 Disarmament Diplomacy
Issue No. 90, Spring 2009
Towards a new US Nuclear Posture
From Counterforce to Minimal Deterrence:
A New Nuclear Policy on the Path Toward Eliminating Nuclear
Weapons
Hans M. Kristensen, Robert S. Norris and Ivan
Oelrich
Executive Summary[1]
To realize President Barack Obama's vision of "dramatic
reductions" in the number of nuclear weapons, stopping development
of new nuclear weapons, taking nuclear weapons off alert, and
pursuing the goal of a world without nuclear weapons, radical
changes are needed in the four types of U.S. policies that govern
nuclear weapons: declaratory, acquisition, deployment, and
employment. This report largely concerns itself with employment
policy, that is, how the United States actually plans for the use
of nuclear weapons, and argues that there should be fundamental
changes to the current war plans and the process of how these are
formulated and implemented. The logic, content, and procedures of
the current employment policy are relics of the Cold War and, if
not changed, will hinder the hoped-for deep cuts to the nuclear
stockpile and the longer term goal of elimination.
This report argues that, as long as the United States continues
these nuclear missions unjustifiably held over from the Cold War,
nuclear weapons will contribute more to the nation's and the
world's insecurity than they contribute to their security. And
without those Cold War justifications, there is only one job left
for nuclear weapons: to deter the use of nuclear weapons. For much
of the Cold War - at least from the early 1960s - the dominant
mission for U.S. strategic weapons has been counterforce, that is,
the attack of military, mostly nuclear, targets and the enemy's
leadership. The requirements for the counterforce mission
perpetuate the most dangerous characteristics of nuclear forces,
with weapons kept at high levels of alert, ready to launch upon
warning of an enemy attack, and able to preemptively attack enemy
forces. This mission is no longer needed but it still exists
because the current core policy guidance and directives that are
issued to the combatant commanders are little different from their
Cold War predecessors. General Kevin Chilton, head of U.S.
Strategic Command (STRATCOM), recently took issue with President
Obama's characterization of U.S. nuclear weapons being on
"hair-trigger alert" but made our case for us by saying, "The alert
postures that we are in today are appropriate, given our strategy
and guidance and policy." [Emphasis added.] That is exactly right
and, therefore, if President Obama wants General Chilton to do
something different, he will have to provide the commander of U.S.
nuclear forces with different guidance and directives.
The counterforce mission, and all that goes with it, should be
explicitly and publicly abandoned and replaced with a much less
ambitious and qualitatively different doctrine. A new "minimal
deterrence" mission will make retaliation after nuclear attack the
sole mission for nuclear weapons. We believe that adopting this
doctrine is an important step on the path to nuclear abolition
because nuclear retaliation is the one mission for nuclear weapons
that reduces the salience of nuclear weapons; it is the
self-canceling mission. With just this one mission, the United
States can have far fewer nuclear forces to use against a different
set of targets. Almost all of the "requirements" for nuclear
weapons' performance were established during the Cold War and
derive from the counterforce mission. Under a minimal deterrence
doctrine, appropriate needs for reliability, accuracy, response
time, and all other performance characteristics, can be reevaluated
and loosened.
In this analysis, we consider in detail an attack on a
representative set of targets that might be appropriate under a
minimal deterrence doctrine, including power plants and oil and
metal refineries. We find that, even when carefully choosing
targets to avoid cities, attack with a dozen typical nuclear
weapons can result in more than a million casualties, although
using far less powerful weapons can substantially reduce that
number. Nuclear weapons are so destructive that much smaller
forces, of initially 1,000 warheads, and later a few hundred
warheads, are more than adequate to serve as a deterrent against
anyone unwise enough to attack the United States with nuclear
weapons.
The president will need to maintain keen oversight to insure
that the new guidance is being carried out faithfully. We describe
the many layers of bureaucracy between the president and those who
develop the nuts-and-bolts plans for nuclear weapons employment to
show how easily a president's intentions can be co-opted and
diffused. We finally offer examples of what a presidential
directive might look like.
Conclusion and Recommendations
Whatever the utility of nuclear weapons during the Cold War,
nuclear weapons today threaten the security of the United States
and the world more than they enhance it. The United States should
publicly announce a goal of eliminating nuclear weapons and
establish a series of policies and action to achieve that goal.
Current nuclear doctrine is an artifact of the Cold War that needs
to be fundamentally altered. "Counterforce" targeting should be
explicitly and publicly abandoned. While the ultimate goal is
nuclear abolition, a minimal deterrence doctrine creates a stable
resting spot that minimizes the salience and danger of remaining
nuclear weapons and allows all of the world's disparate nuclear
powers to come into a stable equilibrium before moving to the last
step or denuclearization. Thus, minimal deterrence should be
adopted as a transitional step on a path to zero nuclear
weapons.
The president must be continuously engaged in this
transformation with specific and direct instructions to the
national security bureaucracies. Once formulated, the president
should publicly announce the changed role for nuclear weapons and
the new types of targets. Under American leadership, the process
should lead to engagement with the other nuclear powers towards a
global goal of negotiating verifiable nuclear abolition, which will
enhance the security of the United States. The new strategy can be
carried out with weapons in the current arsenal. No new weapons
need be built.
A Draft Presidential Policy Directive (PPD)
To change military planning from counterforce to minimal
deterrence, President Obama will have to sign a Presidential Policy
Directive (PPD) that clearly articulates the altered role of
nuclear weapons in overall security policy and discuss details such
as targeting, force size, and the circumstances under which nuclear
weapons might be used. After signing, the PDD would go through a
series of stages to be implemented. Taking direction from the PPD,
the Secretary of Defense would draft the Guidance for the
Employment of the Force (GEF). The GEF provides more detail about
how nuclear weapons are to be employed and instructs the Joint
Chiefs of Staff (JCS) on guidelines on how to create the Nuclear
Supplement to the Joint Strategic Capabilities Plan (JSCP-N), the
document that assigns the nuclear forces to commanders of unified
commands.
Below is a draft PPD that uses the kind of language that will be
necessary to reorient the U.S. nuclear posture in the direction of
dramatic reductions and eventual elimination of nuclear
weapons.
Notes
[1] This executive summary, conclusions
and the associated draft Presidential Policy Directive are
reproduced verbatim with the permission of the authors (with
spelling, punctuation and emphases as in the original).
Presidential Policy Directive X
To: Secretary of Defense
Chairman, Joint Chiefs of Staff
Secretary of State
Director National Intelligence
Subject: Presidential Guidance for Planning the Employment
of Nuclear Weapons
Based upon a vastly altered geopolitical situation, in which the
United States no longer faces thousands of Soviet nuclear weapons,
I have reached a series of decisions about United States nuclear
weapons employment policy. The decisions depart from current policy
in major ways: by limiting the role of nuclear weapons in our
security policy, by going to smaller and smaller numbers through a
series of stages, and by truly supporting our pledge to honor
Article VI of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, which calls for
the eventual elimination of nuclear weapons.
This PPD provides the criteria for how U.S. nuclear weapons
would be employed, and establishes the process by which to
implement the changes.
The Reason for Possessing Nuclear Weapons
The sole reason for possessing nuclear weapons, I have
determined, is to deter the use of a nuclear weapon against the
United States and our allies thus keeping intact prior security
commitments. In years past much more expansive reasons were given
for the utility of nuclear weapons. Their many roles led to
enormous stockpiles and elaborate war plans. The new plans I am
ordering to be implemented will focus on ensuring that there are
assured retaliation options available to the president if anyone
were so unwise as to attack the United States with nuclear
weapons.
Abandoning Counterforce Nuclear Targeting
The most dramatic shift that I intend to implement is to abandon
"counterforce," the ruling paradigm for U.S. war plans and forces
for more than four decades. We are no longer going to demand that,
"U.S. nuclear forces must be capable of, and be seen to be capable
of, destroying those critical war-making and war-supporting assets
and capabilities that a potential enemy leadership values most and
that it would rely on to achieve its own objectives in a post- war
world" as the former administration stated in 2004. The purpose of
nuclear strike planning is no longer to achieve an advantage over
an adversary's nuclear forces or limit damage to the United States,
but entirely to provide a secure retaliatory strike capability to
deter nuclear attack. Dramatic reductions of the stockpile,
limiting the role of nuclear weapons, and relaxing the requirements
for weapon cannot take place unless the current targeting policy
changes. The essential steps are to withdraw target coverage of an
adversary's nuclear forces and relax the alert rates that currently
keep U.S. forces poised to strike.
New Targets for Minimal Deterrence
The shift I am ordering is not from counterforce to
"countervalue" (the targeting of population centers) but rather to
a new set of targets we characterize as "infrastructure" targets.
Infrastructure targets are facilities such as oil refineries, iron
and steel works, aluminum plants, nickel plants, thermal electric
power plants, and transportation hubs that can be destroyed while
minimizing collateral civilian casualties. In short they are the
essential components that constitute the sinews of modern
societies. Their destruction would decimate the economic and
industrial foundation of any country. Knowing that the attack on
infrastructure would follow if any nation were unwise enough to
attack the United States or its allies with nuclear weapons should
be enough of a deterrent - to the extent anything is - to prevent
an attack in the first place.
Upon signing I will make this Directive public to ensure that
our declaratory and employment policies are in concert and to warn
anyone harboring any thoughts of attack to understand what would
happen.
Next Steps and Reviews
Based upon this PPD, the Secretary of Defense shall prepare the
Guidance for the Employment of the Force to instruct the Joint
Chiefs of Staff in their preparation of the Nuclear Supplement to
the Joint Strategic Capabilities Plan. I am to be kept informed of
the preparation of these documents through my National Security
Adviser and must approve the final versions.
___________________________________,
[signed President Barack H. Obama], April 2009
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This executive summary, conclusions and the
associated draft PDD is reproduced verbatim from the Report From
Counterforce to Minimal Deterrence: A New Nuclear Policy on the
Path Toward Eliminating Nuclear Weapons, published in April 2009 by
the Federation of American Scientists and the Natural Resources
Defense Council. The full report is available from the authors' and
publishers' websites: www.fas.org and www.nrdc.org.
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© 2009 The Acronym Institute.
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