For a very long time, from Hiroshima on 6 August 1945 to the collapse of the Soviet Union on 25 December 1991, much of the world dreaded nuclear annihilation. There were attempts to diminish that peril through superpower summits and arms control agreements, but the threat of catastrophe never truly disappeared. Then, with the end of the cold war, the perceived risk of nuclear war largely evaporated, and few gave much thought to the mammoth stockpiles of atomic weapons still in place. But now the threat of nuclear war has returned, as the major powers undertake plans to modernise those arsenals and contemplate their use.

The principal nuclear powers — the US, Russia and China — are all engaged in weapons modernisation, but no government has embraced this new era of atomic rehabilitation with greater fervour than the administration of President Donald Trump. On 2 February the US defence department released a Nuclear Posture Review (NPR), envisioning the use of nuclear weapons under a wider range of circumstances than previously allowed and calling for more atomic munitions to make this possible.

By ‘nuclear posture’ the Pentagon means an assessment of the global security environment; a formal statement of US policy regarding the use of atomic weapons; and an inventory of the weapons deemed necessary to implement it. The new NPR is very clear on all these points. The US, it says, faces wider threats than ever before, including increased hostility from, and military assertiveness by, Russia and China. In response, US nuclear policy must be revised to afford the president greater leeway in the use of nuclear weapons, and munitions must be acquired to facilitate such actions, when and if necessary.

One might conclude that the US is at a military disadvantage vis-à-vis Russia or China, and desperately needs to rebuild its defences. Nothing could be further from the truth: The US has overwhelming superiority in conventional military forces and a vast, potent nuclear arsenal. It maintains substantial combat forces on the periphery of Russia and China but faces no such peril itself. Despite these realities, the new NPR claims the US is severely threatened by Russia and China, and so must acquire more nuclear weapons and be prepared to use them.

Policy reversed

This is a turnaround from the policies inherited by the Trump administration. Under the previous strategic overhaul by US authorities, the Nuclear Posture Review of April 2010, it was policy to reduce the ‘salience’ of nuclear weapons in US military doctrine and to pursue, via negotiations with other nuclear states, significant reductions in stockpiles of such munitions.

When first describing this approach, President Barack Obama said in Prague on 5 April 2009: ‘To put an end to cold war thinking, we will reduce the role of nuclear weapons in our national security strategy, and urge others to do the same’. Underlying this outlook was a conviction that relations among the great powers were capable of steady improvement, that nuclear war was a diminishing prospect, and that in consequence, nuclear arsenals could be safely shrunk. The Trump administration’s review rejects those propositions and goes out of its way to assert the validity of their polar opposites. In this way, the new NPR is a manifesto for the ‘new nuclear age’.

Just as the Obama NPR, with its call for diminished nuclear arsenals, was predicated on the belief that relations among the great powers were moving toward steady improvement, the Trump NPR pictures the opposite, and contends that the US arsenal must be significantly upgraded as a result. Since 2010, it claims, ‘we have seen the return of Great Power competition. To varying degrees, Russia and China have made clear they seek to substantially revise the post-cold war international order and norms of behavior.’ Actions by those countries are cited, including Russia’s seizure of Crimea and China’s building of military facilities on contested islands in the South China Sea. Both countries are said to be ‘pursuing asymmetric ways and means to counter US conventional capabilities, thereby increasing the risk of miscalculation and the potential for military confrontation with the United States, its allies, and partners.’ Russia and China are said to be modernising and expanding their nuclear arsenals to be even greater perils to the US and its allies.

At no point does the NPR acknowledge any role of the US or its partners in propelling the alleged deterioration of great power relations. No mention is made of NATO’s expansion into the territory of the former Soviet Union or the US’s provocative pivot to the Asia-Pacific region. That the US continues to have overwhelming superiority in nuclear weaponry goes unmentioned, as does its massive investment in conventional and space capabilities. Russia and China are exclusively blamed for the increase in nuclear tensions.

‘Russia upgrading nuclear arsenal’

Russia is particularly blamed as seeking dominance over all its neighbours and girding for a war with NATO. In its planning, Russia is said to place disproportionate reliance on nuclear weapons to intimidate the West and, if necessary, defeat NATO in battle.

‘Russian strategy and doctrine emphasize the potential coercive and military uses of nuclear weapons,’ the NPR states. To implement this strategy, Russia is conducting ‘a comprehensive modernisation of its nuclear arsenal’ which entails ‘multiple upgrades for every leg of the Russian nuclear triad,’ as well as the introduction of non-strategic nuclear weapons intended for use on future European battlefields against NATO’s conventional forces.

This intense focus on Russia and its purported threat to the US and its allies is striking, given Donald Trump’s reluctance to criticise Vladimir Putin for recent international disturbances or to blame Russia for interference in the 2016 presidential election. Although Trump has endorsed the modernisation of the US atomic arsenal, he has not spoken as critically of Russia’s nuclear moves as the Department of Defense, as reflected in this document. The upper ranks of the US military establishment are full of career officers who look at the world map and see Russia, followed by China, North Korea and Iran, as America’s principal adversaries, and believe US forces must be capable of overpowering all of them. These officers never embraced the benign world outlook of President Obama and now, with the White House preoccupied with internal matters and the Democrats in Congress keen to punish Moscow for helping elect Trump, see an opportunity to gain funding for all the new weapons — both nuclear and conventional — they’ve long been seeking.

It is in this atmosphere of suspicion and animosity that the NPR appears to have been fashioned. The document points to a revival of great power rivalry and provocative steps said to have been taken by Russia and China, and insists the US has no choice but to gird itself for a new cold war-like era of competition and arms race.

Nuclear arms again to be usable?

Underpinning the entire review is the claim, never actually substantiated, that Russia and China have increased the perceived utility of nuclear arms in their defence strategies: ‘While the United States has continued to reduce the numbers and salience of nuclear weapons, others, including Russia and China, have moved in the opposite direction. They have added new types of nuclear capabilities to their arsenals.’ Here again Russia is said to be the leading culprit, and to have increased its reliance on the first use of nuclear weapons to deter attack by superior western forces, or to defeat them in battle if deterrence failed: ‘Most concerning are Russia’s national security policies, strategies, and doctrine that include an emphasis on the threat of limited nuclear escalation.’

The NPR claims Russia has adopted this stance because it has sought to compensate for its perceived inferiority to western forces on the European front by turning to the early use of ‘tactical’ or ‘theater’ nuclear weapons. In such a scenario, Russia might employ low-yield atomic munitions against selected NATO conventional forces to persuade the West to abandon the fight — a strategy referred to in the US as ‘escalate to de-escalate’. No evidence is provided to support this claim, and many independent analysts are sceptical that Russian strategists seriously entertain this notion. Russian military doctrine does call for the first use of nuclear weapons in the event of an overwhelming enemy attack on Russian territory, just as NATO doctrine envisions first use of such munitions in a non-nuclear strategic attack by Russia on the West.

Nevertheless, it is on this dubious assumption that the Trump NPR calls for a more flexible weapons-use policy, employing a more diverse range of weapons systems. The review claims that the Russians may believe that a US president would hesitate to employ the high-yield nuclear arms currently in the US arsenal in response to Russian use of a low-yield weapons, fearing all-out retaliation by Moscow, and insists that the US must be able to threaten the use of low-yield weapons to close this supposed gap.

‘Our tailored strategy’

A similar approach is taken toward China. Even though China has repeatedly declared a no-first-use policy in nuclear weapons, and has a smaller atomic arsenal than France, the NPR states that the US must be able to threaten it with a wider range of nuclear attacks to deter it from contemplating first use: ‘Our tailored strategy for China is designed to prevent Beijing from mistakenly concluding that it could secure an advantage through the limited use of theater nuclear capabilities.’

Other countries, including North Korea, could become targets for US nuclear weapons in the future. Noting that North Korea relies on underground facilities to protect its vital military systems, the NPR states that ‘the United States will continue to field a range of conventional and nuclear capabilities to hold such targets at risk.’ Because other major threats could emerge — including cyber and space — the review incorporates a hedge strategy intended to ensure that the US will always have wide nuclear response options.

The review affirms that for all this to be credible, the existing US arsenal must be completely rebuilt and new types of munitions added; the arsenal was largely constructed decades ago and is nearing or has exceeded its intended life. Each leg of the nuclear triad — ground-launched intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), sea-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs), and long-range bombers carrying gravity bombs and air-launched-cruise missiles (ALCMs) — must be replaced with new, more capable systems.

Obama, in attempting to gain Congressional support for seeking deep cuts in strategic nuclear weapons via arms control agreements with Russia, agreed to begin initial design work on the replacement systems. These were to include: a new Ground-Based Strategic Deterrent (GBSD) to replace existing Minuteman ICBMs; a new class of missile submarines, the Columbia class; a new bomber, the B-21 Raider, and a new ALCM, the long-range standoff (LRSO) missile. However, he deferred to his successor the decision of whether to proceed with the procurement of these weapons — possibly believing that a President Hillary Clinton might decide to forego one or more. This was probably wishful thinking on his part, as Clinton, as senator, was generally hawkish on defence issues and, as secretary of state and afterwards, conspicuously hostile toward Moscow.

‘Tailored’ and ‘flexible’

The development and production of these new systems is likely to take many years and will cost a minimum of $1.2 trillion. In accordance with the NPR, the Trump administration has requested funding in the budget it submitted to Congress on 12 February. According to the Pentagon’s Fiscal Year 2019 Budget Request, $2.3bn will be sought for development of the B-21 bomber, $3.7bn for the Columbia-class submarine, $600m for the LRSO missile, and $300m for the GBSD, a total $6.9bn down payment on the new arsenal.

To implement the tailored and flexible deterrent strategy, the Pentagon also plans to acquire additional, low-yield munitions intended for potential use against Russia and China in battlefield scenarios. These ‘supplements … will enhance deterrence by denying potential adversaries any mistaken confidence that limited nuclear employment can provide a useful advantage over the United States and its allies.’

The procurement is needed, the NPR states, because Russia may believe that the US lacks a capacity to counter an enemy’s use of low-yield nuclear munitions without resorting to high-yield weapons. But this is untrue, and the Russians know it. As part of its commitment to NATO, the US stations dual-capable aircraft (DCA), specifically F-15 fighters, in Europe that could drop B61 low-yield nuclear bombs on Russian forces in a major European conflagration. New low-yield SLBM warheads and a nuclear-armed SLCM are not needed to deter Russian first use of tactical nuclear weapons, but this satisfies a desire to expand the diversity of the US nuclear arsenal.

Congress still has to appropriate money for all these programmes, and many will not reach completion for many years. It is possible that some of the technical dimensions of the NPR will not be fully achieved. Far more significant is the change in policy and mood, discarding Obama’s anti-nuclear views: the Trump administration is fully committed to expanding the perceived utility of atomic weapons in US military strategy. The anti-Russia climate enveloping the US political class silences all opposition to the enhancement of US nuclear capabilities; there has been an almost unanimous adoption of a huge increase in military spending by both parties’ parliamentarians. This can only inspire the leaders of Russia and China — and other countries — to adopt a similar stance, and seek the expansion of their own arsenals. Welcome to the new nuclear era.

- Michael T Klare is professor of peace and world security studies at Hampshire College in Amherst (Massachusetts) and the author of The Race For What’s Left: the Global Scramble for the World’s Last Resources, Picador/Metropolitan Books, New York, 2012.

Copyright ©2018 Le Monde diplomatique — used by permission of Agence Global