Green New Deal for Nuclear Weapons

The following is excerpted from the September 2019 issue of the "Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists." The article is entitled "We need a Green New Deal for nuclear weapons."

The Green New Deal is a progressive response to climate change, because it's a solution commensurate with the scale of the problem. It also has a coherent vision for its implementation that is equal parts optimistic and realistic. Meanwhile, the arms control community is largely trapped in damage-control mode, valiantly resisting President Trump's efforts to build dangerous new nuclear weans and withdraw from critical nuclear agreements. Environmentalists are playing offense, while the nuclear community is playing defense.

Most progressives would argue that the answer is global zero -- a nuclear-free world. However, that is a long-term solution. Just as the Green New Deal does not immediately see a fossil-fuel-free world, a progressive nuclear policy cannot immediately see a nuclear-free one.

This does not mean, however, that progressives should be satisfied with occasional and incremental nuclear policy tweaks. By applying core principles of the Green New Deal -- international cooperation, reductions, transparency, and justice -- to nuclear weapons, progressives can begin to craft a plan that seeks to ambitiously and coherently restructure U.S. nuclear policy.

The Green New Deal aims to make the United States "the international leader on climate change." In similar fashion, a progressive nuclear policy should seek to place the United States at the forefront of global disarmament efforts -- acting as an international leader in nuclear transparency, diplomacy, and reductions.

President Trump has foolishly undone earlier diplomatic successes by killing off successful arms control treaties --including the Iran nuclear deal and the Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces Treaty, which banned an entire missile class -- and threatening to terminate President Barack Obama's New START, the treaty that caps U.S. and Russian deployed strategic nuclear arsenals. Nevertheless, a progressive nuclear policy should begin by emulating and expanding upon specific policies from not only the Obama era, but also from the Trump administration.

In a similar vein, the United States should immediately end its  bellicose rhetoric toward Iran and attempt to pick up the shattered pieces of the Iran nuclear deal. These efforts might require targeted sanctions relief ad economic inducements to convince participating countries to return to the table in good faith.

With regard to other nuclear powers -- particularly Russia and China -- the Trump  administration has embraced great-power competition and gung-ho militarist policies that will drag the world deeper into a renewed arms race. Instead, the United States should engage with Russia to reconstruct the INF Treaty, with both countries returning to compliance; immediately extend -- and try to expand -- New START; pursue arrangements to reduce military tension; draw up a long-term plan to include China and other nuclear-armed states in the arms-control process; and finally ratify the Comprehensive Nuclear Test Ban Treaty.

The Green New Deal suggests that U.S. technological expertise can be leveraged to help other countries achieve Green New Deals of their own.This can be mirrored in the nuclear policy space. Just as the United States could become the leading exporter of renewable energy technology, it could also emulate the "just transition" envisioned in the Green New Deal,which seeks to smoothly reorient workers toward low-carbon jobs; in the nuclear context, such a transition could result in weapons manufacturers using their expertise for disarmament --placing an emphasis on warhead     dismantlement and verification, rather than on production.

Reductions. Committing to ambitious climate change goals (net-zero carbon emissions by 2050) is a critical component of the Green New Deal,and one that should also be translated to the nuclear space. For both threats, progressives must take steps to physically reduce the causes and enablers of the crisis at hand -- for climate change,it's carbon emissions for nuclear weapons, it's the weapons themselves. Over the next decade, the United States will spend nearly $100,000 per minute on its nuclear forces -- that's a tremendous amount of money that could otherwise be spent on priorities like infrastructure, health care, education, and fighting climate change.

First on the chopping block should be Trump's new nukes: a planned nuclear sea-lunched cruise missile akin to the one retired by the Obama administration for its lack of military utility and a "low-yield" warhead (the name obscures the fact that it's still one-third the size of the Hiroshima bomb that killed more than 100,000 people). These "flexible" weapons could make a nuclear strike even more tempting for military planners, making future crises all the more dangerous.

The current plan to replace nearly every weapon in the U.S. nuclear arsenal was actually enshrined under the Obama administration. As experts from Global Zero have argued, the majority of these replacements are unnecessary and could be phased out under a new nuclear posture favoring minimum deterrence over war fighting.Under this new posture -- and ideally alongside reductions by other nuclear-armed states -- the United States should dramatically reduce its bomber and submarine forces,and completely scrap its intercontinental ballistic missiles,which are irrelevant in a post-Cold-War era and are largely maintained to appease missile manufacturers and members of Congress where the missiles are based. Additionally, the United States should vow never to use nuclear weapons first -- a position supported by the majority of Democrats.

The United States should also be prepared to make concessions regarding its ballistic missile defenses, which -- despite being rudimentary at best and useless at worst-- are key drivers of the arms race. This is because other countries, particularly Russia and China, fear that expanded U.S. defenses might one day render their nuclear arsenals useless.