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THE ARMAGEDDON AGENDA KAMALA HARRIS, DONALD TRUMP, AND THE RACE TO
OBLIVION  
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Michael Klare
September 12, 2024
Tom Dispatch [[link removed]]

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_ The next president will be making critical decisions regarding the
future of the New START Treaty and the composition of the U.S. nuclear
arsenal. Given the vital stakes involved, such decisions should not be
left to the president and close advisors. _

A nuclear weapon is detonated at Bikini Atoll in the Marshall Islands
in 1946. (Image has been colorized.), US Government CC BY-NC 2.0 /
Flickr

 

The next president of the United States, whether Kamala Harris or
Donald Trump, will face many contentious domestic issues that have
long divided this country, including abortion rights, immigration,
racial discord, and economic inequality. In the foreign policy realm,
she or he will face vexing decisions over Ukraine, Israel/Gaza, and
China/Taiwan. But one issue that few of us are even thinking about
could pose a far greater quandary for the next president and even
deeper peril for the rest of us: nuclear weapons policy.

Consider this: For the past three decades, we’ve been living through
a period in which the risk of nuclear war has been far lower than at
any time since the Nuclear Age began — so low, in fact, that the
danger of such a holocaust has been largely invisible to most
people. The collapse of the Soviet Union and the signing of
agreements that substantially reduced the U.S. and Russian nuclear
stockpiles eliminated the most extreme risk of thermonuclear conflict,
allowing us to push thoughts of nuclear Armageddon aside (and focus on
other worries). But those quiescent days should now be considered
over. Relations among the major powers have deteriorated in
recent years and progress on disarmament has stalled. The United
States and Russia are, in fact, upgrading their nuclear arsenals with
new and more powerful weapons, while China — previously an outlier
in the nuclear threat equation — has begun a major expansion of its
own arsenal.

The altered nuclear equation is also evident in the renewed talk of
possible nuclear weapons use by leaders of the major nuclear-armed
powers. Such public discussion largely ceased after the Cuban Missile
Crisis
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1962, when it became evident that any thermonuclear exchange between
the U.S. and the Soviet Union would result in their mutual
annihilation. However, that fear has diminished in recent years and
we’re again hearing talk of nuclear weapons use. Since ordering the
invasion of Ukraine, Russian President Vladimir Putin has repeatedly
threatened
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employ nuclear munitions in response to unspecified future actions of
the U.S. and NATO in support of Ukrainian forces. Citing those very
threats, along with China’s growing military might, Congress has
authorized a program to develop more “lower-yield” nuclear
munitions supposedly meant (however madly) to provide a president with
further “options” in the event of a future regional conflict with
Russia or China.

Thanks to those and related developments, the world is now closer to
an actual nuclear conflagration than at any time since the end of the
Cold War. And while popular anxiety about a nuclear exchange may have
diminished, keep in mind that the explosive power of existing arsenals
has not. Imagine this, for instance: even a “limited” nuclear war
— involving the use of just a dozen or so of the hundreds of
intercontinental ballistic missiles (ICBMs) possessed by China,
Russia, and the United States — would cause enough planetary
destruction to ensure civilization’s collapse and the death of
billions of people
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And consider all of that as just the backdrop against which the next
president will undoubtedly face fateful decisions regarding the
production and possible use of such weaponry, whether in the bilateral
nuclear relationship between the U.S. and Russia or the trilateral one
that incorporates China.

THE U.S.-RUSSIA NUCLEAR EQUATION

The first nuclear quandary facing the next president has an actual
timeline. In approximately 500 days, on February 5, 2026, the New
Strategic Arms Reduction Treaty (New START), the last remaining
nuclear accord between the U.S. and Russia limiting the size of
their arsenals, will expire. That treaty, signed in 2010, limits
each side
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maximum of 1,550 deployed strategic nuclear warheads along with 700
delivery systems, whether ICBMs, submarine-launched ballistic missiles
(SLBMs), or nuclear-capable heavy bombers. (That treaty only covers
strategic warheads, or those intended for attacks on each other’s
homeland; it does not include the potentially devastating stockpiles
of “tactical” nuclear munitions possessed by the two countries
that are intended for use in regional conflicts.)

At present, the treaty is on life support. On February 21, 2023,
Vladimir Putin ominously announced
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Russia had “suspended” its formal participation in New START,
although claiming it would continue to abide by its warhead and
delivery limits as long as the U.S. did so. The Biden administration
then agreed that it, too, would continue to abide by the treaty
limits. It has also signaled
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Moscow that it’s willing to discuss the terms of a replacement
treaty for New START when that agreement expires in 2026. The Russians
have, however, declined to engage in such conversations as long as the
U.S. continues its military support for Ukraine.

Accordingly, among the first major decisions the next president has to
make in January 2025 will be what stance to take regarding the future
status of New START (or its replacement). With the treaty’s
extinction barely more than a year away, little time will remain for
careful deliberation as a new administration chooses among several
potentially fateful and contentious possibilities.

Its first option, of course, would be to preserve the status quo,
agreeing that the U.S. will abide by that treaty’s numerical limits
as long as Russia does, even in the absence of a treaty obliging it to
do so. Count on one thing, though: such a decision would almost
certainly be challenged and tested by nuclear hawks in both Washington
and Moscow.

Of course, President Harris or Trump could decide to launch a
diplomatic drive to persuade Moscow to agree to a new version of New
START, a distinctly demanding undertaking, given the time remaining.
Ideally, such an agreement would entail further reductions in the U.S.
and Russian strategic arsenals or at least include caps on the number
of tactical weapons on each side. And remember, even if such an
agreement were indeed to be reached, it would also require Senate
approval and undoubtedly encounter fierce resistance from the hawkish
members of that body. Despite such obstacles, this probably represents
the best possible outcome imaginable.

The worst — and yet most likely — would be a decision to abandon
the New START limits and begin adding yet more weapons to the American
nuclear arsenal, reversing a bipartisan arms control policy
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goes back to the administration of President Richard Nixon. Sadly,
there are too many members of Congress who favor just such a shift and
are already proposing measures to initiate it.

Buy the Book
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In June, for example, in its version of the National Defense
Authorization Act for fiscal year 2025, the Senate Armed Services
Committee instructed
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Department of Defense to begin devising plans for an increase in the
number of deployed ICBMs from 400 of the existing Minuteman-IIIs to
450 of its replacement, the future Sentinel ICBM. The House Armed
Services Committee version of that measure does not contain that
provision but includes separate plans for ICBM force expansion. (The
consolidated text of the bill has yet to be finalized.)

Should the U.S. and/or Russia abandon the New START limits and begin
adding to its atomic arsenal after February 5, 2026, a new nuclear
arms race would almost certainly be ignited, with no foreseeable
limits. No matter which side announced such a move first, the other
would undoubtedly feel compelled to follow suit and so, for the first
time since the Nixon era, both nuclear powers would be expanding
rather than reducing their deployed nuclear forces — only
increasing, of course, the potential for mutual annihilation. And if
Cold War history is any guide, such an arms-building contest
would result
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increased suspicion and hostility, adding a greater danger of nuclear
escalation to any crisis that might arise between them.

THE THREE-WAY ARMS RACE

Scary as that might prove, a two-way nuclear arms race isn’t the
greatest peril we face. After all, should Moscow and Washington prove
unable to agree on a successor to New START and begin expanding their
arsenals, any _trilateral_ nuclear agreement including China that
might slow that country’s present nuclear buildup becomes
essentially unimaginable.

Ever since it acquired nuclear weapons in 1964, the People’s
Republic of China (PRC) pursued a minimalist stance
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it came to deploying such weaponry, insisting that it would never
initiate a nuclear conflict but would only use nuclear weapons in a
second-strike retaliatory fashion following a nuclear attack on the
PRC. In accordance with that policy, China long maintained a
relatively small arsenal, only 200 or so nuclear warheads and a small
fleet of ICBMs and SLBMs. In the past few years, however, China has
launched a significant nuclear build-up, adding
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300 warheads and producing more missiles and missile-launching silos
— all while insisting its no-first-use policy remains unchanged and
that it is only maintaining a retaliatory force to deter potential
aggression by other nuclear-armed states.

Some Western analysts believe that Xi Jinping, China’s nationalistic
and authoritarian leader, considers
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larger arsenal necessary to boost his country’s status in a highly
competitive, multipolar world. Others argue that China fears
improvements
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U.S. defensive capabilities, especially the installation of
anti-ballistic missile systems, that could endanger its relatively
small retaliatory force and so rob it of a deterrent to any future
American first strike.

Given the Chinese construction of several hundred new missile silos,
Pentagon analysts contend
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the country plans to deploy as many as 1,000 nuclear warheads by 2030
and 1,500 by 2035 — roughly equivalent to deployed Russian and
American stockpiles under the New START guidelines. At present, there
is no way to confirm such predictions, which are based on
extrapolations from the recent growth of the Chinese arsenal from
perhaps 200 to 500 warheads. Nonetheless, many Washington officials,
especially in the Republican Party, have begun to argue that, given
such a buildup, the New START limits must be abandoned in 2026 and yet
more weapons added to the deployed U.S. nuclear stockpile to counter
both Russia and China.

As Franklin Miller of the Washington-based Scowcroft Group and a
former director of nuclear targeting in the office of the secretary of
defense put it
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“Deterring China and Russia simultaneously [requires] an increased
level of U.S. strategic warheads.” Miller was one of 12 members of
the Congressional Commission on the Strategic Posture of the United
States, a bipartisan group convened
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America’s nuclear policies in light of China’s growing arsenal,
Putin’s nuclear threats, and other developments. In its final
October 2023 report, that commission recommended
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alterations and additions to the American arsenal, including
installing multiple warheads (instead of single ones) on the Sentinel
missiles being built to replace the Minuteman ICBM and increasing the
number of B-21 nuclear bombers and Columbia-class ballistic-missile
submarines to be produced under the Pentagon’s $1.5
trillion nuclear “modernization” program
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The Biden administration has yet to endorse the recommendations in
that report. It has, however, signaled that it’s considering the
steps a future administration might take to address an expanded
Chinese arsenal. In March, the White House approved
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new version of a top-secret document, the Nuclear Employment Guidance,
which for the first time reportedly focused as much on countering
China as Russia. According to the few public comments made by
administration officials about that document, it, too, sets out
contingency plans for increasing the number of deployed strategic
weapons in the years ahead if Russia breaks out of the current New
START limits and no arms restraints have been negotiated with China.

“We have begun exploring options to increase future launcher
capacity or additional deployed warheads on the land, sea, and air
legs [of the nuclear delivery “triad”
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ICBMs, SLBMs, and bombers] that could offer national leadership
increased flexibility, if desired, and executed,” said
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Assistant Secretary of Defense Policy Vipin Narang on August 1st.
While none of those options are likely to be implemented in President
Biden’s remaining months, the next administration will be confronted
with distinctly ominous decisions about the future composition of that
already monstrous nuclear arsenal.

Whether it is kept as is or expanded, the one option you won’t hear
much about in Washington is finding ways to reduce it. And count on
one thing: even a decision simply to preserve the status quo in the
context of today’s increasingly antagonistic international
environment poses an increased risk of nuclear conflict. Any decision
to expand it, along with comparable moves by Russia and China, will
undoubtedly create an even greater risk of instability and potentially
suicidal nuclear escalation.

THE NEED FOR CITIZEN ADVOCACY

For all too many of us, nuclear weapons policy seems like a difficult
issue that should be left to the experts. This wasn’t always so.
During the Cold War years, nuclear war seemed like an ever-present
possibility and millions of Americans familiarized themselves with
nuclear issues, participating
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ban-the-bomb protests or the Nuclear Weapons Freeze Campaign of the
1980s. But with the Cold War’s end and a diminished sense of nuclear
doom, most of us turned to other issues and concerns. Yet the nuclear
danger is growing rapidly and so decisions regarding the U.S. arsenal
could have life-or-death repercussions on a global scale.

And one thing should be made clear: adding more weaponry to the U.S.
arsenal will not make us one bit safer. Given the invulnerability of
this country’s missile-bearing nuclear submarines and the multitude
of other weapons in our nuclear arsenal, no foreign leader could
conceivably mount a first strike on this country and not expect
catastrophic retaliation, which in turn would devastate the planet.
Acquiring more nuclear weapons would not alter any of this in the
slightest. All it could possibly do is add to international tensions
and increase the risk of global annihilation.

As Daryl Kimball, executive director of the Arms Control Association,
a nonpartisan research and advocacy outfit, put it recently
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“Significant increases in the U.S. deployed nuclear arsenal would
undermine mutual and global security by making the existing balance of
nuclear terror more unpredictable and would set into motion a
counterproductive, costly action-reaction cycle of nuclear
competition.”

A decision to pursue such a reckless path could occur just months from
now. In early 2025, the next president, whether Kamala Harris or
Donald Trump, will be making critical decisions regarding the future
of the New START Treaty and the composition of the U.S. nuclear
arsenal. Given the vital stakes involved, such decisions should not be
left to the president and a small coterie of her or his close
advisers. Rather, it should be the concern of every citizen, ensuring
vigorous debate on alternative options, including steps aimed at
reducing and eventually eliminating the world’s nuclear arsenals.
Without such public advocacy, we face the very real danger that, for
the first time since the atomic bombings of Hiroshima and Nagasaki in
August 1945, nuclear weapons will again be detonated on this planet,
with billions of us finding ourselves in almost unimaginable peril
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Copyright 2024 Michael Klare

Featured image: US nuclear weapons test at Bikini in 1946
[[link removed]] by International
Campaign to Abolish Nuclear Weapons
[[link removed]] is licensed under CC BY-NC 2.0
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_MICHAEL T. KLARE, a TomDispatch regular
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is the five-college professor emeritus of peace and world security
studies at Hampshire College and a senior visiting fellow at the Arms
Control Association. He is the author of 15 books, the latest of which
is All Hell Breaking Loose: The Pentagon’s Perspective on Climate
Change
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_Follow TOMDISPATCH on Twitter
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Books, John Feffer’s new dystopian novel, Songlands
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final one in his Splinterlands series), Beverly Gologorsky’s
novel Every Body Has a Story
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Tom Engelhardt’s A Nation Unmade by War
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as well as Alfred McCoy’s In the Shadows of the American Century:
The Rise and Decline of U.S. Global Power
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Dower’s The Violent American Century: War and Terror Since World
War II
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Ann Jones’s They Were Soldiers: How the Wounded Return from
America’s Wars: The Untold Story
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