The Security Research Institute Blog

Imagine the United States unilaterally and totally abandoning its nuclear weapons arsenal.  Sounds like something only the most left-wing, radical peacenik would ever advocate, right?  Well, what if the conservative arm of the American political system took up the cause of unilateral U.S. nuclear disarmament, not just a set of international protocols and multilateral treaties designed to reduce and then eliminate all nuclear weapons across the whole world?  Sounds nuts, doesn’t it?  Why would the party of Ronald Reagan ever advocate the U.S. giving up its entire nuclear deterrent?

Well, Ronald Reagan did believe in peace through strength.  Looking back on his speeches, his memoirs, and the words of his wife, Nancy, it’s also clear that he had a vision of a world free of nuclear weapons.  While most rational people wish no one had a nuclear weapon, we won’t totally disarm until the other guy does.  What if the United States took the lead?

You’ll see that our line of thinking will shock conservatives who believe in a strong defense, but that it is clearly not a “left wing” idea either, because we certainly think that it’s crazy to leave the United States defenseless.  Some points we want to explore follow:

• The face of deterrence has changed in a world of global terrorism.  The U.S. triad of nuclear weapons will deter rational state actors.  The American nuclear arsenal will do nothing to deter the terrorist bent on smuggling a “suitcase nuke” into the country.  Preventing such an attack relies on good intelligence and interdiction efforts.  No Trident or Minuteman missile will stop it.
• The American “missile shield” is becoming increasingly effective, and is proving far cheaper to develop than was the U.S. nuclear arsenal.  In fact, we are spending far less on the ballistic missile defense program than we are just to maintain the nuclear arsenal.  We should put a large percentage of the money saved on maintaining the TRIAD into bolstering the missile defense program.  Encouraging more countries to participate in the missile shield could bolster its credibility as a true defensive system.  We believe the system should also include a space-based component.
• The process of negotiating and ratifying nuclear treaties takes place at a glacial pace.  Once a treaty is in place, one or more parties to it invariably cheat, even with the best means of verification.  This is not to discount the notion of treaties altogether; we should pursue these treaties, but cannot rely entirely on them.
• America’s actions could encourage other nations with large nuclear arsenals, such as Russia, and China, to dismantle large portions of their nuclear stockpiles.  Other nuclear players probably won’t be influenced one way or another by the U.S. either building or reducing its nuclear weapons arsenal.  The U.S. can deal with these players through diplomatic, conventional military (including offensive and defensive means), and economic means.
• The United States possesses extremely accurate conventional weapons cabable of preemptively eliminating nuclear arsenals if required.  These types of conventional munitions will only improve.  Money saved by operating, maintaining, and modernizing the U.S. nuclear arsenal could bolster the means for precision conventional strike.

Deterrence since the Cold War has relied on the idea of unacceptable retaliation.  Deterrence in the 21st century might better be the idea that nuclear weapons represent an unacceptable economic burden to develop, deploy, and maintain, with little hope that they would ever reach their intended targets.

Such an idea, promoted by moderates and conservatives in the government, might be better received (and make more sense) than the unilateral disarmament that the most radical peacemongers now propose.