Softening our nuclear policy while Putin amasses troops on Ukraine’s border would send the worst possible message.
Softening our nuclear policy while Putin amasses troops on Ukraine’s border would send the worst possible message.
R ussia is building a massive invasion force on Ukraine’s border, China is rehearsing air strikes on Taiwan, and both Moscow and Beijing are racing to construct newer and larger nuclear arsenals. Nuclear weapons are central to their revisionist military strategies. Maintaining a strong deterrent and stronger alliances must continue to be central to ours.
Consequently, it is concerning that in the face of not one, but two major nuclear threats, the Biden administration is considering adopting policies that explicitly de-emphasize the role of nuclear weapons in U.S. defense policy. Any change in U.S. nuclear declaratory policy, the public articulation of the circumstances in which it would employ nuclear weapons, especially now as the Russian army amasses on the Ukrainian border, sends the worst possible signal both to Vladimir Putin and to U.S. allies and partners.
The danger is that while President Biden’s team may think that de-emphasizing the role of nuclear weapons would help defuse tensions, the effort would only reinforce Moscow’s and Beijing’s belief that the United States would ultimately fold if presented with a nuclear threat — thus making aggression, and war, more likely.
While the Biden administration has reportedly — and rightly — rejected a “no first use” nuclear-weapons policy, still on the table is a “sole purpose” nuclear declaratory policy, which has no precedent in the history of U.S. nuclear policy. A sole-purpose policy states that the “sole purpose” of U.S. nuclear weapons is to deter nuclear attack. But the policy’s goal is the same as a no-first-use policy — to demonstrate U.S. goodwill by removing nuclear options in its defense strategy.
America’s allies protested loudly when the Obama administration, with then–vice president Joe Biden, considered these policies in 2010 and 2016. President Obama, after careful consideration of allied views and the best advice of his military leaders, rejected these policies then, and President Biden should reject them now.
Much of the commentary regarding a change in U.S. nuclear declaratory policy rightly focuses on allied concerns. Allies are objecting even more strenuously than in previous years, in part because the global threat environment is worse than it was in 2010. They are also concerned that their input might not be reaching the upper levels of the White House.
But there is another reason that the Biden administration should reject any change in U.S. nuclear declaratory policy: Changing U.S. nuclear policy now would signal weakness of resolve in the face of growing Russian and Chinese nuclear and nonnuclear threats.
The facts are plain, if alarming. Russia is engaged in a significant nuclear buildup concentrated in its “nonstrategic” forces for warfighting in a regional context. Its “escalate to win” strategy envisions threatening or employing nuclear weapons first if it appears to be losing a conventional conflict.
Not to be outdone, China is building hundreds of new ICBM silos and recently tested a weapon system that reportedly can orbit the earth, release projectiles along its flight path, and then make terminal maneuvers as it approaches its final target while avoiding U.S. missile defenses.
Russia and China are signaling their nuclear prowess, and it is quite evident that their growing nuclear arsenals are foundational to their goal of making the world safe for autocracy. Any shift away from current U.S. nuclear policy would only reward Moscow’s and Beijing’s nuclear saber-rattling and encourage further provocations in places such as Ukraine and Taiwan.
The United States cannot allow any dark hopes to grow in the minds of Vladimir Putin and Xi Jinping that they can be as destructive as they want under the nuclear threshold, free of worry that it might provoke a U.S. nuclear response.
Indeed, nonnuclear threats that the United States and its allies wish to deter have only grown in the past decade. North Korea has “up to several thousand metric tons” of chemical weapons at its disposal, while Russia’s vast chemical-weapons program threatens U.S. and allied forces in NATO. China’s military medical institutions are apparently interested in the military applications of pharmaceutical-based agents.
Why would the United States purposely remove the deterrent threat of nuclear weapons in the face of these threats? Any change in our nuclear declaratory, especially at this dangerous time and amid a Russian buildup on the border of Ukraine, would degrade deterrence, damage alliances, and send a signal to Moscow and Beijing that the United States is unwilling to do what is necessary to defend its vital national interests and those of its allies and partners.
The Biden administration should heed calls from our allies, learn the lessons of history, and resist urges from the fringe to change U.S. nuclear declaratory policy. Russia and China are watching the U.S. nuclear-policy-making process with great interest, hopeful that the United States will adopt a new policy that relieves them from worrying about a U.S. response to their aggression.
Just as the U.S. commitment to defend itself and its allies is unwavering, so too must U.S. nuclear policy remain consistent. As President Eisenhower warned, America’s alliance commitments would be untenable if we did not “possess atomic weapons and the will to use them when necessary.”