The Global Nuclear Posture, Part Two

We discuss the cost of the new arms race, Project 2025's plan for missile defense and what we recommend President Kamala Harris do on nuclear weapons.

Last week, I had the chance to talk with my good friend, Jon Wolfsthal, on his Deep State Radio Network podcast, We’re All Going to Die. In this newsletter, I share part two of our discussion, edited for brevity and clarity. Below is the video version of the podcast.

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Deep State Radio interview, Sept. 13, part two

JON: You and I agree that these nuclear weapon systems aren't necessary or at least the scale of the systems aren’t necessary. I was talking with my staff the other day and they asked, “Is Harris likely to change all this?” I have become cynical. I said that I think Donald Trump is more likely to cut back on nuclear modernization and negotiate arms control with Putin than President Harris would be. I think President Harris, not having a deep background on nuclear issues, is more likely to be swayed by the defense and industrial side, the military side.

So, unless there is an economic argument — and I think you're right on this [See Part One] — and unless that argument develops popular support, I think we're likely to keep spending on the nuclear side. I don't agree with that, but I've now been in the town long enough to know that there is no large public constituency for major cuts to the Pentagon budget. I think that the budget will hit $1 trillion in the next administration regardless of who is president.

Let me ask you another question — since you’ve been talking about huge amount of money. I thought of you as I was rereading the Strategic Posture Commission because buried in there is a real nugget. Which is that the United States has to get really serious about national missile defense. And that has to include cruise missile defense.

I learned most of what I know about you and Matt Bunn so I'm pretty smart on this stuff. I know that national missile defense is really expensive. It's very hard to do.  And it's not cheap compared to offensive. Offenses are always going to be cheaper than defense. Cruise missile defense as I understand, is astronomically more expensive and complicated.

So, please unpack this for our listeners. Because I think this is going to be the next push. Help people understand what that actually means.

JOE: The struggle for missile defense has a long history. You can go back to the Chinese use of rockets in 1320.

JON:  I think we’re going to have shorten that history, Brother Maynard.

JOE:  Oh! You don’t want to hear about the British rockets used to attack Fort McHenry, “by the rockets’ red glare?” Or the efforts to defeat the V-2s? Okay, we can be brief.

The core problem is that these projectiles are very small, very fast and very hard to hit. In the 21st century we've been able to develop some defenses that could hit some of the missiles, some of the time. These are point defense. They defend small areas, such as a harbor, a troop formation and so on. Ukraine and Israel have had success with these kinds of point defenses against shorter range rockets and missiles. But when you get to longer range missiles that are going not tens of miles, but hundreds or thousands of miles, these things are coming in small and fast and cold and they're traveling through outer space which can make them very difficult to target.

It has proven to be technically impossible to develop reliable defense against long-range ballistic missiles. We can try. Under ideal conditions — and this is just remarkable — we can build a system that can hit a warhead in space about 50 percent of the time. It really is hitting a bullet with a bullet.

In order to do that, you have to be able to see the bullet. This requires that your enemy cooperates with you. They can’t try to hide the bullet in a cloud of false targets that confuse your sensors, such as clouds of chaff or balloons that look exactly like the warhead while traveling through the frictionless vacuum of space, or jammers.

If they're not cooperating with you, if they're deploying even primitive decoys, chaff or jammers, you can't see the warhead. You can’t hit the warhead. You have zero protection.

JON: I learned that all of our missile defense tests, except for one, have taken place during the daytime because we need to be able to see the launch. North Korea, however, tests their missiles at night — which shows us they’re not gonna cooperate.

JOE: Basically, our tests are rigged. They are designed for optimal conditions. We know where the missiles are coming from, what the warhead looks like, what it’s radar signature is. Still, we are only able to hit them 50 percent of the time.

When our generals come up to Congress and say we have a national missile defense system, that is true. We have 44 interceptors that don't work. It is a Potemkin defense.

Conservatives hate this reality. Project 2025 calls for expanding and accelerating spending on national missile defense.  I have an article about this in the Bulletin of the Atomic Scientists. Trump advisors want to expand the nuclear arsenal, get rid of the arms control agreements and focus on a strategy of overwhelming adversaries militarily and economically. That is how we “won” the Cold War, they believe, and that's how we can defeat China, etc.

A key part of this is expanding missile defense programs. They believe this is just a problem of political will. That the reason we don't have a missile defense is because we haven't been trying a hard enough.

Oh, really? We have spent $450 billion on missile defense since Ronald Reagan announced his program in 1983. We have had the best scientist, the best defense contractors working the problem. We still do not have an effective national missile defense system. It's not the lack of trying. It is because it is technologically impossible to do.

The Trump and Project 2025 Missile Defense Scam

They see that failure and want to double down. Let’s go to cruise missile defense, too, they say. Now, you can do cruise missile defense, on ships, for example. We have systems like the Phalanx and others that put out a storm of bullets to hit cruise missiles, which are traveling relatively slow. But to defend a country would mean you would have to have these defense systems roughly every 20 miles or so, up and down the entire coastline. That is an insane idea.

Of course they have to be on 24/7 alert because a submarine could pop up 150 miles off the coast and set off of volume of 20 cruise missiles and you had to be ready to take them out in 10 minutes.

JON: Plus, defending the Canadian and Mexican coastlines because a cruise missile could overfly those territories. It is an astronomical undertaking.

I think it points to this disconnect between theory and practice. In theory,  nuclear modernization is easy. the graph look great. I can get it done no problem. $70 billion a year for ten years, you’re all set. Right? Same with missile defense. All we have to do is put two shooters on every incoming. We're good.  Cruise missile defense, we already have these systems, etc.

But when it comes to the implementation, it becomes very complicated and very expensive. And technologically, a lot of this stuff just isn't there. The physics are hard, right? I don't go as far as impossible, because I do think if the United States wanted to be able to shoot down a single missile and we really did nothing but that, we could do that. But, again, they just build a second missile and a fourth missile and so on.

JOE:  I have the perfect example of that. In the 1980’s, we had hearings in the House Armed Services Committee on missile defense. We asked our top generals if they were concerned about the 100 interceptors that Russia had deployed around Moscow. They were tipped with nuclear warheads, because they didn't have hit to kill. They're were designed to destroy incoming missiles in a series of thermonuclear explosions above the city.

The generals replied that, no, they weren’t concerned about the system. If Russia had 100 interceptors, we will just send 101 nuclear warheads. The simplest way to defeat missile defenses is to overwhelm it. In fact, as you know well, we did not have 101 warheads targeted on Moscow, but several hundred. There is no defense in the world that can stop you from killing a city if you want to badly enough.

JON: That is why you insisted when we were together at the Carnegie Endowment program that we have the game Missile Command up on our web site. It is the perfect illustration of the problem. You can win for a while, but eventually you get overwhelmed.

Let’s turn to solutions. Are you worried about China, North Korea, their nuclear modernization and their growth?  What do you think the U.S. really needs to do about it? You talked about the death of arms control. I agree. I think it'll come back because people will recognize the treadmill doesn't get us anywhere. Eventually we're going to need to find someway to engage and stabilize these relationships. But if you were to sit down with Harris and you convince her that she needs to think about this, what are you urging her to do? What are the programs you think we should continue, how do you get out of the current dynamic? Quick question

JOE: Great question. I am a nuclear abolitionist. I believe that these weapons are the most horrible weapons ever invented. I agree with Pope Francis that they are immoral that we should not use a nuclear weapon under any circumstance. That a defense strategy based on the mass destruction of millions of innocent civilians is immoral and unsustainable. You can't do this. You shouldn't do this.

But I am also a realist, For as long as nuclear weapons exist, we’re going to have to have some weapons to deter other nations from attacking us.

I understand that's a contradiction. I'm saying that I want to rely on the mass destruction of innocent civilians in order to prevent somebody from the mass destruction of my innocent civilians. I get that. I understand that. I also know that the only way out of this dilemma is to negotiate the eventual elimination of these systems. Until we get there we need to maintain a nuclear force and modernize it.

I was just asked by The Bulletin Of The Atomic Scientists to to contribute to a series of essays they will publish on what nuclear policy questions we should pose to the presidential candidates. If you had the chance, what would you ask them?

I think my first question to a President Harris would be: How many nuclear weapons do we need?

I want to try to get away from the dodge of talking about this in the abstract. Or talking about it as if we need to dominate every step of the nuclear escalatory ladder. Let’s get specific. How many do you think we need?

Currently, we have 5,000 nuclear weapons, with about 1,500 or1,700 on alert ready to use. Why 1,500? Why isn't 1,000 enough? What about 500? That is what the Chinese now have. Five hundred. And guess what? Even though we outnumbered them ten to one, that force deters us.  Five hundred nuclear weapons to our 5,000 and we are deterred.

We are not going to attack China for fear that they might hit us with one weapon. Or with ten. Ten nuclear weapons going off on ten US cities would be a level of destruction never seen in human history.

So, how many do you need? Let’s look at it that way, rather than get wrapped up in this idea that we have to have a nuclear weapon for every mission, which is the way we do now.

Don't look at this is starting with what we have and what we can get rid of.  Like you want to clean out your closet and think you don't really need this particularly sweater anymore. No. Follow the Japanese method of cleaning out all of your closet. The Marie Kondo method of taking everything out and then consciously deciding what you truly need.

JON: So which nuclear weapons give you joy? (laughing.)

JOE: In some ways. We should build our nuclear posture from the ground up. I know that is bureaucratically impossible, but as a thought experiment it might get you to understand the system.

Couple that with a renewed push to start negotiations. I think negotiations with Russia are highly unlikely in the foreseeable future, but China might be an area where we can reach some sort of at least stability. We might be able to get them to restrain their buildup in exchange for us restraining ours. What do you think?

JON: What you say makes sense but I actually think that you're not going to stop the Chinese build up. I think China's decided that they are going to build about 1500 weapons, if not more. They think that's basically what the United States and Russia have in strategic weapons. And they’re a superpower, so why shouldn't they have that number?

I actually think you still need to start with Russia. If you can get a five-year deal with Russia that caps numbers and then engage the Chinese in some longer-term discussions, I think you might get somewhere.

JOE: So you might be able to get an agreement to just maintain the existing New Start treaty limits, which expire in 2026?

JON: Yes. That is what we did when the START treaty expired. We had a period of about nine months where we didn't have a treaty and before Rose Gottemoeller was able to rapidly negotiated the New Start treaty in record time. Similarly, I think we could end up with a gap. I think the bigger problem is not whether we could get a deal with Russia, but that we are not going to get one until the war in Ukraine ends.

I don't know if the United States is prepared to negotiate with a war criminal. And this is where Trump is more likely to try to rehabilitate Putin than Harris. I would think Harris will have a hard time sitting down and negotiating with Putin because of who he is and what he's done. Trump obviously will do anything Putin wants and I think that path is open. For people who support arms control, that's gonna be a real struggle, because if Trump is president and that pathway opens, it's a real moral dilemma.

END OF PART TWO