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Primacy and Maximum Deterrence

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The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy

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Abstract

After the end of the Cold War there was a debate in the US on the merits and drawbacks of retaining a maximum deterrence posture versus switching to one of minimum deterrence. The 1993–1994 Nuclear Posture Review constituted a victory for the advocates of maximum deterrence. Despite the arms control agreements that would follow in the next decade-and-a-half, and despite the technological advances in non-nuclear systems, maximum deterrence remained the ideational justification for retaining the US nuclear status quo. Minimum deterrence still had its supporters but they constituted a minority.

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Notes

  1. 1.

    Jeffrey Lewis, ‘The Nuclear Trials of Ashton Carter’, Foreign Policy, February 5, 2015.

  2. 2.

    Richard Sisk, ‘Mattis’ About-Face: He Now Supports ICBMS as Part of Nuclear Triad’, Military.com , February 7, 2018; Mattis, J. (2017, January 12). Transcript before the Committee on Armed Services, United States Senate to Conduct a Confirmation Hearing on the Expected Nomination of Mr. James N. Mattis to be Secretary of Defense. Washington, DC. Retrieved from http://www.armed-services.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/17-03_01-12-17.pdf; Statement of James N. Mattis before the Senate Armed Services Committee, 27 January 2015: https://www.armed-services.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/Mattis_01-27-15.pdf.

  3. 3.

    Robert Soofer, ‘Documentation: “The Politics of Nuclear Weapons Policy”’, Presentation to Johns Hopkins University Graduate School Symposium, Washington DC, April 8, 2015, Comparative Strategy, Vol. 35, No. 2, 2016, pp. 169–75.

  4. 4.

    Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press, ‘The End of MAD? The Nuclear Dimension of US Primacy’, International Security, Vol. 30, No. 4 (Spring 2006), pp. 7–44; Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press, The Rise of US Nuclear Primacy, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 85, No. 2, March-April 2006, pp. 42–54.

  5. 5.

    See for instance: Peter C.W. Flory, Keith Payne, Pavel Podvig, Alexei Arbatov, ‘Nuclear Exchange: Does Washington Really Have (or Want) Nuclear Primacy?’ Foreign Affairs, September/October 2006.

  6. 6.

    See argument of Tom Sauer in: Jeffrey S. Lantis and Tom Sauer and James J. Wirtz and Keir A. Lieber et al. “Correspondence: The Short Shadow of U.S. Primacy?” International Security 31, no. 3 (2006): pp. 177–81.

  7. 7.

    See for instance: Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press, ‘The New Era of Counterforce: Technological Change and the Future of Nuclear Deterrence’, International Security, Vol. 41, No. 4 (Spring 2017), pp. 9–49.

  8. 8.

    Keir A. Lieber and Daryl G. Press, ‘The Nukes We Need: Preserving the American Deterrent’, Foreign Affairs, Vol. 88, No. 6, November/December 2009, pp. 39–51. For further discussion see: Jan Lodal, Keir A. Lieber, Daryl G. Press, James Acton, Hans M. Kristensen, Matthew McKinzie, and Ivan Oelrich, Second Strike: Is the US Nuclear Arsenal Outmoded? Foreign Affairs, Vol. 89, No. 2, March/April 2010, pp. 145–52.

  9. 9.

    Roberts provides further elaboration of his ideas in: Brad Roberts conversation: US Nuclear Weapons in the 21st Century, June 28, 2016 Transcript, Carnegie Endowment for International Peace. Available at: http://carnegieendowment.org/files/Transcript17.pdf.

  10. 10.

    Barack Obama, ‘Remarks in Chicago: “A New Beginning”’, October 2, 2007. Can be accessed at: http://presidency.proxied.lsit.ucsb.edu/ws/index.php?pid=77015. Obama’s position on nuclear issues was elaborated further in July 2008. See: Press Release—FACT SHEET: Obama’s New Plan to Confront 21st Century Threats, July 16, 2008. Can be accessed at: http://www.presidency.ucsb.edu/ws/?pid=93199; Gary Samore, ‘Making a Difference: Creating and Implementing the Prague Agenda’, Harvard Belfer Center, June 1, 2013. Can be accessed at: http://www.belfercenter.org/publication/making-difference-creating-and-implementing-prague-agenda; Barack Obama, Statement by the President. Hradcany Square, Prague, Czech Republic, April 5, 2009. Retrieved from https://www.whitehouse.gov/the-press-office/remarks-president-barack-obama-prague-delivered.

  11. 11.

    The 2010 figure of $1 trillion has since increased to at least $1.2 trillion by 2018 and continues to rise.

  12. 12.

    Congressional Budget Office, Projected costs of U.S. nuclear forces, 2015–2024, January 2015. Retrieved from https://www.cbo.gov/sites/default/files/114thcongress-2015-2016/reports/49870-NuclearForces.pdf.

  13. 13.

    Remarks by President Obama at the Brandenburg Gate—Berlin, Germany, Office of the Press Secretary, The White House, June 19, 2013. Available at: https://obamawhitehouse.archives.gov/the-press-office/2013/06/19/remarks-president-obama-brandenburg-gate-berlin-germany.

  14. 14.

    Josh Rogin, ‘U.S. Allies Unite to Block Obama’s Nuclear legacy’, Washington Post, 4 August 2016.

  15. 15.

    US Department of Defense, ‘Nuclear Posture Review’, February 2018.

  16. 16.

    Michael Smetana ‘A Nuclear Posture Review for the Third Nuclear Age’, The Washington Quarterly, 41:3 (Fall 2018), p. 141.

  17. 17.

    W. J. Hennigan, ‘Donald Trump Is Playing a Dangerous Game of Nuclear Poker’, Time, February 1, 2018.

  18. 18.

    Secretary of Defense Jim Mattis, House Appropriations Subcommittee on Defense, Written Statement for the Record, April 25, 2018. Available at: https://www.appropriations.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/050918%20-%20FY19%20DoD%20Mattis%20Testimony.pdf.

  19. 19.

    See for instance: Hearing to Receive Testimony on United States Strategic Command in review of the Defense Authorization request for Fiscal Year 2019 and the Future Years Defense program, Committee on Armed Services, US Senate, Washington DC, March 20, 2018. Available at: https://www.armed-services.senate.gov/imo/media/doc/18-28_03-20-18.pdf.

  20. 20.

    Hans M. Kristensen and Robert S. Norris, ‘United States Nuclear Forces, 2018’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Vol. 74, No. 2, 2018, pp. 120–31.

  21. 21.

    Ground-based interceptors were given an erroneous boost as a result of the misleading first impressions of the performance of the Patriot missile during the Gulf. For the first demonstration of the limits of Patriot see Ted Postol, ‘Lessons of the Gulf War Experience’, International Security 16.3 (Winter 1991/1992).

  22. 22.

    Joseph Cirincione, ‘Why the Right Lost the Missile Defense Debate’, Foreign Policy, 106 (Spring 1997).

  23. 23.

    Bradley Graham, Hit to Kill: The New Battle over Shielding America from Missile Attack (New York: Public Affairs, 2001).

  24. 24.

    Ivo H. Daalder, James M. Goldgeier, and James M. Lindsay, ‘Deploying NMD: Not Whether, but How’, Survival 42:1 (2000): pp. 6–28.

  25. 25.

    George Lewis, Lisbeth Gronlund, and David Wright, ‘National Missile Defense: An Indefensible System’, Foreign Policy, 117 (Winter 1999–2000), pp. 120–37.

  26. 26.

    As examples of the more moderate pro- and anti- viewpoints, and so an indication of the marginality of the decision, see James M. Lindsay, and Michael O’Hanlon. Defending America: The Case for a Limited National Missile Defense. Washington DC: Brookings Institution, 2001 and Charles Glaser and Steve Fetter, ‘National Missile Defense and the Future of U.S. Nuclear Weapons Policy’, International Security 26:1 (Summer 2001). See also the correspondence between these two views in International Security, Vol. 26: No. 4 (Spring 2002).

  27. 27.

    Dennis Gormley, ‘Enriching Expectations: 11 September’s Lessons for Missile Defence.’ Survival 44.2 (Summer 2000): pp. 19–36.

  28. 28.

    NATO Bucharest Summit Declaration, Issued by the Heads of State and Government participating in the meeting of the North Atlantic Council in Bucharest on 3 April 2008, Press Release (2008) 049. Available at: http://www.nato.int/cps/in/natohq/official_texts_8443.htm.

  29. 29.

    Mark Fitzpatrick, ‘A Prudent Decision on Missile defence’, Survival, Vol. 51, no. 6, December 2009-January 2010, pp. 5–12.

  30. 30.

    Keir Giles with Andrew Monaghan, ‘European Missile Defense and Russia’, Strategic Studies Institute, July 2014.

  31. 31.

    Gerry Mullaney and Chris Buckley, ‘China Warns of Arms Race after US Deploys Missile Defense in South Korea’, New York Times, March 7, 2017.

  32. 32.

    Transcript Donald Trump’s Foreign Policy Speech, New York Times, April 27, 2016. Retrieved from: https://www.nytimes.com/2016/04/28/us/politics/transcript-trump-foreign-policy.html; White House, ‘Making our military strong again’, January 20, 2017. Retrieved from https://www.whitehouse.gov/making-our-military-strong-again.

  33. 33.

    Kingston Reif, Congress Boosts Missile Defence Spending, Arms Control Association, May 2018.

  34. 34.

    Frank A. Rose, ‘Will the upcoming Missile Defense Review maintain the current course or plot a new direction?’ Brookings, June 11, 2018.

  35. 35.

    P. W. Singer and Noah Shachtman, ‘The wrong war: The Insistence on Applying Cold War Metaphors to Cybersecurity Is Misplaced and Counterproductive’, Brookings, August 15, 2011; Martin C. Libicki, Cyberdeterrence and Cyberwar, RAND Corporation, 2009.

  36. 36.

    Andrew Futter, Hacking the Bomb: Cyber Threats and Nuclear Weapons (Washington DC: Georgetown University Press, 2018).

  37. 37.

    Jesse T. Wasson and Christopher E. Bluesteen, ‘Taking the archers for granted: emerging threats to nuclear weapon delivery systems’, Defence Studies, 18: 4 (2018), pp. 433–53.

  38. 38.

    Austin Long and Brendan Rittenhouse Green, ‘Stalking the Secure Second Strike: Intelligence, Counterforce, and Nuclear Strategy’, Journal of Strategic Studies, Vol. 38, No. 1–2, 2015, pp. 38–73; Joseph S. Nye, Jr. ‘From Bombs to Bytes: Can Our Nuclear History Inform our Cyber Future’, Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists, Vol. 69, No. 5, 2013, pp. 8–14; Andrew Futter, Cyber Threats and Nuclear Weapons: New Questions for Command and Control, Security and Strategy, RUSI Occasional Paper, July 2016; Paul Bracken, ‘The Cyber Threat to Nuclear Stability’, Orbis, Vol. 60, Issue 2, 2016, pp. 188–203. On hypersonic weapons see Richard H. Speier, Hypersonic Missiles: A New Proliferation Challenge, The RAND Blog, 29 March 2018. https://www.rand.org/blog/2018/03/hypersonic-missiles-a-new-proliferation-challenge.html. See also David Axe, ‘Why Russia Being “First” In Hypersonic Weapons Might Be a Bad Thing’, The National Interest, 28 December 2018.

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Authors and Affiliations

  1. Department of War Studies, King’s College London, London, UK

    Lawrence Freedman

  2. Department of Defence Studies, King’s College London, London, UK

    Jeffrey Michaels

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  1. Lawrence Freedman
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  2. Jeffrey Michaels
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Correspondence to Lawrence Freedman .

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Freedman, L., Michaels, J. (2019). Primacy and Maximum Deterrence. In: The Evolution of Nuclear Strategy. Palgrave Macmillan, London. https://doi.org/10.1057/978-1-137-57350-6_43

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