(Mis)Understanding Nukes

Nuclear illiteracy has grown since the end of the Cold War.

By and
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Russia’s nuclear saber-rattling directed at NATO while it continues its war against Ukraine has brought nuclear weapons back into public consciousness. Tom Nichols, author of the Death of Expertise, recounts in an Atlantic essay that since the end of the Cold War, nuclear weapons illiteracy has grown. Then Nichols inadvertently provides a lesson on just how pervasive misinformation on the subject is by proceeding to misinform the public. He states, “By treaty, Washington and Moscow have limited themselves to 1,550 [nuclear] warheads apiece. The basic idea is that these numbers deny either side the ability to take out the other’s arsenal in a first strike, while still preserving the ability to destroy at least 150 urban centers in each country. This, in the world of nuclear weapons, is progress.” That is completely wrong.

Americans should know that our government does not target urban centers as such with any weapon, let alone nuclear weapons—and this has been true for decades. The Kennedy administration explicitly proffered a “no-cities” approach. Each subsequent administration has done the same, including, for example, President Nixon’s “Policy Guidance for the Employment of Nuclear Weapons,” President Carter’s Presidential Directive-59, up to the most recent 2020 Nuclear Employment Strategy.

Intentionally targeting noncombatants runs afoul of the laws of war, which our Pentagon abides by, and brings scandal and scorn upon itself when it errs. Instead, the United States practices counterforce targeting— that is, targeting the adversary’s military and military-supporting capabilities. Abiding by the laws of war is not only moral and ethical because it seeks to protect the politically innocent and minimize harm to them, it also increases the credibility of our deterrent. This is because the United States seeks to deter adversaries from attacking U.S. vital interests and precipitating a large-scale war by holding at risk the adversaries’ means of continued escalation. If deterrence fails, the United States has sought to maintain a spectrum of tailored options that will give U.S. decision-makers maximum options to increase their chances of terminating the conflict at the lowest levels of damage feasible and on terms most favorable to the United States.

While Americans have enjoyed the relative global peace for nearly 40 years—generally unaware of the size and scope of nuclear dangers to the homeland except for the occasional news snippet about North Korea’s latest nuclear or missile test, or Iran’s threats to get the bomb—commentators and prominent former officials have, like Nichols did here, confused the public about U.S. deterrent strategy. Even the most senior U.S. defense officials are not immune, with Clinton-era Secretary of Defense William Perry recently writing that one U.S. submarine carries enough nuclear weapons “to place two thermonuclear warheads on each of Russia’s fifty largest cities,” even though they do no such thing.

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  6. Avatar photo
    Ben Connelly

    Hmm. An interesting piece but I think there are some questions here.

    “ Americans should know that our government does not target urban centers as such with any weapon, let alone nuclear weapons—and this has been true for decades.”

    Yes. That might be our stated policy. But does anyone think it wouldn’t change instantaneously in the event of a nuclear war? If Russia aimed a missile at Washington does anyone think we wouldn’t bomb Moscow off the face of the Earth?

    “ A nuclear weapon has not been used in war for 77 years, and it is imperative that nuclear strategists, policymakers, and the American people, support strengthening the credibility of the U.S. nuclear deterrent. This means the deterrent we inherited from the Cold War era must be adapted and improved in important ways to meet the challenges of a vastly more complex nuclear weapons threat landscape. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has once again shocked policymakers across Western capitals, who were convinced that Russia simply would not do it. We must reexamine our assumptions and consider the possibility that our adversaries might have aspirations and risk calculations very different from what we think they ought to be. Then, with determination and bipartisan cooperation, we must seek to convince those adversaries that we are willing and able to thwart their aims, and in doing so, we can keep the peace.”

    That much I completely agree with.

    “ A nuclear weapon has not been used in war for 77 years, and it is imperative that nuclear strategists, policymakers, and the American people, support strengthening the credibility of the U.S. nuclear deterrent. This means the deterrent we inherited from the Cold War era must be adapted and improved in important ways to meet the challenges of a vastly more complex nuclear weapons threat landscape. Russia’s invasion of Ukraine has once again shocked policymakers across Western capitals, who were convinced that Russia simply would not do it. We must reexamine our assumptions and consider the possibility that our adversaries might have aspirations and risk calculations very different from what we think they ought to be. Then, with determination and bipartisan cooperation, we must seek to convince those adversaries that we are willing and able to thwart their aims, and in doing so, we can keep the peace.”

    Maybe we need more Ohio class subs then.

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  7. Jaybrown

    "Modernizing" is a goal, not a current process, except for tinkering around the edges, unless and until the DOE/NNSA gets its act together about the required scale of new pit production. The LANL/SRS plan is just that.

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    David Chen

    I fully expect a nuke to go off in my lifetime (currently 32).

    I also have no idea what is credible deterrence short of 'everyone has a nuclear umbrella/stockpile'. And if Ukraine has shown anything, its that you REALLY want your own nukes. Nuclear SK/JP/TW might alarm China, but a heavily nuclearized ME is the stuff of nightmares.

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    1. Seth

      Despite all the sophisticated philosophizing, it's only as accurate as your assessment of your adversary, and I think that's getting more difficult as time goes on. Deterrence is a strange thing, as it depends far more on what your adversary thinks than on what you might actually do. I think that was more predictable during the (relative) stability of great-power rivalry between the US/NATO and USSR, but far less now with myriad actors of widely ranging idealogies and goals in (or near) possession of nukes. Add the possibility of someone gaining control who values destruction of others far more than their own peace or life, and things really get risky.

      That being said, within rational actors, I wonder if there is as much strength in being a nuclear power as it once seemed. The more time that goes by and more times you use them as threats, the less effect those threats have. I think Putin is illustrating that now.

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    MatthewRobin

    This brings back memories of college, my favorite class was called "Strategic Weapons and Arms Control". It was all about nuclear weapons policy.

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    George.Skinner

    I suspect a lot of the lack of attention to western nuclear weapons systems is attributable to wishful thinking. People of the west were far more aware of the consequences of nuclear war than citizens of the Soviet Union or the People's Republic of China. More to the point, as citizens of democracies, their informed opinion actually meant something! We all breathed a sigh of relief with the end of the Cold War, and hoped that we could just let these terrifying arsenals rust away unused. Unfortunately, Putin and the Chinese Communist Party don't share a similar disposition.
    That said, I have to wonder if a successor to the current style of nuclear weapons makes sense? A shift to counterforce targeting meant that big city busting weapons in the multi-megaton scale have been steadily phased out of the arsenal. However, with precision targeting technologies, would you even need something in the range of hundreds of kilotons like the current W-88 warheads? The US was burning the hearts out of cities in WW2 after realizing that their Norden bombsights and heavy high altitude bombers weren't equal to their precision bombing ambitions. We've since seen a steady increase in capability of smart weapons. The first laser-guided bombs in Vietnam could accomplish in 1 or 2 sorties what hundreds of aircraft had failed to so for years. In the first Gulf War, that capability wiped out the Iraqi military's communications and air defense infrastructure in a week or so. 30 years later, what took hundreds of aircraft in 1991 could probably be done with a single wing of fighter bombers . In the same way, you don't need a 450 kiloton warhead to kill a Russian missile silo if you can count on a direct hit by a penetrating warhead vs. a quarter-mile circular error probability with 50 year old ballistic missile technology.
    All of this is pointing to small penetrating nuclear weapons if we're going to build them at all. Unless deterrence really does mean credibly threatening to wipe your opponent's civilization from existence, in which case you're going to need something bigger and nastier.

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