PerspectiveTearing Down the Nuclear Firewall

In the U.S. nuclear community, you’ll often hear a strangely contradictory statement about nuclear weapons. It goes something like this: “We have nuclear weapons so that nuclear weapons will never be used.” U.S. nuclear deterrence, however, hinges on the assumption that adversaries believe that the United States has a functioning stockpile of nuclear weapons that can and will be used.

Al Mauroni writes in War on the Rocks that in recent decades, arms control, nonproliferation agreements, and confidence-building measures have reduced the possibility of a strategic nuclear exchange between Russia and the United States. However, the risk of a conventional military crisis in Europe, the Middle East, or Asia escalating into a theater nuclear war remains.

Mauroni writes:

The U.S. military needs to prepare its conventional forces to fight through a limited nuclear war. Right now, that planning and training is not apparent. The challenge is that U.S. political and military leaders do not encourage critical discussions on theater nuclear weapons use — every pertinent detail about the nuclear stockpile is classified, and every debate includes references to Cold War strategic weapons. In an ideal world, the United States wouldn’t use nuclear weapons if an adversary backs down in the face of a credible nuclear challenge. However, the existence of a nuclear taboo — that political leaders are restrained from first use of nuclear weapons — and Cold War fears of a strategic nuclear exchange between Moscow and Washington raise questions about the operational value of nuclear weapons. And yet, the issue of limited nuclear war isn’t going away.

They add:

The national security enterprise and the general public need to understand the U.S. military’s concept of nuclear weapons use and its associated theory of victory. Indeed, the debate has already started, with the nuclear modernization program that was started under the Obama administration. To successfully engage in this debate, the U.S. government needs to acknowledge that contemporary nuclear weapons scenarios will not look like the Cold War. The national security enterprise should understand that tactical nuclear weapons are part of the military’s toolkit. In order to gain the trust of policymakers and politicians, the Defense Department needs to talk plainly about basic facts regarding nuclear weapons’ capabilities, locations, and use. Only then can the U.S. military confidently say that it has integrated conventional and nuclear operations.