In addition to the opinions of these experts, it should also be noted that the U.S. Enduring Stockpile includes warheads of variable yield for ALCMs (air-launched cruise missiles), SLCMs (sea-launched cruise missiles), and SLBMs (submarine-launched ballistic missiles) with options as low as five kilotons. For “messaging” purposes, the yield of the weapon may be less important than the choice of target to attack. For example, the demonstrative use of a nuclear weapon to create an electromagnetic pulse (EMP) that fries electronic circuits over a wide area might be impressive without causing an immediate loss of life or mass destruction of property. Using a low-yield NSNW at sea might threaten naval vessels and their crews without collateral damage to civilians or facilities ashore. 

Nuclear messaging could even occur without actually firing a weapon. Weapons might be moved from their peacetime storage sites to locations nearer to their assigned launchers and in ways that were obviously visible to enemy intelligence. Bombers and other aircraft that are nuclear capable can be placed on higher alert, relocated, or sent aloft on trajectories that indicate growing seriousness about ongoing events. Military “exercises” can involve more nonroutine activities and visible preparations for attack. 

Paradoxically, signals of resolve for either conventional or nuclear deterrence can also be sent by showing apparent stoicism and self-control in the face of adversary efforts to upset the applecart. Threats of nuclear escalation by provocateurs can be met by treating them as bombastic overkill and by reassuring all audiences that the United States has contingency plans already in place for almost every situation and that it will continue to conduct real-time rehearsals with allies and partners for future challenges. The U.S. president and national security apparatus should, as John F. Kennedy once recommended, “never negotiate out of fear, but never fear to negotiate.”

The precise numbers and kinds of weapons that the United States will need to offset the rise of China as a nuclear peer competitor and modernization of Russia’s nuclear arsenal are not estimated in the commission report. But the apparent costs for modernization of nuclear forces and infrastructure, including nuclear command, control and communications (NC3), delivery systems, warheads, cyber and space supports, and improved U.S. missile and air defenses, plus advanced hypersonic offensive weapons and other means of offsetting enemy integrated air and missile defenses (IAMD), should involve considerable sticker shock. More importantly, the question of U.S. strategy and understanding of Russian and Chinese military strategy (and vice versa), including that for nuclear deterrence or use, looms largely in the background.  

Imagine a four-dimensional chess game of perceptions management taking into account the following: U.S. Perceptions of Russian and Chinese Strategy, Russian and Chinese Perceptions of U.S. Strategy, Russian and Chinese Perceptions of U.S. Perceptions of Russian and Chinese Strategy, and U.S. Perceptions of Russian and Chinese Perceptions of U.S. Strategy. Each of these four dimensions interacts with all the others, exerting some influence and receiving feedback. 

In addition, it will be important to know how closely Russian and Chinese military-strategic planning is coordinated with respect to nuclear deterrence, first use or first strike. Presidents Xi and Putin have made demonstrations of political affinity, and the two states regularly conduct shared military exercises. However, this does not necessarily mean that Beijing and Moscow are totally transparent with respect to their nuclear force holdings or their actual war plans. Chinese and Russian leadership share hostility to what they regard as American global hegemony, but the relationship between that and future force planning remains uncertain. 

Arms control could offer a forum for increasing consultation between China and Russia, in addition to their expectations about the United States. Even if, for example, China builds its strategic nuclear forces to a maximum of 1,500 operationally deployed warheads on 700 or fewer intercontinental launchers, the PLA would still remain within the New START limits for deployed weapons and launchers currently accepted by the United States and Russia (although Russia has temporarily withdrawn from participation in New START formal negotiations, it has indicated its willingness to remain within New START limits unless or until otherwise indicated). 

Some understandable skepticism exists about whether China would agree to take part in strategic arms control talks as they have been conducted in the past by the United States and Russia. China would have to accept a degree of transparency not previously permitted with respect to its deployed (and perhaps non-deployed) nuclear weapons and launchers. However, China’s position on transparency may evolve as its strategic nuclear force deployments increase in number and move into the same neighborhood as those of the United States and Russia. Even then, arms control will be a qualitative as well as a quantitative challenge, assuming a tripartite participation by the three great powers. China and Russia will depend more on land-based missiles than the United States, with the lion’s share of its weapons deployed on submarines and bombers. Although both Russia and China are improving their deployed SSBN and bomber forces, the United States will remain at the forefront of ballistic missile submarine and strategic bomber-related technologies for the foreseeable future.

Additional difficulties in seeing “through a glass darkly” are presented in attempts to forecast how the dominant technologies of the future, including AI, quantum computing, nanotechnology, autonomous weapons systems, directed energy weapons, and hypersonics, among others, will influence decisions about nuclear force planning and “how much is enough” for deterrence. More nuclear weapons do not necessarily mean greater security, and a trade-off between next-generation conventional and nuclear weapons is almost inevitable unless defense budgets are completely open-ended. U.S. defense planners, including those dealing with decisions about nuclear weapons, will need games and studies that maximize uncertainty, include scenarios with nonlinear events, and force different strategic mindsets into close-quarter combat. Keeping all these factors in mind will ensure that we do not overreact to the Commission’s recommendations and that they are implemented in a manner that bolsters our national security. 

Lawrence J. Korb is a senior fellow at the Center for American Progress. Previously, Dr. Korb served as assistant secretary of defense (manpower, reserve affairs, installations, and logistics) from 1981 through 1985.

Stephen J. Cimbala is a Distinguished Professor of Political Science at Penn State Brandywine, an American Studies faculty member, and the author of numerous books and articles in the fields of international security studies, defense policy, nuclear weapons and arms control, intelligence, and other fields.

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