For immediate release June 10, 2024

Press backgrounder: U.S. Considers Expanding Its Nuclear Arsenal

Contact: Greg Mello, 505-265-1200 office, 505-577-8563 cell

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Albuquerque, NM-- This past Friday (June 7), senior White House Aide Pranay Vaddi announced that “absent a change” in the nuclear strategies of Russia and China, the U.S. may adopt "a more competitive approach" to nuclear weapons policy, including expanding the U.S. nuclear arsenal. (See: "Biden aide raises possible increased deployments of U.S. strategic nuclear weapons," Jonathan Landay, Reuters; "U.S. Considers Expanded Nuclear Arsenal, a Reversal of Decades of Cuts,"  Julian Barnes, David Sanger, New York Times.)

Vaddi also said "[w]e need to be fully prepared to execute if the president makes that decision." Being "fully prepared" implies that actions must be taken or are being taken, bringing a hypothetical future decision back to the present.

The NYT's authors spin this announcement as a major change in U.S. policy. We do not see it as that, although it is a major change in narrative.

That article's subtitle and lead sentence are:

China’s expansion and Russia’s threats of using nuclear weapons in Ukraine and in space have changed a U.S. drive to reduce nuclear weapons.

A senior Biden administration official warned on Friday that “absent a change” in nuclear strategy by China and Russia, the United States may be forced to expand its nuclear arsenal, after decades of cutting back through now largely abandoned arms control agreements.

Right at the outset it's important to comment on these claims, starting with the notion that the U.S. "may be forced" to expand its arsenal. The responsibility for what would then clearly be quantitative nuclear arms race should be laid at the doors of Russia and China, the NYT tells us, in case we had any doubts.

As for the "decades of cutting back" on nuclear weapons deployments, those mostly ended with Obama's first election, with only minor decreases since then. That administration later considered, but rejected, additional cuts in the deployed stockpile ("Obama administration embraces major new nuclear weapons cut,"  R. Jeffrey Smith, 2/8/13, Center for Public Integrity).

There simply has been no "U.S. drive to reduce nuclear weapons," either recently or over the past two decades. The last arms control treaty that significantly reduced nuclear arsenals was the Strategic Offensive Reductions Treaty (SORT), signed by G. W. Bush and Vladimir Putin in 2002. Under SORT, the deployed U.S. arsenal was reduced by more than half by the end of the Bush presidency, to roughly its size today. More recently -- over the past 6 years if not longer -- the size of the deployed U.S. arsenal has been static (Kristensen et. al., various "Nuclear Notebook" entries, Bulletin of Atomic Scientists). Under the Obama, Trump, and Biden administrations, no serious arms reduction efforts were made. New START, negotiated in 2010, provided upper limits on arsenals, but it was not an arms reduction treaty and it has not functioned as one. (In fact the New START counting rules allow a potential increase in deployed nuclear weapons, given counting rules that allow each heavy bomber to be counted as ONE deployed warhead, rather than the 20 cruise missiles it might carry, in the case of U.S. B-52s.)

In the midst of numerical stasis, significant qualitative improvements continue apace. One seemingly-minor upgrade is also significant force multiplier ("How US nuclear force modernization is undermining strategic stability: The burst-height compensating super-fuze," Kristensen, McKinzie, Postol, 3/1/17). All W87-0/Mark21 fuzes in the Minuteman III ICBMs will also be replaced with accuracy-enhancing "super-fuzes," starting this year.

Under Biden, there has been no diplomacy at all with Russia since February 2022, and very little before that. What has happened instead is failure to negotiate, the addition of sanctions and more sanctions on top of those already in place, and vast U.S. resources being poured into a war against Russia in Ukraine. That war could have easily been avoided, could have been easily halted in spring of 2022, and could easily be halted right now. Overall, some $175 billion has already been appropriated in support of this war ("How Much U.S. Aid Is Going to Ukraine?", Masters and Merrow, Council on Foreign Relations, 5/9/24). The world is now closer to nuclear war than it has ever been since NATO's "Able Archer" exercises of 1983.

In fact, instead of a "drive to reduce nuclear weapons," U.S. and Ukrainian forces have recently attacked strategic nuclear targets inside Russia (and not for the first time) raising nuclear war risks. (See "Droning Russia’s nuke radars is the dumbest thing Ukraine can do," Postol, Responsible Statecraft, Jun 5, 2024; "Search Fans of Russian Strategic Nuclear Early Warning Radars Attacked by Ukraine," Postol, Jun 1, 2024.)

Last week, Biden's latest escalation, which formally allows Ukraine to use long-range missiles to attack targets within Russia's pre-2014 boundaries, "approaches a declaration of war against Russia," as Stephen Bryen writes ("NATO flirting with war and extinction in Ukraine," Asia Times, Jun 3, 2024). The bigger picture of what amounts to the Biden Administration's stance of anti-diplomacy toward Russia has been discussed by many experienced experts (see for example Jeffrey Sachs, "Why the West Hates Russia," Jun 4, 2024).

As is typical, the NYT does not mention that the "largely abandoned arms control agreements" were "largely abandoned" by the United States -- one after another. As a result, Russia now considers the U.S. structurally incapable of keeping agreements ("non-agreement-capable").

Study Group Director Greg Mello:

"Russia and China will have already "priced in" this latest Biden threat. It will not stimulate either country to accept U.S. "arms control" narratives, after all the Biden Administration has done to poison the waters in both cases. Surely the White House understands this.

The primary audiences for this threat are domestic U.S. actors, namely swing voters, Congressional hawks, and the increasingly-powerful military-industrial-intelligence complex, which stands to profit enormously from a more 'competitive' nuclear policy -- a nuclear arms race.

The more you think about it, the more you realize this announcement has nothing to do with Russia and China at all. It has everything to do with what former CIA analyst Ray McGovern calls the "MICIMATT," the "military-industrial-congressional-intelligence-media-academic-think-tank" complex. This is primarily an internal announcement, delivered and reported within the MICIMATT, generated and explained with the usual solipsism.

The Arms Control Association, at the annual meeting of which this announcement was made, together with the audience of the usual Washington, DC think tanks and NGOs, should be understood as part of the extended government.

This was also a blame-shifting exercise: 'Look at what that wicked Russia and upstart China are doing to us, and what additional weapons we might have to deploy in response.'

It's also meant to divert our attention from the fact that the Biden Administration is taking the U.S. and NATO to the very brink of overt war with Russia. "Arms control" is a quaint -- indeed a stupid -- topic to discuss at this time, unless the actual purpose is to curry favor and reinforce alliances domestically.

The announcement feeds the pretense that "arms control" is possible even while the U.S. wages a real and very bloody war against Russia, designed to overthrow the Russian government. At the same time the U.S. is threatening war against China and undertaking economic sanctions. In this context, this announcement is yet another display of diplomatic incompetence on the part of this Administration.

But as a signal to and within the U.S. national security state, it makes perfect sense. It tells the actors in that world that the Biden administration can and will serve their interests, using Russia and China (which the U.S. has provoked, a fact always denied), as excuses. Stick with us and you will benefit, the Biden administration is saying, even if we have to take the country to the edge of doom.

I have a suggestion for Vaddi and his colleagues. Get Biden to pick up the phone and tell Putin that we are going to negotiate peace in Ukraine. Get Biden to tell Putin that the U.S. is not, under any circumstances, going to war with Russia. Then ask Biden to say the same thing to the American people, who most assuredly do not want to go to war against Russia. We need some leadership from this administration on this existential matter. Making yet another threat to Russia and China accomplishes nothing good."

Politically, the White House is bowing to the corporate lobbyists who wrote last fall's Final Report of the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States. For their ideas of how to make U.S. nuclear policy more "competitive" see especially pp. 47-49 in their report. Those recommendations were received to general acclaim in the House (video) and Senate (video) ("Bi-partisan support for strategic posture report in Senate Armed Services Committee hearing," Exchange Monitor, 10/19/23). A short CRS summary of the report is here. 

We discussed that report last fall ("Posturing Ourselves to Death So Contractors can Thrive," Mello; "Planning for Doomsday," Starr, 11/16/23), preceded by a presentation on the historical context by Dr. Peter Kuznic (combined video).

Technically, expanding the number of deployed ballistic missile warheads from the reserve ("hedge") arsenal could be completed on a time scale of months. Moving additional air-delivered weapons closer to bombers and dual-capable aircraft could be done almost immediately; roughly 488 additional gravity bombs and cruise missiles are available (Kristensen et. al., "United States Nuclear Forces," 2024).

But replacing the reserve arsenal, making new kinds of warheads, or taking other actions which would augment the overall size of the arsenal and number of delivery systems, would in most cases require many years. The National Nuclear Security Administration's (NNSA's) "Stockpile Responsiveness Program," for which $70 million is requested for FY25, looks at ways to shorten the development cycle for new nuclear weapons, among other goals (pp. 410-413 here).

To round out the picture, probably some of the estimated 1,336 retired U.S. warheads and bombs could be brought back into service after refurbishing, again on a time scale of years. And with a Strangelovian quantum of political will and associated suspension of quality and security, existing plutonium warhead cores ("pits") could be used to produce thousands of new tactical weapons ("Integrated Deterrence Considerations for the Nuclear Enterprise," Chris Yeaw, Jan. 2024) -- also on a time scale of years. There are no plans we know of to do any of this.

All that said, at least part of the preparations Vaddi hinted at have long been underway:

• The W87-1 warhead for Sentinel land-based intercontinental missile, slated to begin production in the early 2030s using pits to be produced at Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL).

These warheads would not be needed if Sentinel missiles were limited to a single warhead per missile as is currently the case for Minuteman III missiles. Absent deployment in multiple independent reentry vehicles (MIRVs), the existing W87-0 warheads, which are to be the first warheads deployed on Sentinel, are sufficient in number, quality, and service life.

Using both W87-0 and W87-1 warheads, Sentinel could carry up to three times the number of warheads currently deployed on Minuteman III, plus an additional 150 warheads if all 450 silos were utilized instead of the 400 silos currently in service. The total number of modern, accurate ICBM warheads deployed could be increased from the present 400 to 1,350, if enough pits could be made at LANL, the only site where these pits are to be made.

• The FY2024 National Defense Authorization Act (NDAA) requires that the nuclear armed sea-launched cruise missile (SLCM-N) achieve initial operating capability no later than 2034. The Administration did not request funds for this missile and its warhead in its past three budget requests, but Congress funded both in FY23 and FY24 and is virtually certain to do so again for FY25. NNSA is currently using funds from the W80-4 program to study possible SLCM-N warheads (p. 140), pending direct appropriation. ("Nuclear-Armed Sea-Launched Cruise Missile (SLCM-N)," Congressional Research Service (CRS), May 31, 2024; "Sea-launched cruise missile is NNSA unfunded priority; warhead other than W80-4 possible; Savannah River taking half of W93’s pits," Dan Leone, Exchange Monitor, April 19, 2024).
  

• Assuming there was space available on Trident missiles, the W93 warhead for submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs) could augment, rather than replace, existing SLBM warheads. Neither the W76-1 and its W76-2 variant nor the higher-yield W88 are in immediate danger of "aging out."
  

• The planned procurement of "100" B-21 ("Raider") bombers will augment, rather than replace, 76 life-extended B-52s, of which 46 are currently nuclear-certified.

Before going further, we need to ask, how much of this is managerially possible? Could the U.S. actually conduct a nuclear arms race at this point in time? We think not. 

Without going into details, the context is highly adverse. To understand this would require in-depth explanation across multiple fields, which we cannot do in this backgrounder. We hinted at some of these issues in a presentation to a regional energy policy group earlier this spring (slides 13-14). The U.S. faces multiple crises, which have been building for a long time as many of us have observed over the past two decades and more. These crises are now acute and will, we believe, soon manifest as interacting forces majeure that will end many ill-conceived, unnecessary megaprojects.

Mello:

There is more that needs to be said about this situation, if we are to even begin to properly frame it.

The arms control community and specifically the Arms Control Association fully share in the Russophobia and diplomatic incompetence of this administration. It is as if the 2014 coup d'etat in Ukraine, the sabotage of the Nordstream pipelines, and the economic sanctions never happened. In this context, which includes frequent personal insults to the person -- Putin -- who would be the lead arms control negotiator on the other side, how can anyone who is remotely responsible talk about "arms control"?

U.S. officials and those who parrot their language and ideas use the term "deterrence" as a thought-stopper to cover a multitude of sins. In fact the U.S. is not seeking "deterrence" sensu stricta, but rather seeks to maintain the image, or delusion, of nuclear compellance, the ability to shape political-military outcomes by perceived escalatory dominance in nuclear war scenarios. This is what Vaddi is really talking about.

This ability to compel is gone. Russia has taken some pains, and flak, to make that clear. For U.S. war planners and policy makers, what remains is a dangerous illusion. U.S. war planners are increasingly divorced from reality -- both nuclear and conventional. They simply cannot believe, or allow themselves to understand, that the myth of U.S. dominance is just that, a myth. It would be the end of their careers -- at the Arms Control Association and multiple other think tanks and academic departments as well.

They do not want to experience 'the bitterness of strategic defeat' -- which is in fact unfolding week by week in this administration. This administration cannot even admit that the president does not have the mental ability to govern or to manage -- or even, as we randomly overheard the other day in a public setting, to be a grocery clerk. Day by day, week by week, what comes out of this administration convinces us that this is not a sane, reality-based, administration, let alone anything like a moral one. This goes far beyond mere disagreement.

The loss of a unipolar world order has led to frantic efforts to maintain the illusion of one. Narrative control has replaced actual dominance. Friday's announcement can be seen in this light too. The U.S. cannot conduct, let alone win, a nuclear arms race with Russia and China. What have they been smoking, up there in the Old Executive Office Building?

Increased military spending will not stem the decline in U.S. power. Indeed military spending, and the all-powerful national security state it has created, are a major if not the principal cause of U.S. decline, not to say collapse.

Skilled labor is scarce, not easily trained or replaced, and the U.S. needs all the skilled labor it can get to operate and rebuild its civilian economy and infrastructure. Money can be printed for a while, but real capital, the ability to get big and complex things done with real materials, is scarce and getting more so. The national security state is stealing our future.

Over the past decade a major change has taken place in U.S. governance. We are in a whole new world of militarism. The relationship between the constitutional branches of government on the one hand, and the national security state on the other is now inverted, relative to what most people think. This and the previous two administrations, and Congress with them, are more the pawns of the national security state than its master. This situation is not new in principle but it is quite new in degree. It is not easily corrected. In the absence of deep cuts to national security budget lines, this situation will continue. It may well be fatal, physically as well as politically. The presence or absence of deep cuts in the 050 (national security) budget may be the best single indicator of the state of democracy in the U.S., and may provide the best prognosis of our future.

Our militaristic transformation has gone very far, into a war hysteria. Right now, Congress finds it far easier to wave little Ukraine flags than to solve U.S. problems at home. In nuclear weapons, there is essential no critical oversight going on. Congresspersons are falling over themselves to increase program requirements and funding.

The U.S. does not need nuclear weapons -- not any of them. No one does, but specifically we don't and we should get rid of them -- unilaterally. They are a curse. Some say giving up nuclear weapons would be too risky. We say not giving them up is too risky. Closely related, neither does the U.S. need a global empire, efforts to sustain which have brought us to the precipice of annihilation. Sitting on that precipice is itself fatal.

Some say that the U.S. does not need the Sentinel missile system, or doesn't need ICBMs. That's true enough. But ballistic missile submarines are really the most dangerous first-strike weapons, due to their unpredictable paths and short flight times. Does anyone really think that a piece of paper would prevent a first-strike by some future American Caesar?

We urge all parties to think and act more deeply in this time of crisis. "Oldthink" won't be adequate.

***ENDS***