Rethinking the Road to Zero
June 27, 2013
“There is little reason to believe that nuclear reductions on the part of the United States will incentivize other nations to diminish their own reliance on nuclear weapons, decrease the size of their nuclear arsenals, or abandon their nuclear aspirations,” argues CSBA Senior Fellow Dr. Evan Montgomery in CSBA’s new report, Rethinking the Road to Zero.
“Instead, major reductions appear much more likely to have the opposite effects, particularly if they provide other nations with an opportunity to reach nuclear parity with the United States, or if compensating measures that improve the U.S.’s offensive and defensive conventional military capabilities actually encourage other states to increase their reliance on nuclear weapons for deterrence and war fighting.”
Montgomery’s Rethinking the Road to Zero was released last week at the CSBA’s congressional conference on nuclear strategy and forces, sponsored by Rep. Mike Rogers (R-AL) and Rep. Jim Cooper (D-TN). The expert panel also included CSBA’s Barry Watts, author of Nuclear-Conventional Firebreaks and the Nuclear Taboo, a study released by the Center in April and hailed by Rep. Cooper as “an extraordinary report.”
Watts analyzed the track record of the recent disarmament initiatives and offered insights into the motivations of countries to acquire nuclear weapons, and how those countries view the role of nuclear weapons in their military and national security strategy.
“These are exactly the issues that we need to better understand, especially in light of the potentially destabilizing effects of the President’s new employment guidance,” said Rep. Rogers in his remarks on the report.
The two publications featured at the conference are part of CSBA’s ongoing research program on the Second Nuclear Age. Since its inception, CSBA has maintained a strong intellectual focus on nuclear issues, conducting in-depth research on topics such as the costs of America’s nuclear arsenal, the consequences of nuclear proliferation, and the importance of a credible nuclear deterrent. In the coming months, CSBA will be releasing additional reports on these and related issues, in order to inform public debate and enable policymakers to make sound decisions on matters of strategy, policy and resource allocation.