How to Stop Arms Racing
How to Stop Arms Racing: Modernization, Sustainment and Disarmament Options
One search engine has 18 million entries for the charge that the United States is triggering a nuclear arms race by modernizing its nuclear forces. But apparently, if the United States just maintains its current nuclear force, and builds nothing new, it will still trigger a nuclear arms race. So writes Stephen Young from the Union of Concerned Scientists while adding that building a modern force will simply exacerbate the deteriorating international security environment.
Explains Young: “The geopolitical risk perception is more complicated and has become profoundly more so since 2014 when Russia annexed Crimea. In 2018, Russian President Vladimir Putin announced proposals for multiple new types of nuclear weapons, focused on defeating U.S. missile defenses. In 2021, China’s new land-based missile silos were uncovered, with 250 or more eventually spotted. In 2022, Russia invaded Ukraine, and since then has made frequent nuclear threats and posture changes, including stationing nuclear weapons in Belarus.”
Then Young asks whether any of these adversary actions could have been stopped if the U.S. had expanded its nuclear capability including for example building 80 nuclear pits a year, a key part of the United States current nuclear modernization plan of record.
Apparently, Young is under the strange perception that a modernized deterrent is meant to stop arms racing or in this case, stop Russia and China from having their own modernized nuclear forces. As opposed to the idea that the U.S. wisely modernizes its legacy, old nuclear force to sustain and improve deterrence. Nothing more.
But Young seems to think even replacing legacy systems–soon to become obsolete– is not a good idea. He declares: “The answer to all those questions is a clear and resounding no. Russia and China are taking those actions because they already fear the United States and its massive, lethal, and threatening nuclear and conventional military forces.” According to Young, as noted earlier, moving now to resume pit production and make new nuclear weapons only exacerbates the problem, accelerating an already budding nuclear arms race.
However, Mr. Young is only the latest within the disarmament community to warn the country that the United States is causing a current nuclear arms race with the Russians and Chinese. For decades, the disarmament community believed if the U.S. builds more or updated nuclear capability, that’s bad. If the U.S. builds missile defenses, that’s also bad. If the U.S. builds better and safer nuclear warheads, that’s bad. The implication being that if the U.S. showed restraint, the arms race could be slowed, maybe ended.
But in a remarkable twist, Young says even if the U.S. stopped modernization completely, the Russians and Chinese would also keep building. Why? Young says what they fear is the current legacy U.S. nuclear and conventional capability which is “threatening” to them.]
But if that is the case, how does the U.S. become non-threatening? If doing nothing creates an arms race, then does getting rid of our nuclear and conventional arms bring the race to a halt? Young implies the way to stop the arms race is for the U.S. to disarm.
So, on the one hand Young implies the U.S. didn’t cause the expansion of the nuclear capability in Russia and China with our own modernization, a reversal of the common disarmament community charge over many decades.
But Young switches to blaming the United States for simply having old legacy forces which really scare Beijing and Moscow. And that is causing an arms race.
Young apparently now agrees with former Secretary Harold Brown who quipped about arms racing— “We build, they build. We stop; they build.”
In summary, Young seems to think both that the U.S. is pursuing an arms race with our current modernization effort, implying we are forcing China and Russia to follow suit. But without modernization, the U.S. would have to rely on the current legacy forces. That force is very old and will go out of service relatively soon even though it costs considerably more each year to sustain and operate.
Young simultaneously believes that whether we build or not build, we are not able to effectively restrain Chinese and Russian nuclear force building. Can we exercise any more restraint? After all, we have legacy forces built in 1961 (B-52), 1970, (MMIII), 1982, (Ohio sub), 1992 (the D-5 SLBM), and 1997 (the B2 bomber), currently 28-64 years old. The only option we have is to get out of the nuclear business altogether. That is called disarmament. Others would call it surrender.
Peter R. Huessy is President of Geo-Strategic Analysis and Senior Fellow, National Institute for Deterrent Studies.