When Leonor Tomero, deputy assistant secretary of defense for nuclear and missile defense policy, testified before the Senate Armed Services Committee on May 5, 2021, she aroused the ire of Senator Tom Cotton (R-Ark.), by explaining that her job was to coordinate the review process, consider the risks and benefits of current declaratory policy, assess alternative options, and not impose any personal views she might have. Cotton said he was 'now troubled by the direction' of the Nuclear Posture Review (NPR).The response of the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists was: "What kind of a 'robust' nuclear posture can supposedly deter World War III but not withstand some hard questions about whether all 3,800 nuclear bombs and warheads in the US stockpile (as well as as the 400 ICBMs, 280 SLBMs, 66 strategic bombers, and 14 nuclear-powered ballistic missile submarines that carry them) are vital to that mission, to say nothing of affordable?"
"The writing was on the wall back in January 2021, when Adm. Charles Richard, commander of US Strategic Command, told the Defense Writers Group that the objective of the NPR should be 'validation, that we like the strategy we have. ... [T]nation has had basically the same strategy dating back to the Kennedy administration. It's been repeatedly validated through multiple administrations. It would be useful to do that again. And then to be satisfied that the capabilities we have are able to accomplish that again.' For Richard, the most senior military officer with operational responsibility over the nuclear arsenal , undertaking any kind of serious, thorough evaluation of nuclear requirements, let alone exploring any potentially beneficial alternatives to a strategy that, in his words, hasn't changed for 60 years, was wholly unnecessary. The question now [for Biden] is whether he will accept an NPR that is likely to do far, far less or find a way to ensure he receives actual policy options to pursue, rather than a nuclear fait accompli that changes little or nothing."
"Back to basics. What would an honest and productive NPR look like? Rather than starting with the unquestioned assumption that all the weapons we have and everything we're already doing to upgrade them is essential and effective, it would go back to first principles to identify the fundamental national security and foreign policy objectives of the United States 'before' proposing a strategy for how nuclear weapons can help to achieve some of them. Next the review would identify specific military targets to support that strategy, targets to support that strategy, assess the best weapons for those targets, and determine the precise force posture and deployment numbers to hold those targets at risk. Finally, it would quantify the amount of money required to accomplish all of this -- including designing, building, testing, and maintaining the warheads and all the supporting infrastructure -- both today and well into the future. It would also be managed not just by the Defense Department but jointly with the State Department (to fully assess diplomatic and arms reduction concerns) and the Energy Department (to better include the perspectives of those charged with actually maintaining the nuclear warheads and the facilities that sustain them). And it would allow academics and non-governmental experts (including retired governmental and military officials) opportunities to contribute their knowledge and experience before any drafts are written.
Failing to do that will continue to perpetuate the so-called nuclear triad based on the longstanding but unsubstantiated (and unprovable) belief it is absolutely necessary to our deterrent posture.
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