Return of the Nuclear Debate

In time, President George W. Bush's administration may release much more detail concerning its intentions for nuclear modernization, arms control, ballistic missile defense, space dominance, and the "transformation" of conventional forces.

These initiatives, though presented separately, actually relate to each other and can be best understood with reference to an organized concept of the United States' security needs moving forward into the twenty-first century. But the administration itself has announced no such overall concept. And yet, even if the administration really sees no connections between its choices about nuclear weapons and arms control, defenses and offense, and nuclear and conventional forces--even if the administration actually insists there are no connections--they do interact. It is a good thing for people to be conscious of how these interactions might work out.

The Administration's Case

The following, then, is an interpretation of what the administration appears to have in mind.

• Arms control was at best a highly imperfect effort to regulate the military rivalry between the United States and the Soviet Union. In many ways, such agreements were little more than contracts allowing both sides to pursue next steps in the arms race that each had elected as desirable, arms control or not. At worst, arms control agreements may actually have channeled competition into even more dangerous technologies. Moreover, the price for these agreements was high in terms of unending squabbles about fine points, compliance, and verification--along with dismantling and inspection procedures that literally cost billions of dollars to operate.

• But by far the highest cost of arms control was that it locked the United States into the doctrine of mutually assured destruction (MAD). The objective of limiting offensive nuclear weapons was to find a way to make each side feel certain that, under even the most difficult conditions, it would always be able to destroy an aggressor. The purpose of the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty was to reinforce this "security" by making it impossible for either side to develop a defense of its national territory. However, the ABM Treaty also perpetuated MAD, which was fine so long as MAD was the best arrangement both sides could envision to deter the other.

• Things are now radically different. The Cold War is over; Russia is too weak to be a threat; and, besides, relations with it are basically good. Therefore, the levels and kinds of nuclear weapons available to the United States and to Russia are no longer reasons for mutual fear. In view of this, the United States and Russia should stop trying to regulate their strategic nuclear weapons by way of explicit, formal agreements and instead rely on "understandings" informally worked out and not legally binding. Both sides would be free to shape their nuclear forces as they please; political and economic realism will assure that this translates into spontaneous deep reductions all around.

• On the other hand, the United States faces an emerging new threat from weapons of mass destruction (WMD) in the hands of countries such as North Korea or Iran. To deal with this threat, the United States needs to develop and deploy ABM weapons. The Clinton administration was working on a limited defense--the so-called national missile defense (NMD)--but its heart was never really in the program, and the design was anemic. The United States should shorten the timetable to initial deployment and aim to make the system much more powerful from the outset. The ABM Treaty prevents the United States from doing this and is therefore an obstacle to self-defense. The treaty should be abandoned if Russia will not agree to liberally rewriting it.

• Russia was ready to fight against even the last administration's very limited NMD on the grounds that it constituted a first step toward a system ultimately big enough to threaten the credibility of their nuclear deterrent. In ratifying the second Strategic Arms Reductions Talks (START II) agreement, the Russian Duma attached a condition according to...