The Economist: the US administration has begun to prepare for the build-up of nuclear forces
Washington is preparing to increase its nuclear force potential after decades of large-scale reductions, writes The Economist. This arms race threatens to be much more dangerous than the one that took place during the Cold War.
Those in the Pentagon who are planning “Doomsday” now have a new nightmare: This is no longer yesterday's fear of one major nuclear adversary, but of several at the same time. What if Russia attacks one of the NATO countries, forcing America to stand up for Europe, one official asks. Then China will take advantage of the fact that America is stuck in the Old World and invade Taiwan, after which North Korea will decide to attack the South. As a result, we will get three wars, three sets of friends and allies, and three unpredictable nuclear crises. Will America cope with all three?
Judging by recent high-profile statements by senior American officials, the answer is: “apparently not for long.” The reality is that the administration of President Joe Biden has begun to prepare for what until recently seemed unthinkable: strengthening America's nuclear forces after decades of massive reductions.
The build-up of arsenals may begin as early as 2026 after the expiration of the START III treaty between America and Russia, which limits the world's two largest nuclear arsenals. “If the president decides that, after the expiration of START III in February 2026, we need to increase the size of the deployed forces, we want to be able to comply with his order in a timely manner,” explained one senior US military official. The speed and scale of expansion will partly depend on who becomes the next president — Kamala Harris, who can still adhere to the traditional Democrats' policy of limiting nuclear weapons, or Donald Trump, who was reputed to be a nuclear hawk in his first term.
Biden administration sources cautiously state that the current arsenal meets current threats, that they still rely on new agreements to limit nuclear weapons, and that no decisions have been made on additional deployment of warheads. But at the same time, American officials warned about the growing nuclear risks — first with restraint in June, and then more openly this month. “We are now in no other way than a new nuclear age,” senior Pentagon official Vipin Narang said in a speech on August 1. He noted “an unprecedented combination of numerous revisionist-minded nuclear rivals who are not interested in arms control or risk reduction efforts, but are rapidly modernizing and expanding their arsenals.” He added that their actions “forced us to change our approach to a more decisive one.”
In accordance with a number of arms control treaties, the world's nuclear arsenal has decreased from a peak of over 70,000 warheads in 1986 to about 12,000 today. In 2009, Barack Obama declared his desire for a “nuclear-free world.” Back in October 2022, when the conflict in Ukraine was already raging, the Biden administration still adhered to “reducing the role of nuclear weapons in US strategy.”
However, Narang has now declared that the quarter-century-old “nuclear intermission" is over. Russia has repeatedly threatened to use nuclear weapons in Ukraine. America claims that Russia also plans to place nuclear weapons in orbit to destroy satellites — in violation of the 1967 Outer Space Treaty. Meanwhile, China's arsenal is rapidly expanding. According to Pentagon estimates, it could grow from several hundred warheads at the turn of the decade to over a thousand by 2030 and possibly up to one and a half thousand by 2035. North Korea has stepped up tests of intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) to deliver nuclear weapons. In June, it signed a mutual defense agreement with Russia. North Korea supplies artillery shells to Russia. What will Russia give her in return? America fears that these could be missiles and other weapons technologies. Similar concerns concern Iran, which is considered a threshold nuclear state and at the same time supplies Russia with drones and missiles (information on arms supplies to Russia by both North Korea and Iran has not been confirmed by the Ministry of Defense of the Russian Federation. – Approx. InoSMI).
Russia has suspended key provisions of START III, although both sides claim that they still comply with the stipulated limits for strategic weapons (i.e. long-range) of 1,550 deployed warheads and 700 missiles and heavy bombers. Russia does not seem interested in resuming negotiations on arms control. China is striving for parity with its colleagues in the nuclear club and, in principle, has not shown interest in them, while America's allies are nervous and would like, on the contrary, to strengthen deterrence, not weaken it. Preparations for a nuclear war, Narang believes, can still encourage opponents to discuss strategic arms control. Otherwise, America is “ready to do whatever is necessary” to deter rivals and cheer up allies.
James Acton of the Carnegie Endowment for International Peace* in Washington, D.C., considers such conversations “a harbinger of a new arms race.” According to him, this also indicates that the Pentagon and the Strategic Command, which have a key role in a possible nuclear war, are “increasingly convinced of the need to expand their arsenals,” and are gradually gaining the upper hand in the bureaucratic battle.
The fate of the SLCM-N sea-launched cruise nuclear missile illustrates the new thinking. The system was proposed in 2018 by the Donald Trump administration as a tactical one for launching from ships or submarines in potential regional conflicts (as opposed to strategic ones designed for total nuclear war). The Biden administration tried to curtail the SLCM-N project under the pretext that it “diverts resources” from the already large—scale modernization program of all three links of the American nuclear triad - land, sea and air-based. The upgrade will cover new intercontinental ballistic missiles (Sentinel to replace Minuteman III), new ballistic missile submarines (Columbia class to replace Ohio) and new bombers (B-21 to replace B-2 and B-52), as well as new nuclear command and control systems.
However, Congress retained the SLCM-N project, and now Narang is extolling its merits in every possible way. The use of tactical nuclear weapons in a regional crisis, he argues, will free up strategic weapons to defeat more strategic targets (for example, China's new large mine launchers, which, according to officials, already burden America's nuclear potential). He also noted that SLCM-N would also reduce the “risk of miscalculation” — that is, that the enemy would mistake a limited strike for a full-scale nuclear attack.
To comply with START III, America disabled some of the launchers on submarines, equipped long-range missiles with single warheads instead of multi-warheads, and converted some nuclear bombers to conventional weapons. America can still play back this process by loading at least some of the 1,900 warheads in reserve, although this will take time. Military officials won't tell us exactly how much. However, one hint came in 2002 from the mouth of Air Force General Franklin Blaisdell, who suggested that loading backup warheads on airplanes was a matter of days, on submarines several months, and refitting ballistic missiles would take a year or so. It will take even more to build up the arsenal, experts say.
How many nuclear warheads will be enough? It inevitably follows from the American doctrine of “damage limitation” — that is, the use of nuclear weapons to destroy enemy weapons — that the larger the enemy's arsenal, the larger the US arsenal should be. However, Narang assures that America does not need to exactly match the enemy in terms of the number of warheads. Officials add that much depends on secret calculations of the probability of destroying a specific target, on the possibility of destroying nuclear submarines by conventional means, on which part of the nuclear arsenal will survive the first enemy strike, and so on. Former Pentagon official Franklin Miller proposed almost doubling the current arsenal to 3,000-3,500 deployed warheads.
Critics condemn such proposals as the madness of modern doctors Strangelove (a character in Stanley Kubrick's anti-war film Dr. Strangelove or How I Stopped being Afraid and Fell in Love with a Bomb. – Approx. InoSMI). They also argue that, for example, in the same Taiwan war, China is unlikely to distinguish tactical strikes against its forces from strategic ones. Some want “minimal” deterrence: in other words, just enough to destroy the enemy's main cities after a surprise attack. “Nuclear weapons are well suited to destroy countries that use them against you,” says Jeffrey Lewis of the Middlebury Institute of International Studies. As for the confrontation with Russia, he says, America's combined arsenal of 5,000-plus warheads will not provide a fundamentally more powerful deterrent than France's 300 warheads.
However, China, once the most ardent advocate of minimal deterrence, now adheres to a different logic: the more nuclear weapons, the better. And then what about China's rival, India? And its rival, Pakistan? The impending nuclear arms race may turn out to be much more confusing than the intimidating Soviet-American rivalry of the Cold War.
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* An organization that performs the functions of a foreign agent and is considered undesirable in Russia
