This report seeks to provide the basis for an informed and constructive debate over the role of nuclear weapons in the overall US defense posture. To this end, the principal focus is on identifying the existing and emerging security environment as it pertains to nuclear weapons. The report also offers some recommendations on how the United States might best respond to the challenges posed by nuclear proliferation, and, hopefully, create a more secure global environment.
During the early days of the Cold War, an enormous amount of thought was given to the role of nuclear weapons in the overall US defense posture. The reason for this is simple: nuclear weapons were so destructive that they fundamentally altered the competitive environment. Indeed, for several decades substantial intellectual effort was devoted to understanding the US-Soviet nuclear competition, which was a defining feature of the Cold War security environment. With the Cold War’s end, nuclear weapons proliferation has become an increasingly important issue; yet there has been comparatively little analysis of the kind that characterized the early Cold War period. Moreover, the main intellectual response to this growing danger to US security has been a renewed call for the eventual abolition of nuclear weapons. However, just as the nation’s national security leaders at the dawn of the nuclear era had to contemplate a less-than-ideal outcome of their efforts (i.e., a Soviet Union armed with large numbers of nuclear weapons, including thermonuclear weapons), so too must current senior national security planners take into account a world in which they fail to achieve their policy objectives.
Efforts to Stem Proliferation
The United States tested its first thermonuclear weapon in 1952, and the Soviet Union followed suit in November 1955. Great Britain tested its first hydrogen bomb in 1958, while France tested its first atomic device in 1960, followed by China in 1964. Although the United States and the Soviet Union were bitter rivals, they did agree that the further spread of nuclear weapons should be avoided. With that in mind, both supported the 1968 Treaty on the Non-Proliferation of Nuclear Weapons, often referred to as the Non-Proliferation Treaty, or NPT. Since the NPT entered into force, the rate of proliferation has slowed. Yet by the end of the Cold War, India had exploded a “peaceful” nuclear weapon. And although it had not tested a bomb, Israel was widely believed to have a substantial nuclear stockpile numbering one to two hundred weapons, including both fission and fusion bombs. Still, the more widely proliferated world that worried President Kennedy had not materialized. In short, the NPT had by all appearances proven to be remarkably effective in limiting nuclear proliferation during the Cold War. However, with the dramatic shift in the geopolitical environment following the Cold War, the nonproliferation regime began to show significant cracks, to the point where today some question its relevance.
According to some analysts, the end of the Cold War ushered in a “Second Nuclear Age” characterized by the further spread of nuclear weapons to nations in Asia and fears that non-state actors might acquire these weapons as well. A key US post-Cold War counter-proliferation objective centered on keeping North Korea from acquiring nuclear weapons. Talks failed to prevent Pyongyang from conducting an underground nuclear explosion in October 2006, making it the eighth confirmed nuclear-armed state. North Korea is now believed to have extracted and processed enough weapons-grade plutonium to build between six and eight nuclear fission bombs. Iran’s efforts to develop a nuclear capability and perhaps nuclear weapons have also proceeded apace. Despite Tehran’s repeated assurances that its nuclear program is entirely for peaceful purposes, the facts argue strongly that this may not be the case.