ArgumentPentagon Deployment of New, “More Usable” Nuclear Weapon Is a Grave Mistake
The Pentagon on Tuesday acknowledged that it has deployed a new, sea-based nuclear warhead capability. The move — first reported last week by the Federation of American Scientists — is the first in the Trump administration’s multibillion-dollar, multi-decade plan to replace and expand U.S. nuclear weapons capabilities. Daryl G. Kimball writes that the administration’s stated rationale for the new weapon is deeply flawed, and the decision to field the device only heightens the danger of escalation.
The Pentagon on Tuesday acknowledged that it has deployed a new, sea-based nuclear warhead capability. The move — first reported last week by the Federation of American Scientists — is the first in the Trump administration’s multibillion-dollar, multi-decade plan to replace and expand U.S. nuclear weapons capabilities.
Daryl G. Kimball writes in Just Security that the administration’s stated rationale for the new weapon — a modified, lower-yield nuclear warhead installed on Trident D-5 submarine-launched strategic ballistic missiles — is deeply flawed, however, and the decision to field the device only heightens the danger of escalation.
The Pentagon argues the weapons is necessary to counter what it says is Russia’s willingness to use low-yield nuclear weapons, first to gain an advantage over the United States and its allies in a regional conflict and secondly, to prevail in such a war.
However, the assertion that Russia has formally adopted such a strategy is highly questionable. The Russian Federation still retains a sizeable stockpile of “tactical” nuclear weapons (estimated to number some 2,000 bombs in central storage) and there is reason to believe that Russia’s military and political leaders consider nuclear weapons to be more important to their overall national security than their U.S. counterparts. This is due to Moscow’s relative conventional military inferiority and its concerns that improvements in U.S. missile-defense technology might allow the United States to negate at least part of Russia’s strategic nuclear retaliatory force. Nevertheless, Russia’s official military doctrine does not support the claim that it has an “escalate to deescalate” nuclear use strategy.
Kimball writes that what is likely to prompt Russian President Vladimir Putin to perceive that he could get away with limited nuclear use are the irresponsible statements by President Donald Trump questioning the value of the NATO alliance.
For example, last year, The New York Times reported that senior administration officials said that several times over the course of 2018, Trump privately said he wanted to withdraw from NATO, and in the days around the NATO summit that year, Trump told his top national security officials that he did not see the point of the military alliance.
The United States deploying additional lower-yield nuclear does nothing to overcome the damage caused by such reports and other statements by Trump that raise doubt about whether he would fulfill the U.S. treaty commitment to come to the aid of an alliance member in a real crisis.
