Nuclear Weapons: We can Agree to ... Agree

August 11, 2020

By Bryan Bender

WE CAN AGREE TO … AGREE: The Program for Public Consultation at the University of Maryland over the past five years sought to find out “whether there is common ground between Republicans and Democrats in the public.” And it surveyed nearly 86,000 Americans about more than two dozen policy issues. One takeaway we found interesting: there’s surprisingly bipartisan agreement on nuclear weapons policy.

For example, 65 percent said they support cutting a modest $2 billion from the annual nuclear weapons budget — 56 percent of Republicans and 73 percent of Democrats. Overwhelming majorities in both parties also supported continuing to have nuclear arms control treaties with Russia, renewing the New Strategic Arms Reducation Treaty before it expires in February, and continuing to abide by a moratorium on explosive nuclear tests (see pages 6 and 20 of the report).

Get rid of ICBMs: The surveys also found that 61 percent support phasing out the land-based leg of the nuclear triad (53 percent of Republicans and 69 percent of Democrats). Meanwhile, 68 percent of respondents — 50 percent of Republicans and 74 percent of Democrats — agreed that it should be U.S. policy to “require that before using nuclear weapons first, the President must get a declaration of war from Congress.”

“Overall this report finds bipartisan support for modest changes to current policies in a large number of areas,” emails Greg Mello of the Los Alamos Study Group, a disarmament group in New Mexico, who flagged it for us. “It does not say that these changes represent an optimal set of policies. It just says they are supported (or in some cases at least ‘tolerated’) by bipartisan majorities.”