The Path to Deep Nuclear Reductions – Dennis M. Gormley

The transformation of the U.S. conventional capabilities has begun to have a substantial and important impact on counterforce strike missions particularly as they affect counterproliferation requirements. So too have improvements in ballistic missile defense programs, which are also critically central to U.S. counterproliferation objectives. These improved conventional capabilities come at a time when thinking about the prospects of eventually achieving a nuclear disarmed world has never been so promising. Yet, the path toward achieving that goal, or making substantial progress towards it, is fraught with pitfalls, including domestic political, foreign, and military ones. Two of the most important impediments to deep reductions in U.S. and Russian nuclear arsenals – no less a nuclear disarmed world – are perceived U.S. advantages in conventional counterforce strike capabilities working in combination with even imperfect but growing missile defense systems.

The Barack Obama administration has already toned down the George W. Bush administration’s rhetoric surrounding many of these new capabilities. Nevertheless, it is likely to affirm that it is a worthy goal to pursue a more conventionally oriented denial strategy as America further weans itself from its reliance on nuclear weapons. The challenge is to do so in the context of a more multilateral or collective security environment in which transparency plays the role it once did during the Cold War as a necessary adjunct to arms control agreements. Considerable thought has already been devoted to assessing many of the challenges along the way to a nuclear-free world, including verifying arsenals when they reach very low levels, more effective management of the civilian nuclear programs that remain, enforcement procedures, and what, if anything, might be needed to deal with latent capacities to produce nuclear weapons.1 But far less thought has been expended on why Russia – whose cooperation is absolutely essential for abolition to happen – might ever wish to proceed toward such a post-nuclear world that would be dominated militarily by American conventional military capabilities and what might be needed to allay legitimate concerns in this regard. At the very least, it will become increasingly important to separate fact from fiction in regard to the state of various conventional offensive and defensive counterproliferation capabilities and begin the challenge of addressing what kind of concrete steps are needed to alleviate Russian or Chinese concerns. It is precisely that objective to which this paper is addressed.

The paper is organized along the following lines. It first addresses the origins of U.S. interests and improvements in conventional strike capabilities, and then explores the emergence of counterproliferation as a chief mission for conventional offensive and defensive forces. It next examines the extent to which new conventional capabilities can perform three key missions previously the exclusive domain of nuclear weapons. Armed with this background, the paper then examines Russian perceptions of U.S. advances in conventional warfighting and evaluates the extent to which these perceptions are real or exaggerated. Finally, in light of Russia’s concerns, the paper closes with a set of policy options designed to help allay these concerns on the path toward deep reductions in nuclear arsenals.

Read the whole paper at:

http://www.ifri.org/downloads/pp29gormley1.pdf