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THE RACE THAT CAN’T BE WON  
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Jessica T. Mathews
September 25, 2024
The New York Review
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_ A new nuclear arms race is beginning. It will be far more dangerous
than the last one. _

Russian soldiers loading a short-range ballistic missile launcher
during a drill to train troops in using tactical nuclear weapons; from
a video released by the Russian Defense Ministry on June 12, 2024,
Russian Defense Ministry Press Service/AP Images

 

Like Toto in _The Wizard of Oz_, at their 1985 summit in Geneva
President Ronald Reagan and Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev pulled
back the curtain to reveal the truth behind the terrifying specter of
nuclear war, which their countries were spending hundreds of billions
of dollars to prepare for. “A nuclear war cannot be won,” they
jointly stated, and “must never be fought.” They omitted the
inescapable corollary of those first six words: a nuclear arms race
also cannot be won.

Still, the statement, almost unique among government declarations for
its blunt truthfulness, strengthened the case for the arms control and
nonproliferation undertakings that followed. Decades of agonizingly
difficult negotiations built up a dense structure of treaties,
agreements, and even a few unilateral moves dealing with offensive and
defensive nuclear weapons of short, medium, and long range, with
provisions for testing, inspections, and an overflight regime for
mutual observation. Often the two sides would only give up systems
they no longer wanted. Frequently the language of the agreements was
the basis of future friction. On the US side, the political price of
securing Senate ratification of treaties could be extremely high.

But for all its shortcomings, arms control brought down the total
number of nuclear weapons held by the two countries from 60,000 to
roughly 11,000 today. (The exact number is classified.) Under the most
recent treaty, New START, signed in 2010, each side is limited to
1,550 deployed weapons, with the rest in storage. By any accounting,
that 80 percent drop (95 percent counting just deployed weapons)
is—or was—a notable achievement.

Unfortunately, the past tense is correct, because since the US
withdrew from the Anti-Ballistic Missile (ABM) Treaty in
2002—thereby legitimizing the unilateral renunciation of an
agreement by one party if it no longer finds the restrictions to its
taste—the other agreements have fallen one by one. In February
2026—about five hundred days from now—New START, the last
remaining brick in the edifice so painstakingly built, will expire,
leaving the United States and Russia with no restrictions on their
nuclear arsenals for the first time in half a century.

With tensions among the great powers at a post–cold war high, a new
nuclear arms race is beginning. This one will be far more dangerous
than the first. It will be a three-sided race—now including
China—and thus much more unstable than a two-sided one. And it will
be amplified by the advent of cyberweapons, AI, the possible
weaponization of space, the ability to locate submarines deep in the
ocean, and other technological advances.

To appreciate the danger this represents, it is necessary to look back
at the peculiar dynamics of a nuclear arms race and see the craziness
that drives intelligent people in its grip to grotesque extremes. From
1950 to 1965 the US arsenal grew from its first few warheads to more
than 30,000—five times as many as the Soviet Union had at the time.
Its bible then and now has been the Single Integrated Operational Plan
(SIOP)—the multiservice plan for nuclear war. The SIOP specifies
the targets to be attacked and is based on a required level of
confidence with which each one must be destroyed.

As recounted by Fred Kaplan in his brilliant history _The Bomb_,
President Eisenhower made one of Washington’s early attempts to
exert some control over the nuclear planning being done in its name.

 In November 1960 he sent his science adviser, George Kistiakowsky,
accompanied by another weapons expert, George Rathjens, to Strategic
Air Command (SAC) headquarters in Omaha for a briefing. Rathjens came
prepared with the name of a Soviet city similar to Hiroshima in size
and industrial capacity and asked what weapons the SIOP assigned to
it. The answer was one 4.5-megaton bomb followed by three 1.1-megaton
bombs—a lunatic total of six hundred times the 12.5-kiloton bomb
dropped on Hiroshima.

As outsiders to SAC looked more and more closely at its work, they
were variously baffled, stunned, and appalled. Asked how many
Russians, Chinese, and Eastern Europeans would be killed in the
all-out attack envisaged by the first SIOP, SAC’s answer was 275
million—counting only deaths from bomb blast but not those from
heat, fire, smoke, and radioactive fallout, because these could not be
precisely calculated. Actual fatalities, therefore, would be many
times greater. The population of the region at the time was 1.03
billion. Unthinkable as this was, fear of the Soviet Union, SAC’s
clout inside the military establishment, and political momentum in
Washington were so great that, administration after administration,
the president and the Pentagon wrote guidance that SAC turned into
monstrous plans.

Decades later, after several rounds of cuts, the number of weapons had
come way down, but the level of overkill in the SIOP was still
bizarre. A review ordered by President Obama revealed, for example,
that the plan included several targets that were empty fields.
According to US intelligence, these were designated as backup bases
where Russian bombers could land if their primary bases had been
destroyed. As Kaplan tells it, the official guidance required that
“secondary bomber bases” be destroyed, so the SIOP assigned not
one but several weapons to each of these fields.

The otherworldliness of the anticipated war lies not only in its
planning; it has operational echoes as well. USAF General Charles
Boyd, a fighter pilot (and my late husband), served for a time in a
posting in which his task would have been to deliver a nuclear weapon
in the event of a war in Europe. He and his fellow pilots were each
issued an eye patch lined with lead and instructed to put it on just
before releasing their bomb. At the altitude at which their planes
flew, their unprotected eye would be blinded by the flash of the
explosion. They could then remove the patch and use that eye to fly.
Losing sight in one eye was not a big concern, however, because the
pilots had no doubt that this would be a one-way mission: there would
be nowhere to land in Western Europe in the throes of nuclear war.

Each year since 1947, the_ Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists_ has
published a Doomsday Clock, set by a board of experts, as an easily
understood assessment of the risk of global—mostly
nuclear—catastrophe. In 1991, after the signing of the START I
Treaty—the first to make deep cuts in the Soviet and US nuclear
arsenals—the clock was set to seventeen minutes before midnight. In
2024 it stands at ninety seconds, the closest it has ever been to the
metaphorical moment of apocalypse. The board cited the widespread and
growing reliance on nuclear weapons, the huge sums being spent to
expand or modernize nuclear arsenals, and Russian threats to use
nuclear weapons in the war in Ukraine.

A principal cause of concern is that after decades of relying on a
very small nuclear deterrent, China is rapidly expanding its arsenal.
It is now estimated to have 500 nuclear weapons, with plans to reach
1,000 by the end of the decade and perhaps numerical parity with the
US and Russia by deploying 1,500 strategic weapons (those powerful
enough to destroy cities and other distant targets) by 2035.

Washington can only guess at the motivation behind this decision.
Because Beijing has never been willing to participate in arms control
negotiations, the US government has little firsthand knowledge of its
thinking about its nuclear forces and strategy. It could be preparing
for war over Taiwan or seeking more broadly to establish hegemony over
the Indo-Pacific. It could be responding to what it sees as American
aggression. It could simply be taking the steps it feels are its due
as a newly arrived great power now that it can afford to do so. Most
likely there is a mix of motivations among different parts of the
government.

Russia has modernized its traditional nuclear forces. In addition, in
an angry speech in 2018, Putin unveiled several new nuclear weapons
systems. He claimed that these were a response to the US withdrawal
from the ABM Treaty and its subsequent work on missile defenses,
which Moscow vehemently opposed in the belief that they would neuter
its incoming missiles in a war. Ironically, despite enormous effort
and expense over decades, US missile defenses have never been able to
do that. The best they can do, even under test conditions arranged to
make the task easier, is perhaps to intercept the equivalent of one or
two North Korean missiles, but nowhere near a large Russian attack. So
the US decision to leave the ABM Treaty backfired in the worst way,
adding little if any security while frightening and infuriating
Russia. The new weapons announced by Putin include an intercontinental
hypersonic glider whose trajectory could be altered during flight, a
very fast nuclear-powered cruise missile of almost unlimited range,
and an underwater nuclear torpedo that could span the Pacific. “No
one has listened to us,” Putin said. “You listen to us now.”

Nonetheless, in President Biden’s first week in office, Russia and
the US announced a five-year extension of the New START Treaty days
before its expiration. Two years later, however, in a fit of anger
over Western support for Ukraine, Moscow announced that it was
“suspending” the treaty. Both sides continue to observe the
treaty’s limits on weapons, but its critical provisions for
verification via data exchange, notifications, and on-site inspections
are gone.

Later that year Moscow took the further step of revoking its
ratification of the 1996 Comprehensive Test Ban Treaty (CTBT). Russia
had ratified it in 2000, but in 1999, in a shocking step, the US
Senate had rejected the treaty, although it was an American initiative
that had been a national priority for years. As with New START,
however, Russia’s deratification was a response to US support for
Ukraine, not to its failure to ratify the treaty.

The CTBT has been ratified by 178 countries, though it cannot
officially enter into force until the US, China, and a few others
join. In another angle on this strange story, President George H.W.
Bush announced a nine-month moratorium on testing in 1992: new
technology had provided the means to assure the safety and reliability
of nuclear weapons without explosive testing. That moratorium has now
stretched to thirty-two years, but the Senate has never been willing
to reconsider the treaty. Nonetheless, the new norm has held. Except
for those by North Korea, there have been no tests anywhere in the
world in this century.

Thanks to decades of exacting negotiations, the US has a good
understanding of the doctrines, personalities, and technical details
involved in Russian nuclear planning. But two recent developments
darken the picture. In 2022, days before the invasion of Ukraine,
Putin and Chinese president Xi Jinping announced a “no-limits”
partnership covering economic, geopolitical, and security relations.
China has in fact placed limits on what it will do, for example, in
providing weapons for use in Ukraine, but the two countries’
announced joint goal of ending American primacy in international
affairs deeply concerns US leaders. Putin has also engaged in an
unprecedented degree of nuclear saber-rattling tied to the Ukraine
war. As the invasion began, he put Russia’s strategic weapons on
heightened alert. He has since threatened to use tactical weapons
(shorter-range weapons intended for battlefield use) if he thinks the
West’s support of Kyiv goes too far and has moved some of these
weapons into Belarus and ordered joint combat drills involving them.
Most recently, officials have said that Russia’s formal doctrine
would be amended to lower the threshold for nuclear use.
Notwithstanding all these steps, there is no doubt that Russia
continues to be deterred by the unquestioned threat of an overwhelming
US response to any nuclear use.

For its part, the United States has embarked on a sweeping
modernization of its entire strategic triad, covering new warheads,
delivery vehicles (bombers, submarines, missiles), and support and
command-and-control systems. Assuming no further
overruns—unlikely—the cost to develop, build, and operate the new
systems will be at least $1.5 trillion. (For a sense of scale, one
trillion seconds last 32,000 years.) Several alternatives to replacing
the land-based missile leg of the triad have been proposed for both
technical and cost reasons as well as strategic ones. These
Minuteman ICBMs are called “first-strike” weapons because the
location of their fixed silos is well known and therefore in a war
they must be fired quickly before they are attacked. For this reason,
they are kept on high alert, making them particularly susceptible to
accident or miscalculation. Thus they are both vulnerable and
destabilizing. The anticipated cost of this one piece of the program
has ballooned by 81 percent since 2020 as the schedule has slipped.
The Pentagon insists that it should proceed as planned nonetheless.

The combination of this enormous spending on upgrades and additions to
the world’s three largest nuclear arsenals, the high level of
tension and mistrust among Russia, China, and the US, and the
anticipation of highly destabilizing technological advances accounts
for the Doomsday Clock’s approach to midnight. Now there are signs
that the second hand may have to be moved yet closer.

The US modernization plan did not contemplate additions to the nuclear
arsenal. It was to be an exchange of new and improved weapons for
old—in some cases very old—ones, while keeping to New START’s
limits on weapons and delivery systems. But New START is sixteen
months from its expiration, with no replacement likely. Moreover, the
US force was designed solely for use against Russia. A force powerful
enough for that purpose was always deemed capable of dealing with a
potential threat from China or any other state. Now China’s apparent
determination to quickly acquire a large strategic nuclear force and
its new partnership with Russia dramatically alter the picture. The US
faces not one but two nuclear “near peers.”

The critical question is how to respond. Reflexive hawks have argued
that the situation demands adding to the US arsenal. Until very
recently the Biden administration, and many outside experts, argued
that such thinking fundamentally misunderstands nuclear deterrence.
“Nuclear deterrence isn’t just a numbers game,” said Secretary
of Defense Lloyd Austin in December 2022. “In fact, that sort of
thinking can spur a dangerous arms race.” Six months later, National
Security Adviser Jake Sullivan was more explicit: “I want to be
clear here—the United States does not need to increase our forces to
outnumber the combined total of our competitors in order to
successfully deter them.”

Rather than numbers, the meaningful measure of deterrence is whether,
after absorbing even a joint attack, the US would still be able to
inflict catastrophic damage on its enemies. That, in turn, depends
heavily on what it chooses to target. Current US strategy, known as
counterforce, aims at the opponent’s nuclear forces, leadership, and
military command-and-control structure. Other possibilities, such as
targeting the infrastructure that holds a state together—its
industry, ports, transport, finance, communication networks,
government, and conventional forces—might achieve the same result
with far fewer warheads and a comparable number of civilian deaths.

By the summer of 2024 administration officials were signaling that
rising nuclear risks could force the US to replace one-for-one
modernization with additions to its forces. This could lead to
“nothing short of a new nuclear age,” said Vipin Narang, a senior
Pentagon official, on August 1. “Absent a change” in Russian
behavior and China’s nuclear trajectory, he added, we might have to
look back on the period since the end of the cold war as “nuclear
intermission.” There are conflicting reports about whether the
top-secret nuclear guidance signed by President Biden last March
reoriented nuclear planning around China. “We have repeatedly voiced
concerns” about China’s growing arsenal, said a National Security
Council spokesman in an intentionally non-informative comment, but
“there is far more continuity than change” in the new guidance.

By raising the implicit threat level, the administration may be trying
to push Moscow and Beijing toward different behavior, or an internal
bureaucratic battle may be ongoing or have been resolved in favor of a
new policy. If former president Trump is reelected, however, there is
little doubt about the outcome. Trump’s fourth and last national
security adviser, Robert C. O’Brien, argues that “the United
States has to maintain…numerical superiority to the combined Chinese
and Russian nuclear stockpiles.”

 This would be almost a mathematical impossibility. After decades of
negotiating arms control agreements on the basis of parity, Russia
would match any additions the US makes. China’s force would be
additional to that. Hence even equality in numbers—much less
superiority—would be unattainable. Such a goal is a foolproof recipe
for an arms race without end.

O’Brien also calls for a return to nuclear testing. After conducting
more than a thousand tests, the US has little to learn from carrying
out more. China, on the other hand, has conducted fewer than fifty and
would leap at the opportunity to resume if the US were to bear the
political opprobrium of breaking the moratorium. It would not be long
before other nuclear and currently nonnuclear states followed suit.
The result would be a pointless loss in US national security and a
sharp spur to global proliferation.

So it seems that the curtain has risen on the opening of a new arms
race, one deeply destabilized by a third participant and a raft of new
technology. There is little doubt as to how it will unfold and—God
willing—end. Vast sums of money will be spent by each country to
respond to worst-case assumptions about the others. The diversion of
funds from domestic needs and the growing national debt burden will
weaken all of them. This will continue until fear, among leaders and
perhaps the public, turns wiser heads to diplomacy and the inching,
difficult steps of negotiated arms control. Then additional vast sums
will be spent dismantling what has been built. Darker possibilities of
course abound, including accident, miscalculation, or a “limited”
nuclear war intentionally started or stumbled into in the delusion
that it would not escalate to a global holocaust.

Those who bear the responsibility to protect the United States must
naturally consider worst-case assumptions about adversaries. But they
must also bear in mind truths we now know about ourselves. When the
United States went on its nuclear building spree in the 1960s, it had
no intention of destroying the planet even as it acquired more than
enough nuclear weapons to do so. Although its plans included one for a
preemptive first strike on the Soviet Union, no president or party
ever contemplated starting a nuclear war. Even now, with so much more
publicly known about this period, it would be hard to point to a
single clear rationale for why the US created such an arsenal.

While it faces real threats, the United States is still unquestionably
the strongest of the three participants in this costly, dangerous, and
ultimately futile contest, with the opportunity to consider what might
be done to interrupt it. A negotiated end to the war in Ukraine would
help remove barriers to working with Russia. Even before that, there
are possibilities. General Christopher Cavoli, the NATO Supreme
Allied Commander and a fluent Russian speaker and student of that
country, urges that Washington should make a concerted effort to
revive lines of communication that enabled the US and the Soviet Union
to survive the cold war:

We knew how to communicate verbally and nonverbally about our
intentions in a way that gave predictability to the other side….
This was one of the principal things we used to…achieve deterrence
without significant risk…. We knew how to send signals to each
other…almost all of that is gone now.

Rose Gottemoeller, the chief US negotiator of New START and former
deputy secretary general of NATO, believes that even though Russia
violated the 1987 Intermediate-Range Nuclear Forces (INF) Treaty by
deploying missiles with an illegally long range, an offer made by
Putin in 2020 suggests the possibility, however small, of negotiating
a new agreement on such missiles. China might be interested as well.
Putin and Xi have reportedly discussed parallel moratoriums
on INF missiles in Europe and Asia.

Attention needs to be paid to public opinion as well. The major steps
to wind down the first arms race began under heavy public pressure
that influenced leaders and legislators. Today climate change has
replaced nuclear war as the main existential threat in the public
mind, and funders of nongovernmental research and analysis have
redirected their resources far too heavily in that direction even
while the reasons for fearing nuclear war are, if anything, greater
than they once were.

The Senate could also take a fresh look at the Test Ban Treaty.
Washington insiders will laugh at this idea, since the Senate has
never shown the slightest willingness to reconsider its vote. But
after thirty-two years of no testing, with proven means of assuring
the reliability of US weapons without testing, and with international
monitoring stations in place capable of detecting the smallest test
anywhere on the planet, there are no legitimate arguments against
ratification. Moreover, ninety-one current senators did not take part
in the original vote. Though it would have no effect on US security,
ratification would reverberate loudly worldwide. It would likely be
followed by ratification by the other treaty holdouts and thereby
boost global efforts to contain proliferation and rising nuclear
risks.

This list is only suggestive. Others will have different ideas. The
point is that even with formal arms control negotiations currently
precluded by geopolitical tensions with both Russia and China, there
are steps the United States could take, without risk to its own
security, to interrupt or possibly reverse the downward spiral that
has begun into the depths of another full-fledged nuclear arms race.

_JESSICA T. MATHEWS was President of the Carnegie Endowment for
International Peace from 1997 until 2015 and is now a Distinguished
Fellow there. She has served in the State Department and on the
National Security Council staff in the White House. (October 2024)_

_THE NEW YORK REVIEW OF BOOKS has established itself, in Esquire’s
words, as “the premier literary-intellectual magazine in the English
language.” The New York Review began during the New York
publishing strike of 1963, when its founding editors, Robert Silvers
and Barbara Epstein, and their friends, decided to create a new kind
of magazine—one in which the most interesting and qualified minds of
our time would discuss current books and issues in depth. Just as
importantly, it was determined that the Review should be an
independent publication; it began life as an independent editorial
voice and it remains independent today. _

_Subscribe to New York Review of Books.
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