On November 8, 2013, Franklin Miller, Principal in the Scowcroft
Group, underscored in his remarks, at the Naval Submarine Base Kings
Bay, Georgia, entitled "Sustaining the Triad: The Enduring Requirements
of Deterrence in the 21st Century," that the current radical campaign of
Global Zero to undo the deterrent principals of the past three-quarters
century was largely based on faulty assumptions and dangerous
recommendations. Miller noted that the deterrent equation of the 21st
century may indeed have to resemble that of the 20th century, not
because anyone wants to return to the "Cold War", but because those
deterrent qualities worked and preserved the peace between the nuclear
armed powers of the globe. Global war which had engulfed humankind twice
in the first half of the 20th century was avoided. Remarkably as well,
the average number of deaths from warfare dropped significantly from 2%
of the world's population per year to less than .2%, a drop of 90%, a
not inconsequential achievement, a point made by the former Commander of
the US Strategic Command, Admiral Ed Mies. Here are Franklin Miller's
remarks.
MR. FRANKLIN MILLER: I want to thank the Camden Partnership, the
Camden Kings Bay Council of the Navy League and the Camden Country
Chamber of Commerce, and Peter Huessy, for inviting me to appear at this
breakfast. And my goal this morning is to start your day off right.
Peter Huessy is surely an unsung hero in our campaign to keep our
nuclear deterrent. In the current public debate in Washington on our
nuclear deterrent is completely unbalanced and intellectually empty.
Last year's report by the Global Zero organization was built on
faulty assumptions, questionable if not downright incorrect assertions,
and dangerous recommendations. But you can't find a mainstream
publication which ever seriously analyzed it. We are routinely
subjected to stories sneeringly referring to our existing deterrent
posture as Cold War-like. But no one steps forward to explain why, just
maybe why, the nuclear deterrence equation in the 21
century. But Peter, by keeping his speaker's series going, provides a
forum where some small degree of balance can be introduced into the
debate. So thank you for that, Peter.
Peter asked me to speak this morning about the challenges to
maintaining strategic stability. And let me give you my views as a
former American official, not as an academic, the view of a
practitioner. I take strategic stability to mean the absence of
state-to-state armed conflict involving any of our allies; the absence
of overt military threats to the United States or our allies' vital
interests; the absence of military or political blackmail against us or
our allies; and finally, the management of regional security issues so
that the risk of armed conflict is minimized to the maximum extent
possible.
Please note, I did not use the word nuclear in any of the above.
Nuclear stability, is a lesser included case, and it is critical to
remember that. But nuclear weapons clearly still play a very critical
role in allowing us to maintain strategic stability.
Our nuclear weapons serve to deter direct military attack by a major
state power against us or our allies. They serve to deter nuclear
blackmail or intimidation against the United States or our allies. They
serve to moderate great power behavior. In essence, in crude terms,
they serve to make war among the major powers too dangerous. Their
purpose is to prevent war.
This means that our advanced conventional weapons cannot reduce our
reliance on nuclear weapons because advanced conventional weapons are
war-fighting weapons, not war preventing weapons. So what must we do,
and what must we do differently, to preserve nuclear strategic
stability? My starting premise is that critical to nuclear stability is
our ability to maintain a credible retaliatory capability which
threatens potential enemy leadership's most valued assets, even in
worst-case scenarios for us.
This means we and our allies have to have confidence in our
deterrent, and potential adversaries must have respect for it. But we
will have neither confidence nor respect if we continue along our
current path. We are in serious danger, as my friend and CSIS colleague
Clark Murdoch has said, of rusting away into disarmament.
The last time the triad was modernized was in the 1980s. Triad
modernization is essential. The president promised the Congress, as
part of the agreement to ratify the New START Treaty, that U.S.
strategic nuclear forces would be modernized.
But that's not happening. The program to build a new SSBN has
suffered a two year delay, although thanks to Admiral David Hudson and
his team, it is back on track. The Air Force has said that the new
bomber will have a nuclear role someday, but not at its initial
operating capability, and when that will be is left unclear. The Air
Force has a program to choose a successor to the Air-Launched Cruise
Missile, but the way that program is structured, seeking to procure only
a few hundred nuclear-only missiles, makes it almost certainly
unaffordable. Both of these lagging efforts, by the way, are from the
administration which, when it negotiated New START, resurrected what's
called the bomber counting rule, thereby making a modern and sizable
air-breathing force a political necessity.
The Air Force is studying - studying Minuteman life extension, and
will soon begin studying a Minuteman replacement to include, according
to the administration's 2010 Nuclear Posture Review, underground and
mobile basing modes. Well those of us with gray hair have seen that
movie a few times before in the 1970s and 1980s, and we know it doesn't
end well. And the administration has yet to announce the composition of
its New START strategic deterrent force, so we have absolutely no idea
how that reduced force might be allocated among the three triad legs,
and that directly affects stability.
The fact is, we need a strategic triad, in spite of the nonsense from
Global Zero that we should eliminate the ICBM force and reduce the
number of SSBNs to a point where it would be difficult to maintain one
at-sea in each ocean at all times. Why do we need a triad? Well, with
our current force structure any Russian leadership in a future crisis -
and remember we're not talking about tomorrow - we're talking about a
hugely dangerous future crisis in which the use of military force is
being contemplated in the Kremlin, including the use of pre-emptive
nuclear strikes, as Russian doctrine calls for. That Russian leadership
would have to consider launching a huge attack in order to neutralize
our ICBM force, as well as our other triad legs and our national command
and control.
But if you eliminate the ICBM force, the problem becomes dramatically
easier for the Russian planner. To succeed, you only have to destroy
two SSBN bases, two bomber bases, and Washington, and then demand a
ceasefire. And even a small nuclear power can figure that out.
So let me put it more personally, the existence of several hundred
ICBMs makes Kings Bay a less attractive target in a crisis. So keeping a
strategic triad, some elements of which are always on alert, remains
vital.
By this point, some of you are surely concluding that I have reverted
to type and that I'm spouting Cold War rhetoric. But I'm going to urge
you to look around your world. And that look around the world should
convince you that another thing we have to change is the misbegotten
belief that the world's nuclear weapons states either already agree or
shortly will agree, given that we have blazed a path and thereby
enlightened their benighted minds that nuclear weapons should be
eliminated one day, and that the role nuclear weapons play in their
respective national security postures should be reduced now.
You will recall that in 2009 the president, speaking in Prague,
called on the world's nuclear weapons states, and I quote, "To put an
end to Cold War thinking," close quote. He announced that the United
States, quote, "Will reduce the role of nuclear weapons in our national
security strategy and urge others to do the same," close quote. Well,
the scorecard is in four years after the Prague speech, and the answer
except for here in the United States is, it ain't happened.
Actually, the reverse is happening. Russia is deploying a new class
of SSBNs, two new types of sea-launched ballistic missiles, a new type
of ICBM with two variants, a new air-launched cruise missile, and has
placed nuclear weapons at the heart of its security policy. It
continues to threaten nuclear weapons use against its neighbors. And
just last week, President Putin played a conspicuous role directing a
Russian strategic nuclear force exercise.
And just to put a coda on that, he sent two Blackjack strategic
bombers first to Venezuela and then to Nicaragua. But you won't read
that in the New York Times or the Washington Post. Reduced role?
Exactly the opposite.
The Chinese government refuses to engage in any discussion of its
nuclear policy, maintaining a total opacity except for making the
operationally empty statement that it has a no first use policy. That,
of course, is meaningless, since such a policy can literally be changed
in an instant by the Central Committee. And it's worth noting that the
Soviet Union had a no first use declaratory policy and a first-use
operational policy.
China is deploying two new types of ICBMs. It is building a new
class of SSBN, a new type of SLBM, and refuses to accept any limits on
the growth of its nuclear forces. And in case you missed it - and
again, you probably did because it's not carried in the U.S. press -
Chinese state run media, and let me emphasize state run media, carried
stories last week complete with photos and graphics describing with
great relish the ability of Chinese nuclear forces to destroy various
named U.S. cities. Reduced role? Not apparent.
India is now deploying the sea-based element of its nuclear
deterrent, completing a nuclear triad. And Pakistan is doubling its
fissile material production capacity and is deploying a new class of
short-range nuclear weapons. Reduce role? Exactly the opposite. The
subcontinent resembles a nuclear tinderbox.
North Korea continues its missile and nuclear development programs.
Reduced role evidently doesn't translate well into Korean. (Nor into
Farsi ?), since Iran continues its missile development and deployment
programs and continues to move closer to a nuclear weapons capability.
It is not possible - it is not possible to maintain strategic stability
if your policy does not reflect the global realities, and those global
realities are moving in a different direction than our aspirations.
I'd like to pivot now and take a few moments to discuss with you some
of the arguments against maintaining a nuclear deterrent which are
prevalent inside the Washington beltway. One of the arguments most
frequently used against our nuclear deterrent is that it is said to be
irrelevant to the threats of the 21
st century. Global Zero
smugly points out that our deterrent did not prevent the September 11
attacks or the various terrorist plots we have uncovered since then.
But nuclear weapons are not, indeed never have been or never will be,
an all- purpose deterrent. They are not useful for deterring
terrorism, even WMD terrorism by stateless entities, or piracy, across
border drug trafficking or even low level insurgencies. And it's a
cheap rhetorical trick - let me say that again - it's a cheap rhetorical
trick to suggest that nuclear weapons have outlived their usefulness by
pointing to attacks they failed to deter when they were not intended or
deployed to deter such attacks in the first place.
To meet the new threats of the 21
st century, which are
very real and which must be deterred or defeated and destroyed, the
United States must continue to rely on and to modernize its conventional
forces, its ballistic missile defense forces, its special operations
forces, and its space and cyber capabilities. And I urge you to
remember that nuclear weapons were not designed to serve this role and
they can't. They can, however, prevent the big war and allow us to use
our other tailored capabilities to deal with more proximate and daily
threats, threats which are more proximate and daily precisely because
nuclear deterrence has made the threat of great power conflict less
proximate.
You will also hear it said that non-nuclear forces are also far more credible instruments for providing 21
st century reassurance to allies whose comfort zone in the 20
th
century resided under the U.S. nuclear umbrella. Well clearly some
left-wing American philosophers believe so, but the allies aren't buying
it. And try as the philosophers might, and they have done so mightily,
our allies still continue to make clear that they want the reassurance
provided by our nuclear umbrella. This is still the case in Asia. And
it is still the case in NATO, where twice in the last three years the
leaders of the alliance have reaffirmed this.
And speaking of proliferation, we are told ad nauseum that our
nuclear weapons are contributing to the threat of nuclear
proliferation. Once again, the evidence shows that that is clearly not
true. Our nuclear arsenal, in fact, is an anti-proliferant because we
protect allies who otherwise might and could build their own nuclear
weapons.
And it is fundamentally important to recognize that the often
discussed linkage between the continued existence of the nuclear
arsenals of the nuclear weapons states and further proliferation does
not exist. The history of the last 20 years is that the U.S., British,
French and even Russian nuclear arsenals have declined dramatically
over the last 20 years, while over the same period the Chinese, Indian,
Pakistani and North Korean arsenals have grown.
North Korea has not pursued a nuclear weapons program because of our
nuclear arsenal. It has pursued one because it seeks to intimidate its
neighbors and to deter U.S. conventional military action. And while the
continued existence of the nuclear weapons states arsenals makes for a
convenient talking point in international and domestic nonproliferation
circles, it is factually wrong and intellectually patronizing to believe
that proliferant governments are mindlessly aping the policies of the
nuclear weapons states.
Let me conclude by leaving you with three final thoughts. First, in
thinking about nuclear deterrence it is absolutely critical that we
remember that our task is to deter a potentially hostile foreign
leadership which possesses nuclear weapons. Our task is not to deter
these states today. It is to deter them in a future crisis when they
are contemplating the use of military force, including nuclear weapons,
against us or our allies' vital interests.
In such a perilous situation, U.S. policy must reflect the fact that
we deter hostile leaderships by threatening what they value most, not
what we value most. We value our people and our society. Hostile
authoritarian leaderships value their ability to stay in power, and a
security apparatus which enables them to do so, and the military forces
and the industrial capacity to sustain war.
And so it is a strategic mistake of enormous proportion to believe
that an effective deterrent in a future crisis can be based on a few
hundred weapons which threaten a potential enemy's cities. That
strategy would be both immoral and self-defeating. Mirror imaging is a
dangerous an fundamentally flawed approach to deterrence, and we must
never, ever fall into that trap.
Second, there are those, including many former senior officials who
should know better, who would eliminate or dramatically scale back our
nuclear deterrent because they say eliminating the deterrent would
accelerate the movement to a world without nuclear weapons, and this
will increase global stability. The assumption that somewhere in the
future there must be a world in which the instability of nuclear
deterrence is replaced by the stability of conventional deterrence,
reveals that its proponents neither study history nor pay attention to
the policies of governments who just might not be content to turn away
from aggression. My study of history from 1945 shows that the world
before 1945, a nuclear weapons free world, was not particularly stable.
Nor was deterrence based on conventional forces ever particularly
effective.
There is a quote popularly attributed to Ms. Thatcher, and if she
didn't say it she should have. Speaking of all the war memorials in
France, she said, there's a monument to the failure of conventional
deterrence in every French village. Since 1945, however, the major
powers have avoided war with one another, a sharp contrast to the
average of five to seven wars per century between the major powers from
1648 to 1945.
Something happened in 1945. Nuclear weapons made war between the
major powers too dangerous. And that was, and remains, a good thing.
Finally, when you encounter a proponent of nuclear zero, you'll
likely be asked, how can you support a nuclear deterrence policy which
is based on weapons which will never be used? Don't be drawn into a
debate of hypothetical warfighting scenarios. They just love that.
Just answer plainly, we use them every day. We preserve peace and
freedom for us and our allies.
Thanks, again, for the Camden Community. And thanks, again,
particularly to the members of the Kings Bay Base Trident force present
here today, for what you do now and every day. Thank you.
Peter Huessy is President of GeoStrategic Analysis of Potomac, Maryland , a defense and national security consulting firm.
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