Editorial: US Strategy in the Second Nuclear Age

US Navy Ohio class SSBN (Wiki Info - Image: Wiki Commons)

By James R. Holmes

America’s nuclear triad shouldn’t be held sacrosanct just to please advocates in the U.S. Navy and Air Force.

As submarines, bombers, and ballistic missiles age, and as the U.S. armed forces flourish the long knives over budgetary matters, the future of the nuclear triad has come under scrutiny. The Obama administration released a new Nuclear Posture Review in 2010 and revised its Nuclear Employment Strategy last June. Think-tank analyses abound. While vowing to seek additional cutbacks to the U.S. and Russian arsenals and reduce the part nuclear weapons play in U.S. national security strategy, the administration also affirms that it will retain the triad of nuclear-powered ballistic-missile submarines (SSBNs), manned bombers, and intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs).

Fixing its strategic gaze on Russia, however, risks anchoring Washington in the Cold War past. The triad aimed at deterring the Soviet Union, a peer opponent boasting a massive atomic arsenal. But the world has entered a second nuclear age typified less by deterrence between nuclear-armed alliances than by competition among states at very different places in their nuclear lives. Multiple nuclear trajectories translates into a more complex strategic setting. Concentrating exclusively on Russia distracts from a comprehensive survey of that setting, and potentially leaves U.S. nuclear strategy out of phase with changing times.

Read the full story at The Diplomat