Two Myths about Counterforce - War on the Rocks

Tags

Top Highlights

• our disagreement is about whether the United States should hold targets in additional categories at risk

• the most recent American nuclear war plan to have been even (very) partially declassified dates to 2009 and includes four target categories: “military forces,” “WMD [weapons of mass destruction] infrastructure,” “military and national leadership,” and “war supporting infrastructure.”

• I advocate CMI targeting, which is an acronym I came up with to describe holding Conventional Military forces and war-supporting Industry at risk.

• The central issue is the arcane subject of nuclear targeting: the question of what facilities the United States should, in the detached language of nuclear strategists, “hold at risk,” or in plain English, threaten to nuke.

• America’s current targeting policy is often described as “counterforce.” This term is widely and correctly understood to mean that the United States targets its adversaries’ nuclear forces and nuclear command-and-control capabilities, and widely and incorrectly understood to imply that it does not target other kinds of assets.

• he conventional wisdom is that the United States should build-up its nuclear forces so it can target China’s and Russia’s nuclear forces simultaneously.

• a study group convened by the Lawrence Livermore National Laboratory argued that “[a]n increase in the number of targetable Chinese nuclear weapons implies an increase in the number of U.S. nuclear weapons to target them.”

• An alternative view, which two colleagues and I recently advanced in Foreign Affairs, is that the United States should abandon targeting nuclear forces, their command-and-control systems, and an adversary’s leadership.

• China’s and Russia’s nuclear forces are, and will remain, sufficiently survivable that preemptive strikes on them would not succeed in meaningfully limiting the damage that the United States would suffer in a nuclear war.

• As a result, targeting those forces does not enhance deterrence — but it does create serious risks and costs.

• In a conventional conflict, Chinese or Russian fears that the United States might launch large-scale attacks on their nuclear forces could induce them to use nuclear weapons first, before those weapons were destroyed.

• Such use could be limited and aimed at terrifying the United States into ceasing the conflict rapidly.

• Alternatively, the Russian military might launch large-scale preemptive attacks on U.S. nuclear forces (China currently lacks the capabilities to do so but may acquire them).

• The result will be a futile and difficult-to-stop three-way arms race that is likely to exacerbate tensions and increase the danger of war.

• In sum, enlarging its arsenal will likely make the United States less secure and less solvent

• Myth 1: Counterforce targeting would avoid strikes on cities in all circumstances.

• Myth 2: The only alternative to counterforce targeting is planning for large-scale strikes against cities.

• it is entirely possible to favor counterforce targeting while recognizing that many counterforce targets are in cities and that population targeting is not the only alternative

• Myth 1: Counterforce targeting would avoid strikes on cities in all circumstances

• Department of Defense’s Nuclear Matters Handbook, which states that “counterforce targeting plans to destroy the military capabilities of an enemy force” and lists nuclear-weapon delivery systems, “command and control centers, and weapons of mass destruction storage facilities” as “typical counterforce targets.”