Russian Mordernization Of Nuclear Forces

Russian Military

Russian military doctrine has placed new emphasis on these weapons. Facing sharp deterioration in the quality of its conventional military forces, Russia has taken a page from NATO’s book and ended the Soviet Union’s long-standing “no-first nuclear use” policy. Although this policy was never reflected in Soviet war plans or equipment, and despite the slow pace of Russian modernization of its nuclear forces, the doctrinal change suggests that while further reductions in Russian forces are possible, Moscow will be reluctant to move seriously into a negotiation aimed at eliminating all nuclear weapons until outstanding issues between it and the West are resolved.97 However, the surprising joint statement by presidents Obama and Medvedev in April 2009, announcing that they had “committed our two countries to achieving a nuclear free world,” is an encouraging sign of the potential for progress in that direction.

Writing in the Obama Administration’s earliest days, it is difficult to predict how seriously the president’s rhetorical support for eliminating nuclear weapons will be taken. It is certainly good politics—domestic and international—to support zero weapons as a goal or vision; actually seeking to begin negotiations toward
that end is something else. The administration would certainly be split on such a political initiative internally. Secretary of Defense Robert Gates, for example, a hold-over from the Bush Administration, has indicated he doesn’t believe the goal to be a realistic policy option, stating.

While we have a long-term goal of abolishing nuclear weapons once and for all, given the world in which we live, we have to be realistic about that proposition.”  Secretary of State Hillary Clinton reaffirmed the Obama
Administration’s nuclear elimination goal during her nomination hearing before the Senate Foreign Relations Committee, but key appointments at Defense, State, and the National Security Council have tended to favor incremental approaches to arms reductions in their writings and previous government service.

The possible elimination of nuclear weapons

The issue will probably be discussed in the context of the “Nuclear Posture Review,” which the administration is required by legislation to submit in December, 2009. Proponents of a more visionary approach will not be helped by the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United States, which the same legislation also established. In its final report, and despite the fact that its chairman is former Secretary of Defense William Perry, one of the four senior statesmen who kicked off the new attention to nuclear elimination, the Commission stated that, “The conditions that might make the elimination of nuclear weapons possible are not present today and establishing such conditions would require a fundamental transformation of the world political order.”  This phrase may be interpreted to mean that the current international system would
have to morph into some sort of world government before nuclear weapons could eliminated, meaning that the “vision of a nuclear-free world,” will always remain just that, a “vision.”


In all likelihood, the Obama Administration will continue to pay rhetorical obeisance to the goal of nuclear elimination, if for no other reason than to help reduce problems at the NPT Review Conference to be held in June 2010, but will focus on four tangible actions:

• Attempting to persuade Iran to halt its nuclear weapons program short of an overt capability;

• Attempting to cajole North Korea into resuming progress toward fulfillment of its commitment to dismantle its nuclear weapons and supporting infrastructure;

• Negotiating a new, verifiable agreement with Russia for deeper reductions in the two nations’ nuclear arsenals, perhaps broadening the limits from their past focus on so-called “strategic” or long-range weapons to encapsulate shorter range weapons, as well as reserve warheads; and

• Seeking ratification of the Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty by the US Senate and, if successful, persuading other key states, especially China, India, Israel, and Pakistan to follow suit.

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5 Countries Elimination Nuclear Weaopons

Concerns about proliferation and nuclear terrorism have prompted renewed unofficial, bipartisan, mainstream calls for the elimination of nuclear weapons. For the first time, senior statesmen in the United States, the UK, Russia, China, and India have talked seriously about the need to eliminate all nuclear weapons, from all nations. The trend began with two Wall Street Journal op-eds in 2007 and 2008 by former secretaries of state George Schultz and Henry Kissinger, former secretary of defense William Perry, and former senator Sam Nunn.

In the articles, these respected voices on national security issues called on the US to provide leadership in reversing the global dependence on nuclear weapons and ultimately moving the world toward the elimination of nuclear weapons, calling this a “bold initiative consistent with America’s moral heritage.” Although the overall tone of the articles suggested that these four statesmen believe eliminating nuclear weapons to be a realistic goal, as a practical matter they argue that attention should be paid first to measures that could be implemented in the near-term, establishing “paving stones” on the “road to zero.”

Esteemed foreign policy experts in other countries have echoed these pathbreaking calls for eliminating nuclear weapons. In the UK, for example, former foreign ministers Douglas Hurd, Malcolm Rifkind, and David Owen, and former secretary of state for defense and secretary general of NATO George Robertson wrote in the London Times, “The ultimate aspiration should be to have a world free of nuclear weapons. It will take time, but with political will and improvements in monitoring, the goal is achievable.”

 In Germany, former chancellor Helmut Schmidt, former president Richard von Weizsäcker, former foreign minister Hans-Dietrich Genscher, and former Socialist Party leader Egon Bahr wrote a parallel piece. India’s venerable grand master of national security strategy. Subrahmanyan, has written similarly, “India should attempt to regain its earlier reputation as a champion of a nuclear weapon free world.” Finally, in Paris in December 2008, more than 100 leaders from 23 countries came together under the banner of “Global Zero” to kick off a world-wide campaign to persuade the governments of the nuclear weapon states to negotiate a treaty to eliminate nuclear weapons by a date certain.

Many governments have also expressed their desire to attain the “goal” of eliminating nuclear weapons, or have discussed the “vision” of a nuclear-free world. Russian Prime Minister Putin, for example, has said, "I believe it is now quite possible to liberate humanity from nuclear weapons". Similarly, China has stated that it, “stands for the comprehensive prohibition and complete elimination of nuclear weapons.”

President Obama set out his nuclear agenda, identifying as its centerpiece “America’s commitment to seek the peace and security of a world without nuclear weapons,” though with the caveat that it, “will not be reached quickly – perhaps not in my lifetime.” He outlined his view of how the goal could be achieved, beginning with the pursuit of CTBT ratification, the negotiation of a fissile materials cut-off treaty, a “new framework for civil nuclear cooperation, including an international fuel bank,” a reduction of, “the role of nuclear weapons in our national security strategy,” and a “legally binding and sufficiently bold” strategic arms reductions treaty with Russia.

These reductions would then “set the stage for further cuts” that would “include all nuclear weapons states.”Whether US-Russian strategic reductions and the pursuit of CTBT ratification and a fissile materials treaty will translate into tangible movement toward eliminating nuclear weapons as envisioned by the president remains to be seen and will depend on how rapidly progress might be made toward these near-term
steps and on broader trends in international relationships. It is evident that the United States will have to take the lead if progress is to be made. Together, the US and Russia own roughly 95 percent of the world’s nuclear arsenal, having perhaps ten thousand weapons each, including inactive warheads, while no other nation is believed to have more than a few hundred.

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Nuclear War Doctrine

The 1970s saw the previously dominant U.S. nuclear arsenal diminished by a steadily increasing Soviet nuclear capability, which caused many U.S. national security policymakers to question some Flexible Response tenets. One of these policymakers was James Schlesinger, who became President Nixon’s Secretary of Defense in 1973. Recognizing that the United States no longer enjoyed nuclear superiority over the Soviets and that the Soviets now possessed an invulnerable second-strike force, Schlesinger realized that U.S. enemies would not see MAD as employable.

He urged the United States to obtain more selective targeting options that were less likely to involve major mass destruction; maintain a capability to deter an enemy’s desire to inflict mass destruction on the United States and its allies; and reduce U.S. targeting to enemy military targets in order to reduce potential counterattacks against U.S. cities. This new U.S. nuclear strategy, known as the Schlesinger Doctrine, was articulated on January 17, 1974 in National Security Council Decision Memorandum (NSDM) 242. Key NSDM 242 elements included the U.S. National Command Authority (NCA) having multiple nuclear weapons use choices and the option to escalate; an explicit U.S. targeting policy focused on selective retaliation against the enemy’s military or targeted counterforce; and withholding strikes against some enemy targets and target classes so that opponents had a rational reason to terminate conflict.

The next significant document regarding U.S. nuclear weapons policy doctrine was Presidential Directive (PD) 59. This directive was issued by the Carter Administration in 1980 and stressed the Schlesinger Doctrine’s counterforce modus operandi. Refl ecting the work of Secretary of Defense Harold Brown, PD 59 emphasized continuing the policy of focusing U.S. nuclear targeting on enemy military targets instead of enemy cities as a means of enhancing U.S. nuclear deterrence quality.

PD 59 went on to emphasize the United States’ desire to bargain effectively to terminate a war with the most favorable terms, prevent an enemy from achieving its war aims, effectively deploy U.S. nuclear forces to work with conventional forces, and enhance the quality of U.S. command, control, communications, and intelligence
capabilities.

The Reagan Administration saw the fi rst signifi cant questioning of MAD as a U.S. nuclear doctrinal tenet. This questioning would lead to the 1983 unveiling of the Strategic Defense Initiative (SDI), which committed the United States to developing a space-based ballistic missile defense system to protect the United States and its allies from ICBM attacks. Although SDI and the idea of ballistic missile defense remain controversial, they have become an important part of U.S. nuclear doctrine by stressing the critical importance of developing effective defenses against nuclear or other weapons of mass destruction missile attacks against the
United States and its allies.

Reagan also sought to increase pressure on the Soviets by providing military assistance to forces fi ghting the Soviets or Soviet-backed regimes in locales as diverse as Afghanistan, Angola, Grenada, and Nicaragua. These collective efforts became known as the Reagan Doctrine, and they would eventually succeed in compelling the Soviets to withdraw from Afghanistan, as well as achieving some domestic political reform in the Soviet Union or Russian under Mikhail Gorbachev, reaching nuclear arms control agreements like the 1987 Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty, retaining SDI despite Soviet attempts to eliminate the program, and beginning to move U.S. nuclear doctrine from MAD to a more fl exible stance that incorporated ballistic missile defense. These developments would all play a role in the subsequent collapse of the Soviet Union and the end of the Cold War on desirable terms for the United States and its allies.

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American and Russian Producer of the world's Largest Nuclear

A particularly important factor in the development of early postwar U.S. military doctrine was the unwillingness of the United States and its North Atlantic Treaty Organization (NATO) allies to expend the resources necessary to equal the conventional force superiority of the Soviet Union and its Warsaw Pact allies. This decision required the United States and NATO to rely on the emerging nuclear weapons deterrent as the best way to preserve European peace.

More The Dead Due Nuclear

Consequently, one of the most critical sources of U.S. military doctrine strategy was developing documentation of the United States’ willingness to use its nuclear arsenal to deter the Soviets and, if peaceful deterrence failed, to defeat them by using such weapons in war.

One of the most important demonstrations of this willingness to use nuclear weapons was the Strategic Integrated Operational Plan (SIOP) issued in 1960. SIOP called for integrating the capabilities of the three nuclear weapons delivery components, or triad, which consisted of land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs), aerial bombers with intercontinental range, and submarine-launched ballistic missiles (SLBMs). SIOP preparation involved participation by the Joint Chiefs of Staff ( JCS), the Secretary of Defense, and the President, and it detailed highly classifi ed information on specifi c enemy targets the U.S. military would strike with nuclear weapons in the event of a war with the Soviet Union, China, or some other country. SIOP has been a controversial program and revising and updating it has been an ongoing process, with revisions occurring in 1962, 1976, 1981, and 1989.

Massive Retaliation was another key element in early U.S. and NATO nuclear doctrinal strategy. Massive Retaliation involved NATO publicly announcing that it would respond to a Soviet bloc attack with a disproportionate response, emphasizing strategic nuclear weapons in the belief that such a policy would deter
potential adversaries from initiating an attack. Another key characteristic of Massive Retaliation was that the state that announced such a tactic had the ability to launch a second round of nuclear strikes against its attacker.

Massive Retaliation was announced by Secretary of State John Foster Dulles on January 12, 1954,
and it remained in force throughout the Eisenhower Administration as part of its New Look policy, which emphasized nuclear deterrence over conventional forces as the foundation of U.S. national security strategy. However, its lack of flexibility in responding to potential Soviet attack severely limited its effectiveness and it
would be replaced in the Kennedy Administration.

Enunciated by Kennedy’s Defense Secretary Robert McNamara, Flexible Response allowed the use of conventional defenses to stop a Soviet assault; deliberate escalation to tactical nuclear weapons if conventional defense collapsed; and escalation to strategic nuclear forces if further battlefi eld deterioration occurred, resulting in assured destruction of both sides.

The U.S. nuclear force could survive a fi rst strike attack to retaliate by destroying enemy cities and industrial capacity. The doctrinal tenet of Mutual Assured Destruction (MAD) was further codifi ed into U.S. nuclear doctrine as part of Flexible Response. Flexible Response has gone through signifi cant evolutions since its introduction, but it has remained a critical component of U.S. nuclear doctrine until the present.

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