National Security Perspective
Dennis Evans, Barry Hannah, and Jonathan Schwalbe
The United States has a nuclear triad consisting of ballistic missile submarines, land-based intercontinental ballistic missiles, B-52 bombers, and B-2 bombers. At one time, it also had thousands of nonstrategic nuclear weapons (NSNWs) that were not covered by any treaties until the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty banned several types of US and Soviet weapons in 1987. Today, US NSNWs are limited to unguided bombs on non-stealthy short-range fighters at several bases in NATO countries. Russia, by contrast, has a much larger inventory of NSNWs and is modernizing them. China also has NSNWs, and North Korea either already poses, or soon will pose, a nuclear threat in the western Pacific. This growing asymmetry in NSNWs may pose a threat to NATO and to US allies in the western Pacific. The United States needs to devote more attention to this situation, considering improvements to its NSNWs along with other measures that might help mitigate these asymmetries, such as improved defenses against small nuclear attacks. The United States also needs to consider options for modifications to the INF Treaty in lieu of complete withdrawal.
National Security Perspective
Richard Danzig, John Allen, Phil DePoy, Lisa Disbrow, James Gosler, Avril Haines, Samuel Locklear III, James Miller, James Stavridis, Paul Stockton, and Robert Work
During World War II, international threats and national goals were clear. That clarity continued, albeit to a lesser degree, throughout the Cold War and into the new century, with the United States as the world’s preeminent superpower and leader in defense, technology, and economic might. Today’s world is a different place, and the need for a clear picture of it is critical. This paper helps to crystallize that picture by first identifying premises that served processes, institutions, and strategies from World War II through the Cold War, seeking to comprehend our inherited predispositions as predicate for rethinking them. It then identifies changes that undermine these premises. To forge new premises, the authors specify foundational American strengths that must be protected and expanded amid and despite these changes. Finally, the authors suggest premises for a new age of strategic thought. This paper does not recommend a new national security strategy. Instead, it serves as a necessary preface to such a strategy by articulating how our national strengths and weaknesses must be understood as foundations for American security and by showing how the premises that have guided us from World War II to the present must be modified for the future.
