Nuclear Roulette: The U.S. Nuclear Employment Guideline
From left are the Peacekeeper, the Minuteman III and the Minuteman. Photo,
photo by R.J. Oriez, U.S. Air Force.
The U.S. Nuclear Employment Guideline Report, according to Department of Defense websites, appears to be a detailed target menu in the event the president orders a nuclear attack. It is required of the executive by Congress, Section 491, when the president alters the nuclear weapons strategy of the U.S. As alluded to by top-ranking administration leaders and reported in the New York Times, the revised Nuclear Employment Guideline signed by President Biden reflects China’s expanding nuclear arsenal.
The president sets the nation’s nuclear strategy and the Joint Chiefs of Staff develop the tactical plans to achieve the president’s strategy, according to DOD literature.
As China, People’s Republic of China, has increased its manufacture of nuclear weapons in the past five years much faster than defense analysts had predicted, the U.S. has turned the focus of its nuclear guideline toward the PRC. China now possesses around 500 nuclear warheads. And while the U.S. and Russia each currently deploy around 1,700 nuclear warheads each, China is on pace to equal that number by 2035.
Similarly threatening to the U.S. is the prospect of China coordinating its nuclear capability with that of Russia, and even with North Korea, now harboring around 60 nuclear warheads and a growing fleet of intercontinental missiles to deliver them.
China has also made aggressive territorial claims to the South China Sea and vows to gain control of Taiwan by any means necessary, definitively by 2049. This July China suspended nuclear weapons control talks with the U.S. citing increased military arms sales to Taiwan by the U.S.
Yet, China has recently dissuaded Russia from threatening the use of nuclear weapons against Ukraine, or against western states that might deploy soldiers to Ukraine. And China repeated its call for the “denuclearization” of the Korean Peninsula in joint meetings with Japan and South Korea in May of this year.
Significantly, China maintains its posture of No First Use of nuclear weapons and repeated calls last week for the other leading nuclear-armed nations, Russia, France, U.K and the U.S. to adopt a No First Use nuclear policy. India and China are the only nuclear-armed nations to affirm NFU.
One of the architects of the revised U.S. Nuclear Employment Guidelines is Vipin Narang, Acting Assistant Director of Department of Defense Space Agency. During his retirement speech from DOD this August, Narang blamed China and Russia for failed arms control talks. Before returning to lecture at M.I.T. Narang said China’s expansion of its nuclear arsenal was threatening, and that moving its nuclear-armed missiles to “launch on warning” status was provocative.
Narang did not share that the U.S. possesses more than ten times the number of nuclear warheads, 5,580, as China has. Nor that the entire fleet of U.S. Air Force Minuteman missiles has been on “launch on alert” status for sixty years.
Failing arms control negotiations with Russia result from Russia’s invasion of Ukraine and Russia’s announced withdrawal from the NewSTART nuclear weapons treaty in 2026, according to Narang. NewSTART is the only remaining arms control treaty now in effect between Russia and the U.S. It successfully decommissioned thousands of nuclear warhead and missile launchers from each arsenal since its ratification in 2010. For the deteriorating state of U.S. Russia talks, Narang did not cite the failure of the U.S. to ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty, 1996, the U.S. withdrawal from the Anti-Ballistic Missile Defense Treaty in 2001 or withdrawal from the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, INF in 2019.
Narang’s bleak address to his DOD colleagues warned them to “prepare for a world where constraints on nuclear weapons arsenals disappear entirely”. He described the last quarter century following the Cold War as a “nuclear intermission”, and that “the intermission is over and we are clearly in the next act (of the Cold War)”. Grimly assessing the failure of two years of nuclear weapons negotiations he went on to extoll the Air Force’s new generation F-35 fighter jet, the new B61-12 nuclear bomb, the Sentinel fleet of new ICBM missiles, and the “modernization” of our nuclear forces, costing more than one trillion dollars in coming decades.
In his book Nuclear Strategy in the Modern Era (2014) Narang proposed a theory about how nations devise their nuclear postures to enhance deterrence. Countries will either seek protection from larger nuclear powers, threaten asymmetrical nuclear attack or promise assured nuclear retaliation.
Missing from Narang’s calculus, is the decision many countries have already made to forgo nuclear arsenal all together. Indeed, the majority of nation-states, pursuant of their own security, have rejected the deployment of nuclear weapons on their soil. The majority of humankind regard nuclear weapons as inherently destabilizing and dangerous and of no military value.
When 193 countries voted for the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons Treaty, NPT, in 1970, they agreed not only to halt the spread of nuclear weapons but to reduce nuclear weapons stockpiles, and “cease the nuclear arms race”. The NPT places the onus on the nuclear powers to eliminate all nuclear weapons at an “early date”. All nuclear weapons would eventually come under the control of an international agency as agreed in the NPT’s Article VI.
The international control of military arms and especially nuclear weapons was the lifelong goal of Albert Einstein. Even before WWI but surely after “The Great War”, then WWII and endless conflict since, Einstein regarded nation states as incapable of resolving their disputes in a peaceful manner. The creation of the League of Nations, the United Nations, and the International Atomic Energy Commission have in some measure fulfilled his vision of a supra-national organization of de-militarization and peace.
Three recent decisions by the International Criminal Court in the Hague would have major geopolitical consequences and improve prospects for peace if and when they were enforced: that Isreal’s occupation of Palestinian Territory, including, Gaza, East Jerusalem, and the West Bank is illegal, that China’s jurisdictional claims in the South China Sea are illegal, and that Vladamir Putin’s capture of Ukrainian children was illegal.
Even more consequential is the growing effort begun in the United Nations General Assembly to outlaw nuclear weapons, the Treaty on the Prohibition of Nuclear Weapons, TPNW. Endorsed by 122 countries in the United Nations General Assembly in 2017 is now ratified or acceded to by 70 countries, banning nuclear weapons from their jurisdictions.
As the U.S. and the other nuclear powers drift further and further from the goal of nuclear disarmament, they double down on their nuclear arsenals and invest in new platforms to deliver their nuclear payloads. Is it too late to build credible assurances that these awful weapons will never be used? It will never be too late to eschew these horrible weapons, unless or until some brilliant leader orders a nuclear attack.
Another Secretary of Defense from Cambridge, Robert McNamara, learned some bitter lessons from the fog of the Vietnam War (The Fog of War, Academy Award film documentary). That the new generation of cold warriors should review McNamara’s warnings before charging into another nuclear arms race.
Lesson #1. Military leaders make mistakes. If you make a mistake with a nuclear weapon you literally destroy nations.
Lesson #2 Empathy; we have to put ourselves in our adversaries’ skin, and look through their eyes, in order to understand their actions.
Lesson #3 Human fallibility and nuclear weapons do not mix. Humans need to think more seriously about war and killing other humans. Beware of having all the answers.
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Lesson #7 Belief and seeing are both often wrong. Your mindset can be wrong. You may see only what you believe.
According to both Defense Secretaries McNamara and George Shultz, we only survived the last Cold War “by sheer luck”. We court disaster by opening another round of nuclear brinksmanship and mutually assured destruction.
“Nuclear weapons are totally irrational”, said Ronald Reagan, they are “totally inhumane, good for nothing but killing people, possible destruction of life on Earth and civilization.” There is no theory that will change the brutal absurdity of nuclear weapons nor transform them into logical agents of peace and security.
In Thomas Schelling’s application of game theory to nuclear weapons the object of deterrence is to convince the adversary not to use their weapons and vice versa. If nuclear deterrence is the stated goal of the U.S. nuclear posture, then adopting a No First Use of nuclear weapon either by treaty or unilaterally is the clear choice. China and India have done so for decades. No First Use makes perfect sense. Repelling conventional assaults should not be part of the nuclear employment equation. Nuclear weapons are not just more powerful conventional weapons. If they are ever used in war again the consequences are unpredictable and beyond any risk assessment.
It is past time to end the U.S.’ “nuclear ambiguity”. Take the nuclear option off the table. Abide by the Non-Proliferation Treaty; refuse to renew the nuclear arms race. We cannot win security or freedom in a game of nuclear roulette. But we can and will lose everything if we continue to bet on nuclear weapons. What folly.
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