-strike capability." They instead identified the capacity to guarantee "assured destruction" of the Soviet Union as the fundamental measure of whether U.S. nuclear forces were sufficient and used that metric as the basis for rejecting the policy direction and force structure Lieber and Press assert that they sought.