Putting the nuclear genie back into the bottle

Never short of surprise and spectacular announcements, President Trump has recently said that the United States will resume the testing of nuclear weapons immediately. Posting on Truth Social on 20 October, Trump justified this move by claiming that other countries were testing their nuclear weapons and that US security requires that the US, which has not conducted a nuclear test since 1992, must now catch up. This claim is simply wrong as both China and Russia have also refrained from nuclear testing in recent years. Russia’s last test was in 1990 and China’s in 1996. India and Pakistan have also not tested since May 1998, and France held its last test in its Pacific territory of French Polynesia in January 1996. The one country that has been testing in more recent times, and in violation of UN Security Council resolutions and its obligations under the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, is North Korea. Yet even Kim Jong-Un has not carried out a new test since 2017.

Trump showed his confusion on this issue by also falsely claiming that the US has more nuclear weapons than anyone else. In fact, according to the Federation of American Scientists, the US has 5,177 warheads in its stockpile in comparison to Russia’s 5,459 warheads. Trump also mistakenly stated that China would catch up with the US within five years. Certainly, Beijing has been increasing its numbers of nuclear weapons and modernising its delivery systems, such as ballistic missiles or nuclear submarines, in recent years. Yet it is still significantly behind the US. The Pentagon calculates that Beijing will have around 1,000 warheads by 2030 and perhaps 1,500 by 2035.

There are various forms of nuclear testing, from partial and non-critical tests of individual warhead components to ensure that they will still work reliably, to the testing of the individual delivery vehicles (for instance nuclear capable ballistic or cruise missiles and drones) to testing via digital simulations using very sophisticated computer technology. Clearly, missile launches and testing continue in a number of countries outside the current prohibition on the testing of the nuclear warheads themselves. The US test fired one of its Minuteman 2 missiles just a few days ago and Russia has made a big show since the onset of the war in Ukraine of test firing its new generation of nuclear capable ballistic and cruise missiles (such as the Oreshnik, Burevestnik, and the underwater drone, Poseidon) in an attempt to dissuade NATO countries from giving further support to Ukraine. Yet Trump doubled down on his intention to resume full scope nuclear testing by ordering the Pentagon to get the US underground testing site in the Nevada desert ready. This will be no simple process as nuclear experts calculate that with all the technical preparations involved (not to mention the environmental impact studies and the need to secure Congressional funding) this may take at least three years. Meanwhile, US Administration officials, blindsided, and not for the first time, by an out-of-the-blue policy shift, scrambled to interpret what the President might have in mind. Chris Wright, the Energy Secretary, suggested that this might cover “system tests” or non-critical testing of certain parts of the US nuclear weapons chain, which would not violate the US commitment to adhere to the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty, a treaty to which the US is a signatory even if the US Congress has not so far ratified it. Appearing for his confirmation hearing in front of the Senate, the incoming head of the US Strategic Command, responsible for nuclear war-fighting, Admiral Richard Correll, suggested that Trump was thinking mainly of emulating Putin by accelerating the roll out and testing of the US’s own next generation of nuclear delivery vehicles, bombers and submarines.

The various testing options, including the possibility of testing very low yield nuclear warheads, gives Trump the opportunity to back down from full scale testing, if his national security advisers can convince him that the US has more to lose than to gain from a resumption of nuclear testing by the nuclear weapons powers, whether these powers have publicly acknowledged their nuclear status, or are still secretive or mainly aspirational for the time being. The problem here is that the US President is not fond of saying that he got it wrong and he will make the facts fit his instinctive view of the world rather than the other way around. He may stick to his guns because he already toyed with a resumption of nuclear testing during his first administration and he has some support from right-wing Republicans and national security hawks like Senator Tom Cotton and former National Security Adviser, Robert O’Brien. They both believe that renewed testing will send “a firm message of resolve and deterrence” but to which US adversaries and to what concrete purpose is far from clear. The issue here is that for the US to resume nuclear testing will not do much to enhance the US’s already fearsome nuclear deterrence capability, based on its arsenal of Trident submarines, B2 stealth bombers, Minuteman and MX ballistic missiles, and air and sea-launched cruise missiles. The US has amassed enough data from its supercomputer simulations to be able to map nuclear explosions in a way to ensure the safety of its nuclear stockpile. So, for technical and operational reasons it doesn’t need to test. That could only be for political and messaging purposes.

Yet breaking the 30-year-old consensus against nuclear weapons testing will certainly help the US’s adversaries to improve the quantity and quality of their nuclear weapons. In Russia, President Putin has already responded to Trump’s announcement by ordering his military commanders to ready Russia’s nuclear testing site at Novaya Zemlya in the Arctic to follow the US if it goes ahead with a resumption of tests. Lack of clarity from Washington as to what Trump actually intends to do is only fuelling Russia’s adherence to worst case scenarios. Trump’s lack of interest in extending the START treaty on strategic nuclear warhead numbers and delivery systems, as Putin has repeatedly proposed to the White House, will give Putin the sense that he has nothing to lose. This said, Russian Foreign Minister Lavrov has reported that the US State Department is at least considering a START extension. China too will undoubtedly see the chance to test nuclear weapons again as the opportunity to assert equality with the US and Russia, the two powers that between them possess 90% of the world’s nuclear weapons. Whereas the US has so far conducted 1,030 tests since 1945, and Russia 715, the Chinese have carried out far fewer with just 45 tests to date. This said, they have doubled the number of their nuclear weapons over the past decade to 600 warheads and are on course to double them again by 2030. North Korea, which has periodically threatened to resume testing and made preparations at its test site at Punggye-ri to do so, will probably feel empowered to proceed. Pyongyang has certainly kept up its regular ballistic missile launches, the most recent taking place on 7 November. India and Pakistan, which clashed militarily over Kashmir earlier this year, may feel less constrained by Washington to de-escalate once the unofficial moratorium on testing has lapsed. We should also not forget Iran, which might be tempted to conduct a nuclear test to demonstrate to the US and Israel that despite their attacks on its nuclear processing facilities last June, it has preserved enough fissile materials and centrifuges to cross the threshold of weaponisation and rapidly deploy a limited arsenal of nuclear warheads. Last week, Iranian President Pezeshkian said that Tehran was ready to negotiate with Washington but would continue its nuclear and missile programmes.

This is indeed not the best moment for the US to announce through new nuclear tests that nuclear weapons are now much more important and desirable assets for the security of major powers. That message would only play to Putin’s narrative that nuclear weapons are the key criterion of great power status and that Russia’s parity in nuclear weapons with the US gives it the right to co-determine the fate of the world with Washington and to have its own extended sphere of influence. Certainly, Putin would relish the rift in NATO cohesion that a resumption of US testing would bring about as European and Canadian reactions are likely to be highly critical and only serve to provoke public hostility to the Alliance’s dependence on (mainly US) nuclear deterrence and NATO’s intention (as stated in its two most recent Strategic Concepts) “to remain a nuclear alliance as long as nuclear weapons exist”. Moreover, new rounds of US nuclear testing would only cast doubt as to the quality and reliability of the US nuclear deterrent and thereby undermine NATO’s collective defence. It would encourage Putin to double down on his intimidating rhetoric that because of increased reliance on nuclear weapons for national security, all future wars involving great powers are likely to have a nuclear dimension early on and end in total devastation – a sure fire way of intimidating political and public opinion in Europe and inducing a sense of resignation and defeatism when it comes to standing up to the Russian threat. Russia has deployed this propaganda tactic already as Russian officials have repeatedly dangled the threat to use tactical nuclear weapons in Ukraine to deter the NATO member states to send more advanced weapons or deploy their own troops on Ukraine’s territory, even in modest numbers. We know from statements by Jake Sullivan, the former National Security Adviser in the Biden administration, that the US took these nuclear escalation threats seriously. The US intelligence community reportedly told Biden that there was a 50:50 chance that Russia would use nuclear weapons in Ukraine. Biden adopted a highly cautious and slow approach to weapons delivery to Kyiv as a result.

So, if nuclear testing is the wrong idea at the wrong time, what is the best way to make nuclear deterrence work (as it has done for NATO over the past 70 years), to reinforce conventional defence and prevent a hot conflict from breaking out between the Alliance and Russia?

The first point concerns consistency in messaging.

Nuclear deterrence depends on cool, calm and firm but also consistent communications. Ambiguity may help deterrence when it comes to not revealing your precise plans and keeping your adversary guessing your potential response to aggression. But resolve is key and effective deterrence is not helped by sowing confusion, responding to threats that don’t exist or sudden on-again/off-again policy swings where different officials say different things or find it hard to interpret what the policy actually is. The role of nuclear weapons is to make sure that wars do not happen in the first place and to discourage the development of ever more sophisticated instruments to fight with. The introduction of nuclear weapons into a conflict would most likely bring defeat for both sides or make the concept of victory meaningless given the level of universal destruction. That’s why NATO’s long-standing mantra of “a nuclear war can never be won and must never be fought” sends exactly the right message. Nuclear deterrence is already in place. It doesn’t need to be reinvented through nuclear testing, which can only lead to more pressures to modernise nuclear arsenals and thus costly and destabilising arms races as nuclear powers seek to upstage each other and demonstrate their escalation dominance over their rivals. Far better to keep to the current Western approach of stable nuclear deterrence at the lowest levels of deployed weapons possible.

Yet the corollary of this approach is to demonstrate the preparedness of the current arrangements. This is the core of deterrence. Recently NATO has completed its annual Steadfast Noon exercise in the Netherlands. Over 80 aircraft participated from the US and the five European allies that participate in NATO’s nuclear burden sharing at the sub-strategic level and that could carry US tactical nuclear weapons on their fighter jets (notably F16s) in wartime. Steadfast Noon tested NATO’s ability to disperse its aircraft to alternative locations in a crisis or war situation, its interoperability among aircrews and aircraft and the Alliance’s arrangements for political consultations involving nuclear weapons. The United Kingdom may well join this burden sharing arrangement as the sixth participant given that it is buying 12 F35A fighter jets from the US, which are dual capable and equipped to carry nuclear weapons. As the aircraft carry bombs, they do not have a sudden decapitating strike capacity and cannot be used for a pre-emptive, bolt-from-the-blue attack. Russia is also used to this multilateral arrangement within NATO, which has been in place since the early 1990s and the end of the Cold War. Thus, the credibility of deterrence demonstrates from time to time the continued commitment of allies to an existing capability, which is still militarily viable and operationally tested to be usable in extremis. In other words, deterrence is the stated intention to respect the status quo, but to also be willing and able to uphold it in a crisis or conflict.

Apart from predictability, a further stabilising element is the use of nuclear doctrines. These are national positions reflecting the concept that nuclear weapons states have of the role and utility of nuclear weapons and the circumstances (remote and extreme as they may be) in which states might contemplate their use.

After the Cold War, the three Western nuclear states (US, UK and France) revised their nuclear doctrines to downplay the role of these weapons. They stressed that the function of nuclear weapons was to prevent nuclear attacks by other nuclear armed states and that they would not use nuclear weapons against non-nuclear states, even if these were allied with nuclear powers. This was known in the jargon as ‘negative security guarantees’. Moreover, and in conformity with their obligations under Article 6 of the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, the Western nuclear powers reiterated that their ultimate goal was a world without nuclear weapons even if they angered many NGOs by not agreeing to an immediate and unilateral ban, but rather preferred a more gradual and step-by-step approach using arms control and disarmament negotiations and verifiable agreements. Western powers recognised that it is difficult to persuade others to refrain from acquiring nuclear weapons if you are not willing to give them up yourself and declare that your security would be impossible without them. But in recent times, nuclear powers elsewhere in the world have come up with more permissive doctrines for nuclear use, for instance lowering the threshold and threatening nuclear retaliation for violations of national sovereignty short of outright invasion or to stave off military defeat. They have linked nuclear retaliation to chemical as well as conventional attacks or prescribed the early use of nuclear weapons to dominate and end a conflict. Russia has certainly brandished its nuclear weapons to stop NATO allies from authorising Ukraine to strike targets deep inside Russia. The aim is to instil fear by demonstrating a willingness to act irrationally and to escalate sharply. Moscow has transferred medium range nuclear weapons to Belarus and helped North Korea with missile guidance and satellite technology in exchange for Pyongyang sending soldiers and ammunition to Russia for operations against Ukraine. So, as nuclear weapons and the know-how to make them spread to more countries, now is the time for the NATO allies, working with like-minded partners across the globe, to put pressure on countries like Russia and China to be more open and transparent about their nuclear doctrines. It is also an opportunity to pressure countries to sign up to a common and standard list of nuclear constraints, both in terms of further constraints on possible nuclear use and more commitments to stop the transfer of nuclear technologies to third parties. This will hardly be easy in the present more tense and confrontational geopolitical context, but a strong diplomatic effort is urgently needed to push back against efforts by Russia and China to ‘normalise’ nuclear weapons by claiming ever more political and military uses for them. Non-nuclear states will increasingly feel vulnerable and left behind. If this trend goes unchecked, countries like Saudi Arabia, Türkiye, Egypt or South Korea may soon decide that they need to invest in nuclear weapons, too. Non-proliferation efforts, already under strain, will come to a grinding halt.

Arms control needs to be revived as well. It played a key role both during and after the Cold War in promoting transparency and building confidence. Since the fall of the Berlin Wall, 80% of American and Russian nuclear warheads have been eliminated. Yet in the past decades many stabilising agreements between Washington and Moscow have lapsed, for instance the Intermediate Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty of 1987, which eliminated both nuclear capable and conventional missiles from the European continent. The START treaty restricting strategic systems between Washington and Moscow is the one agreement still in force although both sides have backtracked from some of its verification mechanisms such as ground inspections, notification of missile tests and data exchanges. Given the increase in nuclear tensions, this is certainly not the time to allow this agreement to lapse as well and the Trump administration should accept Putin’s offer to extend it. The US needs to resume its periodic talks with Russia on strategic stability (essentially information sharing and nuclear crisis management) as well. But this is merely a holding operation while the NATO allies debate the future arms control agenda.

One issue is how to bring China into the process as Beijing catches up with Washington and Moscow in the number of deployed warheads. The UK and France will have to consider whether it is time for them to join the process too as they pursue modernisation programmes of their own. If not, singling out China will be more difficult.

Another issue will be how to address new nuclear weapons technologies, such as underwater drones like Poseidon, nuclear-propelled missiles like the Burevestnik and the growing number of hypersonic missiles like the Avangard or glide bombs. The UN Outer Space Treaty of 1967 prohibits the deployment of weapons of mass destruction in space, but it needs to be brought up to date to deal with low yield nuclear devices and to protect the satellites and uplinks and downlinks on which the nuclear powers depend for early warning of launches, missile tracking, communications and the monitoring of nuclear tests. Again, reviving arms control and adapting it to modern challenges will not be easy in the current environment but the Cold War experience demonstrated that it is both possible and imperative to negotiate agreements while continuing to uphold nuclear deterrence and prepare for potential future conflict. And if the NATO allies are to be ready to exploit diplomatic openings when they arise, they need to do the intellectual and conceptual work now to have substantial and actionable proposals to put on the table and get as many partners from across the globe on board in advance as possible.

New and emerging nuclear powers must know that they will have to join the new arms control negotiations immediately if they conduct tests or deploy nuclear weapons. Moreover, the NATO allies should start a global dialogue on how the current Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty can be reinforced at the next Review Conference; for instance, by making it legally binding to remain in the treaty, increasing the sanctions for non-compliance and giving the Vienna-based International Atomic Energy Agency more powers and resources to monitor the nuclear activities of the treaty states. Moreover, pressure must also be put on the three states that so far have refused to join the treaty, namely Israel, India and Pakistan.

Missile defence is the final building block in a more stable international nuclear regime. Kathleen Bigelow’s current hit movie on Netflix, “House of Dynamite”, has reminded US viewers of the dire consequences of a single nuclear missile strike on a US city and of all the terrible choices and dilemmas in responding to such a strike, especially when US leaders realise that their missile defence shield has failed to intercept the incoming missile. Indeed, despite the impressive performance of Israel’s Iron Dome, David’s Sling and Arrow missile defence layers, we know that they are far from perfect when it comes to massed missile attacks, as Iran demonstrated during its recent 12-day conflict with Israel last June. Even if missile defences perform optionally, just two or three missiles getting through is still enough to cause major casualties, physical blast destruction and radioactive contamination. The US has carried out 23 live tests of its GMD missile defence system against ballistic missiles since 1999 and has experienced nine failures. Supporters of missile defences point out that the last four tests have all been successful, but there is still a way to go.

So why build missile defences? Certainly, they can help to limit the damage. No matter how catastrophic, losing two cities is better than losing 20. The attacking nuclear power also cannot destroy all your nuclear weapons in a disarming first strike so mutual assured destruction is the only realistic outcome. Missile defences also make you less subject to nuclear blackmail by making it harder for an adversary to calculate the military impact of a strike, particularly a limited one. If arms control and disarmament efforts fail, and we move to a more dangerous and risk-prone nuclear world, it is certainly prudent for Western governments to invest in basic missile defence radars and interceptors, which can be perfected over time as technologies such as sensors, decoy detection and space based interception closer to launch sites (when the attacking missile is moving most slowly and emitting the largest thermal signature) all improve. President Trump is on safer ground in acknowledging the role of missile defence by launching his Golden Dome missile shield initiative. Taiwan has emulated this plan by announcing a T-Dome programme. Golden Dome marks a return to Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defence Initiative (promptly dubbed ‘Star Wars’), which was unveiled in 1983. That included space based and boost phase interception as well as the more traditional terminal ground-based defence. Back in the 1980s, Reagan’s plan foundered on the technological challenges of putting vast amounts of military hardware in space, the exorbitant cost and a lot of opposition from the US and business community, which refused to participate. But the times have changed and 40 years later the technology has moved on, and the US must cope with more nuclear armed adversaries. Russia is not the cautious and conservative state that the Soviet Union was and many new kids on the block (like North Korea, Iran or Pakistan) do not inspire confidence in their command and control or crisis management abilities.

As a result, Europe needs to think harder about its future drone and missile defence shield. Perhaps the US will be prepared to engage its NATO allies in co-development of Golden Dome R&T and technology (although Trump will undoubtedly want the lion’s share of the money to go to American companies). The US has cooperated with NATO in building the rudimentary elements of a ballistic missile defence system in Europe with a tracking radar in Türkiye and SM3 interceptor sites in Romania and Poland. So, there is a basis to build on and to the extent that US missile defence relies on early warning radars on European territory such as the UK and Greenland (Denmark), there is an incentive for Washington to transfer defence technology to its European allies. But like in the space domain, where Europe for many years relied on US systems and technologies like GPS or Starlink, the NATO allies, whether in the Alliance itself or the EU, will need to determine where they believe that they can continue to rely on transatlantic cooperation and where in such a crucial domain they must have their strategic autonomy. And then which specific projects (for instance space-based early warning, tracking and targeting radars or more civil protection and medical facilities) are needed to secure round the clock and in all circumstances Europe’s existential security interests.

Writing in the Financial Times this week, foreign affairs columnist, Gideon Rachman, has titled that “The Nuclear Arms Race Is Back”. His analysis of the growing dangers from nuclear proliferation and a new emphasis on nuclear escalation dominance is wholly correct. Europeans are, to paraphrase the Italian Marxist Gramsci, rapidly acquiring the “pessimism of intelligence”. But can they also learn – and rapidly – the other part of the equation that is the “optimism of the will”?

The views expressed in this #CriticalThinking article reflect those of the author(s) and not of Friends of Europe.